provision for their own welfare if they could afford to. A number of key measures have been taken by Labour which have gone some way to eroding welfare provision. The most striking act was to introduce tuition fees for university students. At the same time a system of ‘stakeholder pensions’ was introduced – a private pension scheme sponsored by the state, but left to individuals to make their own provisions. It was clear from this that there is an intention to erode or remove the state pension from future generations. Labour’s loss of enthusiasm for the Welfare State
comparison to most other models – SDR being the value attached to the welfare of future generations in relation to the present. On the basis of what Stern described as a ‘moral principle’, he set this rate (or, more technically, the ‘pure rate of time preference’) at 0.1%, which means, in effect, that the welfare of future generations will be valued as equal to the welfare of the present generation.11 In addition to the moral argumentation for this choice, Stern presented technical arguments, suggesting that previous modeling of the optimal price of CO2, such as those
by those motivated, above all, by economic goals. Those adopting a dark-green position are also more likely to recognize the various inequalities relevant to environmental issues (Maguire et al ., 2002 ). These include both intergenerational inequalities, whereby future generations are impacted by the environmentally damaging activities of the present day, and inter-species inequalities, which pertain to the impacts of human behaviour on ‘voiceless’ non-humans such as flora and fauna. Ultimately
et al. 2007), proposed a revised model of sustainability based on what they termed a ‘nested concept’ (Griggs et al. 2013: 306). This entails an amendment to the widely accepted definition of the UN’s 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development (chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland), which is verbally modest, but conceptually momentous. Instead of framing sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’, the proposed new definition refers to ‘development
Meadowcroft 2000b:424). On balance, then, how far has Sweden come towards ecologically rational governance? As for the spatial dimension, it is fair to say that there are moves to change man-made jurisdictional boundaries and adapt to scales compatible with the boundaries of natural ecosystems. In temporal terms, Sweden already scores high in adapting socio-economic processes to natural eco-cycles. The process of implementing the National Environmental Objectives is quite unique. It represents the so far most pronounced commitment of present and future generations to
same mendelian laws and was as predictive in nature as that of other sexually reproducing organisms’. 16 In 1883 Galton coined the term ‘eugenics’ to describe ‘the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally’. 17 As Angus MacLaren has suggested, eugenic arguments also claimed scientific
/backgrounds/religions/skin colours/ sexual orientations etc. But it does not stop here: as Corbellini and Sirgiovanni (Chapter 13 in this volume) also note, science requires abstract thinking through expressing hypotheses and developing the ability to rationally evaluate them, and this in turn improves people’s capacity to imagine situations, and thus to identify with other people, other animals or future generations. Training in abstract thinking, and thus scientific education, makes us all better at seeing beyond our moral, geographic, personal or cultural reference systems. Small science: an
biological balance’, and that environmental destruction must not be permitted to jeopardize future generations’ room for manoeuvre. 54 The level of ambition for the research programme was unmistakeably high. At the same time, the work plan did not provide any concrete guidance as to how the group should move from planning to research. In conjunction with the meeting at FOA, Birgitta Odén noted that various vested interests had begun to emerge, and that group members were therefore pulling in different directions: scientific
the creation of a permaculture, a dynamic culture that is able to adapt to change but which maintains the goal of long-term sustainability for future generations. Chase’s utopian vision of a sustainable country displaced into the future 170 Reading sustainability is an attempt to re-orient American values by introducing an element of universality in space and in time; the work of creating a sustainable permaculture is dependent upon assistance to developing countries and an expansion of these values to the globe: Eventually I think what will happen is that we will
the novel’s proleptic account of Pi’s eventual establishment of ongoing family life and living in Canada. But this projection of 228 Circles unrounded 229 a future world and its wellbeing raises the question of it being possible to account at all for the real beyond grasp, and not just that of some imagined future. Sustainability assumes, moreover, not just such accounting, but – as delineated in the Brundtland definition of sustainable development – the embedding of such accounting in the actions of the present.1 That is, the wellbeing of future generations