The threat of intergenerational extortion: on the temptation to become the climate mafia, masquerading as an intergenerational Robin Hood

Abstract

This paper argues that extortion is a clear threat in intergenerational relations, and that the threat is manifest in some existing proposals in climate policy and latent in some background tendencies in mainstream moral and political philosophy. The paper also claims that although some central aspects of the concern about extortion might be pursued in terms of the entitlements of future generations, this approach is likely to be incomplete. In particular, intergenerational extortion raises issues about the appropriate limits to the sway of central values such as welfare and distributive justice. We should be wary of ways in which such values invite us to buy off, or perhaps to join, an intergenerational climate Mafia.

Keywords:

• Climate justice
• John Broome
• intergenerational justice
• making the grandchildren pay
• luck egalitarianism

Acknowledgements

Parts of this paper were presented at the London School of Economics, Princeton University, the University of Leeds, the University of Reading, Washington State University, and Williams College. I thank Susan Brison, Michael Goldsby, Dale Jamieson, Rob Lawlor, Andrew Light, Keith McPartland, Michael Otsuka, Julie Pedroni, Joe Saunders, Peter Singer, and Paul Tubig for comments. I am especially grateful to Rahul Kumar and Catriona McKinnon. Some sections extend arguments originally offered in Gardiner and Weisbach 2016, chap. 4.

Notes

1. Attributed to Senator John McCain; see also Carson (1985, 74).

2. Coke, Institutes *542, quoted in Lindgren (1993, 1722).

3. ‘Second Opinion’, episode 3.7.

4. Tony does agree to give the $5000 they typically donated to Meadow’s high school.

5. In this case, Carmela disputes that Tony is being ‘shaken down.’ In the actual episode, she recognizes the extortion and wants to protect her daughter from it.

6. This is true of many central concepts in philosophy, including political concepts such as justice, domination, and coercion.

7. The colleagues are Cass Sunstein and David Weisbach. The three wrote their pieces while at the University of Chicago Law School; Sunstein is now at Harvard.

8. This reconstruction isolates core claims rather than imposing the structure of a logically valid argument. The main premises have a strong basis in the Chicago position; the conclusion is just a more overt version of the polluted pay principle foreshadowed (albeit tentatively) in the quotations.

9. This is a slightly more specific formulation of the Chicago thesis ‘International Paretianism.’ I’ve expanded the scope to go further than accepting a treaty, and added ‘to the extent that’ for clarity. These should be uncontroversial additions. Elsewhere, I argue that the label ‘paretianism’ is misleading (Gardiner and Weisbach 2016, 56–57).

10. Geographical location also matters, but typically plays a lesser role (e.g. contrast Bangladesh and the Netherlands on vulnerability to sea level rise).

11. Thus, we might extend the NAP, adding:

(8) The most vulnerable countries are not capable of compensating the rich, high emitters.

(9) Therefore, it is not possible to protect the most vulnerable countries, unless the rich countries withdraw their demands or they can be met in some other way.

12. Such values include historical accounts of fairness, ideals of moral equality, giving priority to the least well-off, and welfare considerations (e.g. Shue 2014; Gardiner and Weisbach 2016, 99–101; Singer 2016).

13. While intergenerational extortion can occur as an instance of a tyranny of the contemporary or a pure intergenerational problem (Gardiner 2011, chap. 5), these three categories are distinct.

14. Although I will not pursue a more precise philosophical definition here, it may be helpful to make a few points. I doubt: (a) that extortion requires a specific intention to extort on the part of the extortionist (e.g. wrongful threats may arise unintentionally); (b) that it must involve communication or interpersonal address; (c) that the basic threat must be created by the extortionist (e.g. she may take advantage of an independent threat to the victim); and (d) that extortion is synonymous with coercion On the latter, behavior may be coercive without being extortionate (e.g. legitimate arrests), and extortionate without being (obviously) coercive (e.g. perhaps the rabbit case later in the paper).

15. Lindgren identifies his theory as an exploitation theory. However, ‘exploitation’ is often used in a more restricted sense than extortion. For example, Christopher Bertram says: ‘Where there is no common cooperative scheme, and where we simply impose a harm on a future generation then this an unjust thing to do, but it is not a case of exploitation’ (Bertram 2009, 164).

16. Note that being ungrounded is different from violating a further constraint (see below).

17. In this paper, I will use the label ‘baseline’ in a very generic sense. Although more specific baseline accounts are popular in related areas, such as analyses of coercion, I do not mean to prejudge the issue of whether the best account of extortion is of this form (cf. Nozick 1969; Wertheimer 1987; Anderson 2011).

18. Extortion also threatens related values, such as autonomy.

19. This section substantially extends an argument originally introduced in Gardiner and Weisbach (2016, chap. 4).

20. Although efficiency without sacrifice is morally inferior, I am not convinced that ‘efficiency’ is the morally appropriate goal.

21. The only people available actually to be ‘bribed’ are those members of the current generation who have serious concern for future people and might need to be persuaded to support the resource shift.

22. Some might object to ‘theft’ and ‘extortion’ on the grounds that future people do not yet exist. However, even here it may be enough that Broome’s reasoning is close enough to that of the paradigm extortionist that currently existing agents have reason to recoil from it.

