“With higher population growth, more people will be vulnerable to climate change. Understanding how much society values those future people should be an influential component of climate policy decisions.”
This article was refreshing in that it not only focused on the depressing impeding doom of climate change effects, but also put the effect of climate change in perspective to our current happiness, and how much we care about the well being of future generations due to the climate change related decisions we can make during our time on this planet. Climate change might be due to our poor environmental decisions, but it is crucial to examine why certain decisions are being made, such as for pleasure, comfort, or through ignorance.
“At its core, the climate problem is about protecting the future against intolerable damages, so it’s essential that policymakers think clearly about how much we value our descendants. Our goal is that our descendants will think back to this generation and be convinced that we carefully considered their interests [when setting climate policy].”
Most of the population would agree that we want to leave a habitable space for our future kin, but this is becoming increasingly difficult with exponential population increase, and the build up of mismanagement in poorer and less developed countries who are either unaware of climate change effects and their causes, or simply do not have the economic ability to actively finance change and try to make a difference.
“If society values the absolute number of people who are happy, it also has a significant effect on the world’s optimal peak temperature. A higher population leads to a higher carbon price but a lower optimal peak temperature; this is because it is even more important to limit temperature rise when there are more future people who will suffer the damages.”
Ultimately, the article concludes that understanding the amount happiness, and average happiness levels of our global population can help put climate change in a perspective where we actively care about our children, and their children, and so on, because we are in the happy mental state that allows us to focus on more long term goals. This is interesting to explore because many groups of people do not have the privilege to ponder the well being of the people who will come after them, due to circumstances such as poverty, which statistically showcase less happy people, who would ultimately make less future oriented decisions, and would submit to choosing quick, cheap solutions that they can benefit from in the short term. In conclusion, we are still deciding how much we should value the future generations well-being, especially in the context of understanding what the population wants and why, and if we will be able to help those in need quickly now, or if that will impede our ability to leave a habitable Earth for our children.
How much do you value your immediate happiness over the well being of your grandchildren in the context of #climatechange? #bcsfh2o https://t.co/RR4vLWuN3C
— Aleksandra Ratkiewic (@alexratkiewicz) October 31, 2017
