This highly accessible book provides an extensive and comprehensive overview of current research and theory about why and how we should protect future generations. It exposes how and why the interests of people today and those of future generations are often in conflict and what can be done. It rebuts critical concepts such as Parfits' non-identity paradox and Beckerman's denial of any possibility of intergenerational justice. The core of the book is the lucid application of a veil of ignorance to derive principles of intergenerational justice which show that our duties to posterity are stronger than is often supposed. Tremmel's approach demands that each generation both consider and improve the well-being of future generations. To measure the well-being of future generations Tremmel employs the Human Development Index rather than the metrics of utilitarian subjective happiness. The book thus answers in detailed, concrete terms the two most important questions of every theory of intergenerational justice: what to sustain? and how much to sustain?

The contributors to this volume undertake to establish the foundations and definitions of intergenerational justice and to explore its capacity to guide us in policy and public opinion judgments we must make to face unprecedented issues. . . We are changing the biosphere and using resources to an extent never contemplated in the history of ethics. Deterioration of our oceans, loss of topsoil, insecurity about potable water supplies, the ozone hole, global warming, and the question about how to handle high-level nuclear waste which remains lethal perhaps 400,000 years from now, are some examples whose consequences reach far beyond inherited principles and policies of responsibility to others. This Handbook works to open a path for debate, extension of our tradition and invention of new thinking on these issues. Craig Walton, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, US More than a Handbook, this collection is a landmark work showing the way to a new ethics of intergenerational responsibility. It raises, in the most comprehensive way, the overarching ethical questions of our time, What are the rights of future generations? and How might present generations establish a philosophical foundation for its responsibilities to generations to come? . Peter Blaze Corcoran, Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education, Florida Gulf Coast University, US This important book provides a rich menu of history, current theory, and future directions in constitutional law, philosophy of rights and justice, and the relations of economics and politics to time, institutions, and the common good. It is enlivened by back-and-forth discussions among the authors (including some disagreements), as well as by applications to important contemporary issues such as climate change, nuclear waste, and public debt. Theoretic considerations are nicely balanced with examples of the means adopted in a number of countries to establish a legal foundation for protection of the quality of life for future generations. Neva Goodwin, Tufts University, US Do we owe the future anything? If so, what and why? Our capacity to affect the lives of future generations is greater than ever before, but what principles should regulate our relationship with people who don t yet exist? This Handbook offers a comprehensive survey of the key debates and pathbreaking accounts of potential ways forward both ethical and institutional. Andrew Dobson, The Open University, UK This Handbook provides a detailed overview of various issues related to intergenerational justice. Comprising articles written by a distinguished group of scholars from the international scientific community, the Handbook is divided into two main thematic sections foundations and definitions of intergenerational justice and institutionalization of intergenerational justice. The first part clarifies basic terms and traces back the origins of the idea of intergenerational justice. It also focuses on the problem of intergenerational buck-passing in the ecological context; for example in relation to nuclear waste and the greenhouse effect. At the same time, it also sheds light on the relationship between intergenerational justice and economics, addressing issues such as public debt and financial sustainability. The innovative second part of the volume highlights how posterity can be institutionally protected, such as by inserting relevant clauses into national constitutions. Reading this volume is the best way to gain an overall knowledge of intergenerational justice an extremely salient and topical issue of our time. The Handbook is an important contribution to the literature and will be of great interest to academics and graduate students as well as readers interested in wider human rights issues.

Cost-benefit Analysis of Environmental Health Interventions clearly articulates the core principles and fundamental methodologies underpinning the modern economic assessment of environmental intervention on human health. Taking a practical approach, the book provides a step-by-step approach to assigning a monetary value to the health benefits and disbenefits arising from interventions, using environmental information and epidemiological evidence. It summarizes environmental risk factors and explores how to interpret and understand epidemiological data using concentration-response, exposure-response or dose-response techniques, explaining the environmental interventions available for each environmental risk factor. It evaluates in detail two of the most challenging stages of Cost-Benefit Analysis in 'discounting' and 'accounting for uncertainty'. Further chapters describe how to analyze and critique results, evaluate potential alternatives to Cost-Benefit Analysis, and on how to engage with stakeholders to communicate the results of Cost-Benefit Analysis. The book includes a detailed case study how to conduct a Cost-Benefit Analysis. It is supported by an online website providing solution files and detailing the design of models using Excel. - Provides a clear understanding of the core theory of cost-benefit analysis in environmental health interventions - Provides practical guidance using real-world case studies to motivate and expand understanding - Describes the challenging 'discounting' and 'accounting for uncertainty' problems at chapter length - Supported by a practical case study, online solution files, and a practical guide to the design of CBA models using Excel

Sustainable development is necessary to counteract and mitigate the impact of socially harmful forces in a globalized world. However, sustainable development and its organizations must ensure the effective management of their funds and beneficial financial frameworks in order to best realize their sustainable goals. There is a need for studies that seek to understand how to connect sustainable development and the financial world in order to maximize the economic and environmental wellbeing of the world. Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts Between Sustainable Financial Systems and Financial Markets is a pivotal reference source that examines the funding and monetary utilization of environmental and socially-responsible entities. Featuring research on topics such as green taxes, intergenerational equity, and shadow economy, this book is ideally designed for government officials, policymakers, economists, financial managers, sustainability developers, and academicians seeking current research on the relationship between new sustainable financial phenomena and negative global externalities.

Climate change presents perhaps the most profound challenge ever confronted by human society. This volume is a definitive analysis drawing on the best thinking on questions of how climate change affects human systems, and how societies can, do, and should respond. Key topics covered include the history of the issues, social and political reception of climate science, the denial of that science by individuals and organized interests, the nature of the social disruptions caused by climate change, the economics of those disruptions and possible responses to them, questions of human security and social justice, obligations to future generations, policy instruments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and governance at local, regional, national, international, and global levels.

The America of the near future will look nothing like the America of the recent past. America is in the throes of a demographic overhaul. Huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use. Today's Millennials -- well-educated, tech savvy, underemployed twenty-somethings -- are at risk of becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Meantime, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every single day, most of them not as well prepared financially as they'd hoped. This graying of our population has helped polarize our politics, put stresses on our social safety net, and presented our elected leaders with a daunting challenge: How to keep faith with the old without bankrupting the young and starving the future. Every aspect of our demography is being fundamentally transformed. By mid-century, the population of the United States will be majority non-white and our median age will edge above 40 -- both unprecedented milestones. But other rapidly-aging economic powers like China, Germany, and Japan will have populations that are much older. With our heavy immigration flows, the US is poised to remain relatively young. If we can get our spending priorities and generational equities in order, we can keep our economy second to none. But doing so means we have to rebalance the social compact that binds young and old. In tomorrow's world, yesterday's math will not add up. Drawing on Pew Research Center's extensive archive of public opinion surveys and demographic data, The Next America is a rich portrait of where we are as a nation and where we're headed -- toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.