The supersession thesis, climate change, and the rights of future people

ABSTRACT

In this article, I explore the relationship between the supersession thesis and the rights of future people. In particular, I show that changes in circumstances might supersede future people’s rights. I argue that appropriating resources that belong to future people does not necessarily result in a duty to return the resources in full. I explore how these findings are relevant for climate change justice. Assuming future generations of developing countries originally had a right to use a certain amount of the carbon budget, changing circumstances could result in rights-supersession. Consequently, members of future generations of industrialized countries may be allowed to use part of the share of the carbon budget belonging to developing countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical injustices
• intergenerational justice
• restitution
• rights
• supersession
• Jeremy Waldron

Acknowledgments

I thank Lukas Meyer, Timothy Waligore, Jeremy Waldron, Seunghyun Song, Romina Rekers, Lucas Misseri, Laura Garcia-Portela, Norbert Paulo, Daniel Loewe, the participants of the Workshop “The Temporal Orientation of Justice” (Graz, 2018), and anonymous reviewers of the journal for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In contrast, for Waldron, supersession cannot occur without prior injustice.

2. Meyer and Waligore’s (2016, 2018) distinction between full and partial supersession could apply here. Full rights-supersession materializes if all the reasons why some right was justified at T₁ no longer have any moral weight. However, if such moral weight is only diminished, partial rights-supersession might occur. The right of group S to use H_s at their sole discretion could be superseded in the waterhole scenarios, but S could have the right to use more water from H_s than N does, if N could meet their basic needs.

3. See Gough (2017, pp. 21–37).

4. I set aside the possibility of adding new carbon sinks.

5. This exemplifies the so-called ‘carbon-law’ (Rockstrom et al., 2017).

6. I refer to arguments for grandfathering, legitimate expectations, sufficientarianism, and fairness (see, Meyer & Sanklecha, 2017).

7. An anonymous reviewer suggested that the most relevant climate justice problem is reducing emissions now. In case we do not reduce emissions, it is worth discussing how future people should act.

8. I speak of “members of groups” and “groups” interchangeably.

9. See further Gough (2017).

10. China might be an exception.

11. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this and the previous objection.

12. If a transformation to less emission-intensive sources of energy occurs by 2050, we can still talk about what Meyer and Waligore (2016; 2018, pp. 228–229) call dormant supersession. This kind of supersession, unlike what they call final supersession, implies that for a certain period the superseded right no longer exists; however, it can re-arise if circumstances change again.

13. It might affect the terms of sharing (Meyer & Waligore, 2016, 2018).

14. This is not to say that future consequences of our present actions cannot set-back future people’s future interests.

15. Waldron (2004) himself discusses arguments that ‘fall slightly outside the ambit of the Supersession Thesis,’ because no injustice existed to be superseded, but a supersession-like effect occurs (pp. 264–265). Here, no right existed to be superseded.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of research undertaken in the project ‘Supersession of Historical Injustice and Changed Circumstances,’ funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) under research grant P 30084.

Notes on contributors

Santiago Truccone-Borgogno

Santiago Truccone-Borgogno is a member of the FWF-Project 'Historical Injustice and Changed Circumstances' and of the ACRP-Project: 'Legitimate Expectations and Austria's Transformation to a Low-Carbon Society and Economy.' He holds a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Graz, Austria. He also holds a doctorate in Law and Social Sciences, awarded by Có rdoba National University, Argentina