1.a. The standard Pareto argument

Initially, the central rationale offered for “making the grandchildren pay” appears straightforward. Relative to business as usual, advocates say, both the current generation of decision-makers and future generations can benefit from passing the costs of climate mitigation onto the future: future generations benefit because they are spared severe climate impacts; the current generation benefits since it is no longer asked to absorb the costs of decarbonization. Thus, the argument goes, MGP can deliver a strong Pareto improvement: both the current generation and future generations are made better off than under the status quo (and no one is made worse off). As Broome characterizes it, MGP generates a “win-win” scenario.

1.b. A transformative analysis?

In light of the Pareto argument, proponents of MGP sometimes assert that their argument is transformative: it radically alters how we should understand the climate problem, and thereby potential solutions. I reconstruct the position in terms of seven major claims.

The first major claim involves the shape of the problem. Conventional accounts of how to allocate climate mitigation responsibilities emphasize sacrifice, burden-sharing, and requirements of justice.Footnote ⁴ By contrast, we are told, the Pareto framing implies that we should think of climate mitigation in terms of “the division of a surplus,” where this “surplus” can be shared by the current generation and the future (Broome & Foley, Reference Broome, Foley, Gonzalez-Ricoy and Gosseries2016).

The second major claim is that “making the grandchildren pay” can deliver efficiency without sacrifice. Under the Pareto argument, no generation need make a sacrifice, since each generation can be made better off than under the status quo. Notably, Broome and Foley appear to embrace two particularly strong forms of the “no sacrifice” position. In general (the first strong form), they declare that “everyone” can benefit from pursuing climate action in a Pareto-efficient way (the scope claim). For instance, they declare: “we think that negotiations should aim instead to achieve efficiency through a Pareto improvement that benefits everyone” (Broome & Foley, Reference Broome, Foley, Gonzalez-Ricoy and Gosseries2016); “Climate change can be controlled without a sacrifice by anyone. This means literally anyone: each person in every generation” (Broome & Foley, Reference Broome, Foley, Gonzalez-Ricoy and Gosseries2016); and “no one needs to bear a burden to mitigate climate change” (Broome & Foley, Reference Broome and Foley2022). This assertion of universal benefit suggests that there is no need to think in terms of burdens or burden sharing at all.Footnote ⁵

More specifically (the second strong form of the “no sacrifice” view), Broome and Foley emphasize the ability of the current generation to secure full compensation and so protect itself from any threatened sacrifice (the depth claim). For instance, Broome says: “If we [the current generation] make a sacrifice by emitting less greenhouse gas, we can fully compensate ourselves by using more … artificial and natural resources for ourselves. We can consume more, and invest less for the future” (Broome, Reference Broome2012, p. 44).

Returning to the transformation thesis, the third major claim of that thesis (as I interpret it) centers on political transformation. Typically, proponents of MGP claim that the strategy of “making the grandchildren pay” will enable us to move beyond the ongoing political inertia impeding climate action. Under “efficiency without sacrifice,” advocates say, those in the current generation who would otherwise resist change can be placated. Specifically, future generations can “buy off” the recalcitrant (Broome & Foley, Reference Broome, Foley, Gonzalez-Ricoy and Gosseries2016). The “grandchildren” can be made to shoulder the full costs of climate mitigation in order to ensure that the current generation bears no burdens.

The fourth major claim is that the primary reason that “making the grandchildren pay” is transformative is that it embraces self-interest rather than ethics.Footnote ⁶ Broome, for instance, claims that emphasizing moral arguments has so far failed to motivate strong climate action. By contrast, the MGP strategy allows us to move beyond ethical motivations to rely on the power of self-interest. In his aptly titled “Do Not Ask For Morality,” Broome declares: “we should give up trying to solve the problem of climate change by appealing to the morality of governments. Instead we should concentrate on building the institutions that will make it possible to solve the problem without asking for morality” (Broome, Reference Broome, Walsh, Hormio and Purves2017).

The fifth major claim is that our practical priority should become to develop institutions that will facilitate “efficiency without sacrifice.” Enthusiasts argue that implementation of MGP will require institutional change, and that the institutions that are relevant here are primarily economic institutions. The most prominent proposal is Broome and Foley’s call for the creation of a genuinely new institution, the World Climate Bank, to be modelled on the existing World Bank and International Monetary Fund (Broome & Foley, Reference Broome, Foley, Gonzalez-Ricoy and Gosseries2016). The general idea is that their new WCB would be empowered to issue long-term debt on extended timeframes, of 300 years or so. Similar proposals involve a more modest reorientation of existing institutions. For example, Matthew Rendall argues that specific countries that are currently well-positioned in terms of debt, such as the Nordic countries and South Korea, should perform the more limited task of providing funds for the research and development of green technologies by taking on intergenerational debt (Rendall, Reference Rendall2021).

Although the basic philosophical idea is relatively simple, design and implementation are not. The sixth major claim made by proponents of MGP is that the task of designing new institutions is one for economists. Thus, Broome says:

In short, Broome explicitly delegates the project of devising and developing his World Climate Bank to economics as a profession. Notably, he does not call on experts in ethics and justice, such as (say) those engaged in designing human rights regimes, constitutions, development policies, or humanitarian aid. Whereas economists are presumed to have the right expertise, those in (say) philosophy, political science, law, development, human rights organizations, and so on, are not called upon; indeed, they appear not even to rate a mention.

