How ought we to think of our relationship to – our responsibility for – future people? Is this question (a question pressing all the harder in the wake of the recent failure to adequately safeguard those future people, at Copenhagen) essentially a question of justice? The rallying cry at Copenhagen was, “What we do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!” But what if it’s not enough to call for justice? Let me explain… Future generations – future people – are collectively our children. We give birth to them. They are even more powerless than the newest new-born baby. They cannot entreat, nor even scream, let alone…

It is no longer socially-acceptable to exhibit prejudice against ethnic minority people on grounds of their ethnicity, women on grounds of their gender, or working-class people on grounds of their class. The last bastions of discrimination are being overcome: such as prejudice against gay and lesbian people, and against disabled people. But is there one crucial bastion of discrimination still strongly in place? Take this kind of remark, which I sometimes hear on the doorstep while I’m out talking to my constituents: “I just don’t care about what happens after I’m dead and gone.” We might dismiss this as the attitude just of some old curmudgeon, and think that it…