Geography
Intergenerational Equity in the Context of Long-Term Climate Debt
Quick fact
In 2021, the U.S. government’s official 'social cost of carbon' was updated to about $51 per ton, but a 2021 study in Nature suggested that a fair price considering intergenerational equity could be as high as $125 per ton or more. The exact number depends on how much we value the well-being of future generations relative to our own.
Why this is interesting
You’ve heard of national debt, but what about a debt we owe to people not yet born? Climate change is creating just that—a debt of risk and cost that our great-great-grandchildren will have to pay.
Read the full explanation
Understanding Intergenerational Equity in the Context of Long-Term Climate Debt
Think of Earth’s atmosphere as a shared bank account. Each generation makes deposits (carbon sinks like forests) and withdrawals (emissions). Currently, we are overdrawing the account, while future generations will be left with a negative balance—lower air quality, more extreme weather, and less stable sea levels. Intergenerational equity is the principle that says we should not load all the costs of our progress onto people who come after us. It’s not just about being fair to ourselves or to people alive today, but about considering the rights of future people, who have no voice in our decisions. This idea is often framed as 'climate debt'—the debt we incur when we emit greenhouse gases, knowing that the consequences will fall on future generations.
A deeper explanation
The mechanism of climate debt works through the long lifetime of greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide emitted today can stay in the atmosphere for centuries, locking in warming that affects generations for hundreds of years. Intergenerational equity demands that we weigh the well-being of these future people equally with our own. This is where economics comes in: the 'discount rate' is a tool used to compare costs and benefits that occur at different times. A high discount rate means future costs are worth less to us today, which can make it seem acceptable to defer action. But a low discount rate—reflecting a moral stance of equal worth for all generations—makes the present value of future climate damages very large, pushing for aggressive near-term moves. The tricky part is that there is no purely scientific answer to the discount rate; it is a choice about how much we value the future. This ethical choice is at the heart of many climate policy debates.