23. There is also a technical reason not to describe what is going on as bribery. Bribery is often defined in terms of a baseline of fair treatment, so that paying only to reestablish such a baseline is not considered bribery. As Lindgren puts it: ‘If a citizen is paying only to buy fair treatment and nothing more, he is the victim of extortion and has not committed bribery according to its general lay conception. Bribery is usually thought to consist of paying for better than fair treatment’ (Lindgren 1993, 1699). Consequently, if all that future generations would be endorsing is attempts to reduce the unfairness of their treatment, it would be a mistake to accuse them of offering bribes.

24. There may be exceptions, such as for self-defense (Gardiner and Weisbach, 122–125).

25. Broome may respond by agreeing that we need ethical criteria, but insisting that this fact does not undermine the basic suggestion of efficiency without sacrifice. However, this is not so easy, as he appears to have a criterion: any Pareto improvement. I argue that this is the wrong criterion: it is too easy to satisfy, and misses much of what is going on. Moreover, the more promising criteria may fall under better understandings of sacrifice, and especially ones that say something about comparing the sacrifices made by difference generations. Arguably, this is what one intuitively expects under the label ‘efficiency without sacrifice’: that future generations will be better off than reasonable baselines and the current generation will be protected against the worst. Consequently, Broome’s may be the wrong proposal dressed up in the right language.

26. Personally, I would not assume that there are such gains, as I take seriously the indirect costs of fossil fuels, and alternative visions of human well-being. Nevertheless, perceptions matter here.

27. Perhaps Broome is assuming a background moral motivation that breaks the tie. However, then we need to know more about that motivation and in particular why it does not support a more robust commitment to protecting future generations.

28. In addition, neutrality is hardly likely to be enough in a situation where the actor who needs to be bribed has the existing default situation completely within his power and is being asked to give that up in exchange (e.g. imagine trying to induce a Mafia boss by offering him something equivalent to what he already has).

29. I thank Catriona McKinnon for this phrasing.

30. Enthusiastic welfare arguments often underwrite defenses of discounting in economics (e.g. Helm 2008). For an enthusiastic Rawlsian argument that intergenerational savings are unfair for just societies, see Gaspart and Gosseries (2007).

31. Initial arguments against such redistribution include that created wealth may properly be subject to rival norms of intragenerational distribution, or intergenerational inheritance.

32. Some may be skeptical about the existence or status of such norms; however, for current purposes, I leave aside such skepticism.

33. Clearly, these propositions are not regarded as decisively overriding all other normative concerns (i.e. they are more ‘other things being equal’ than ‘all things considered’). Nevertheless, they are also not so weak as always to be overridden by conflicting concerns.

34. One might say that the threats violate an entitlement ‘not to be subject to illegitimate threats’ ; however, this is not independently specifiable.

35. As I understand the case, he is not saying that Meadow would not be admitted without it. If he were, that would be extortionate.

36. Notice that I am not arguing that the Dean’s proposal is not extortionate, or that it is not so because it involves a beneficial offer. My claim is that the entitlement account is poorly placed to explain why the Dean’s beneficial offer involves extortion of the Sopranos. (There is an interesting related issue about whether and when beneficial offers can be coercive. However, I leave that aside here; for an overview, see Anderson (2011)).

37. Stonehenge was my primary example before I discovered Sachs’ paper; he also mentions such cases in passing.

38. Perhaps each of us has at least an indirect entitlement that humanity’s cultural heritage be respected, so that such artifacts are, in some sense, our “birthright”. Nevertheless, I’m not sure that these or any other entitlements are the core issue. For one thing, extortion would plausibly still occur if the threatened entity was something that does not fit with any indirect entitlement of this kind (e.g. the Moon). For another, even in the Stonehenge case, the extortion does not seem to be targeted at some entitlement of mine, but rather at the responsibilities I feel I have for protecting Stonehenge (see below).

39. I am not assuming that either baselines or illegitimate threats are in some way ‘primary.’ My sense is that the two ideas are intertwined, and that the baseline is partially constituted by an account of illegitimate threats, which is itself only partially constituted by an account of entitlements.

40. Rahul Kumar suggests that the issue may be about manipulation rather than responsibility. Although I agree that manipulation is important, in this case I think that responsibility assignments play a key role in explaining why the demand is manipulative enough to count as extortion. For example, it is manipulative to the extent of extortionate for your own child to refuse to study for a test unless you pay them; however, it is not normally extortionate for a complete stranger (say, a college student) to do so. Plausibly, this is because you lack any general responsibility in the latter case, so that the threat has no bite.

41. Among other things, this encourages contractualist and Kantian arguments.

42. Sachs’ account focuses on the aims of the extortionist; I reject that solution.

43. Notably, the demand for money still seems extortionate even if the rabbit does not actually exist, and so has no entitlements (e.g. some believe the Toby case was a hoax). This fits with the idea that what matters is the nature of the threat, and the relationship between those making it and those subject to their demands, rather than entitlements.

44. On the related issue of institutional reform, see Gardiner (2014).