“the aesthetic catastrophe which is the bleaching of our coral reefs” I am less dismissive of the moral worth of non-human life. But even if you think the inherent moral value of non-humans is zero, I would be quite worried (indeed, I am) about messing with the deep levers of the world that control ecological homeostasis. For example, if pollinators go extinct because of climate change, we are screwed, and no recalculations of GNP is going to help.
Exactly. I analogize climate change's effects of future generations as similar to a smoker who leaves a house when he/she dies. The house is worth less money, because the smoker makes all the carpets stink. But the smoker is leaving the house to the future generations. They are not entitled to a house that hasn't been smoked in. They're not even entitled to the house.
Evil Romans: Two thousand years ago, Caligula ordered a very long fuse to be looped eight-hundred times beneath the city of Rome and secretly lit. Today, it has finally exhausted itself and reached the great stash of Greek fire at its end. The city is destroyed.
How do we ground our moral intuition that Caligula did something very morally wrong here? He wrongs none of his contemporaries, except for levelling some of their architectural work. But very obviously, architecture is not the source of the wrongdoing here. An answer is needed if accepting the Non-Identity Problem.
“the aesthetic catastrophe which is the bleaching of our coral reefs” I am less dismissive of the moral worth of non-human life. But even if you think the inherent moral value of non-humans is zero, I would be quite worried (indeed, I am) about messing with the deep levers of the world that control ecological homeostasis. For example, if pollinators go extinct because of climate change, we are screwed, and no recalculations of GNP is going to help.
"Climate Change Can't Wrong Future People"
Exactly. I analogize climate change's effects of future generations as similar to a smoker who leaves a house when he/she dies. The house is worth less money, because the smoker makes all the carpets stink. But the smoker is leaving the house to the future generations. They are not entitled to a house that hasn't been smoked in. They're not even entitled to the house.
https://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2014/04/do-people-of-2100-have-a-right-to-be-pretty-angry-about-global-warming.html
Evil Romans: Two thousand years ago, Caligula ordered a very long fuse to be looped eight-hundred times beneath the city of Rome and secretly lit. Today, it has finally exhausted itself and reached the great stash of Greek fire at its end. The city is destroyed.
How do we ground our moral intuition that Caligula did something very morally wrong here? He wrongs none of his contemporaries, except for levelling some of their architectural work. But very obviously, architecture is not the source of the wrongdoing here. An answer is needed if accepting the Non-Identity Problem.