Is It Morally Justifiable To Pass on Part of the Costs of Pivotal Climate Action to Future Generations?

In The Pivotal Generation (2021), Henry Shue provides compelling normative reasons for members of the present generation to take pivotal climate action: the last remaining hopes that global warming will not spiral out of control lie with them. In this article, I address the question of whether the present generation should bear both the implementation responsibility and the economic costs of pivotal climate action alone. The latter question is particularly relevant because, as several authors have pointed out, the structure of global financial markets would allow the present generation to take full responsibility for implementing decisive climate measures while shifting some of the associated economic costs to future generations. I address the issue on both an ideal and a non-ideal level. First, there are no tangible signs that the present generation is ready to take on pivotal action on climate change – CO2 emissions have reached a new historic peak in 2023, investment in fossil fuel extraction continues, and climate finance targets have so far been missed. Is it morally permissible for the present generation to break the deadlock (for which it is directly responsible) by shifting some of the costs of pivotal climate action onto future generations? Second, what (if any) are the normative reasons why the present generation should refrain from doing so, from the standpoint of ideal theory? I will argue that some form of intergenerational cost shifting with respect to energy transformation is morally justifiable at both the ideal and non-ideal levels.