The seventh major claim suggests one reason for this. Typically, advocates for “making the grandchildren pay” maintain that conventional concerns about justice should be largely set aside.

At a theoretical level, we see two main camps. On the one hand, some proponents of MGP adopt a concessive approach. They grant that their approach is morally problematic, in part because it perpetuates injustice and violates duties of beneficence. Nonetheless, they argue, “the best” should not become “the enemy of the good” (e.g., Broome, Reference Broome, Walsh, Hormio and Purves2017). By this, they presumably mean that the stakes are high enough that we should pursue MGP anyway. On the other hand, other proponents appear to adopt a more enthusiastic theoretical understanding of “making the grandchildren pay”: they suggest that the relations between generations are such that MGP raises little or no moral problem (e.g., Rendall, Reference Rendall2021). Both camps emphasize the expectation (coming from mainstream economics, they say) that the future will be much richer, and so better off, than the present.

At a practical level, one symptom of the marginalization of justice is that both the concessive and enthusiastic camps approach institutional proposals with notable excitement and few, if any, reservations. For instance, Rendall says:

Similarly, Broome and Foley urge:

In summary, the standard argument for “making the grandchildren pay” paints a comparatively rosy picture of our predicament and how to find a feasible way out. The central ideas are: (1) we should see the climate problem as one of sharing an intergenerational surplus and facilitating Pareto improvements; (2) under these conditions, MGP can ensure that everyone benefits and no one needs to make any sacrifices; (3) this enables us to overcome ongoing political inertia by (4) embracing the power of self-interest; (5) the main difficulty is practical and concerns institutional design; but (6) the solution is a WCB whose design can be left to economists; and (7) concerns about justice can be largely set aside.

This rosy picture stands in stark opposition to more mainstream accounts of both the climate problem and the needed solutions. As noted above, conventional diagnoses typically emphasize deep issues of injustice, institutional inadequacy, and moral failure; similarly, conventional solutions often require sacrifice, major structural reform, and wrestling with wider injustice on a global scale. By contrast, according to its proponents, “making the grandchildren pay” offers the promise of setting aside such issues through a simpler and more politically tractable strategy for making progress.

1.c. Overview of concerns

Unfortunately, we shall now see that the rosy picture is misleading, in part because it obscures much of what is really at stake. Before diving in, here is a brief overview of the central concerns.

First, we should be critical of the framing. Principally, the standard argument fails to acknowledge (i) the serious threats to the future posed by climate policies based on “making the grandchildren pay,” (ii) the grim reality of many potential Pareto “improvements,” and (iii) the wider risks of transforming global norms in ways that threaten both future generations and humanity’s progress more generally.

Second, we should be concerned about the policy proposals. Importantly, the framing issues threaten to compromise a new institution such as Broome and Foley’s. In particular, (iv) to guard against the obvious threats, such an institution would need to embrace strong intergenerational ethical norms; yet these norms (v) go far beyond the call for Pareto improvements, and (vi) are themselves in need of further elaboration and defense. Moreover, (vii) a climate World Bank, together with the global institutional architecture in which it resides, would also have to be capable of delivering on such norms, including not just in its own decisions but also in wider enforcement of those decisions. None of this seems easy, and (viii) much of it invites the re-emergence of many obstacles to effective climate action that have hampered earlier international efforts.

Third, we should be concerned about the implications. For one thing, (ix) it is far from obvious that Broome and Foley’s own World Climate Bank is fit for purpose, especially since it is to be structured along the lines of current institutions such as the existing World Bank and IMF, and supported by national governments as conventionally understood. For another thing, arguably (x) making it fit for purpose requires both more ambitious proposals for institutional reform and ones grounded in ethical norms. Indeed, (xi) without such reform, proposals for MGP may well turn out to be more a further manifestation of threats to future generations than an effective counter to such threats.

2.a. A hostile context

My first basic point is that the case for MGP is troublingly acontextual. In particular, when we turn to climate reality, discussion of “making the grandchildren pay” takes place in a fraught, even hostile context. Broome and Foley effectively acknowledge this when they argue (i) that past efforts have failed, (ii) that morality has little influence, and (iii) that MGP involves intergenerational injustice. Nevertheless, they do not pursue the issue of why failure has occurred, or the further implications of that failure for their proposals. This is an important blindspot of their analysis, and one that threatens to overwhelm it.

Climate injustice is multidimensional. Among the key problems are: skewed vulnerabilities (e.g., those most at risk tend to be those least responsible and vice versa); the influence of background injustices (e.g., global poverty, inequality, gender, racism, the legacies of colonialism and feudalism, etc.); the risk of exacerbating ongoing domination; the threat of intergenerational tyranny; and the tyranny of humans over the rest of nature (e.g., Gardiner, Reference Gardiner2011). Arguably, MGP is well-situated to exacerbate most, if not all, of these injustices. Still, for simplicity, and since the strategy is essentially about shifting burdens across generations, for current purposes let us highlight intergenerational injustice.

A core concern here is that earlier generations typically find themselves in positions of asymmetric power over later generations, in ways that are easy to exploit for their own ends. Elsewhere, I elaborate on this idea in two ways (e.g., Gardiner, Reference Gardiner2011, Reference Gardiner and Gardiner2023a). The first elaboration involves identifying a specific kind of intergenerational collective action problem, the “tyranny of the contemporary.”Footnote ⁷ I claim that this threat is both live and severe in the case of climate change (Gardiner, Reference Gardiner2011, Reference Gardiner2026). I also argue that the concept of intergenerational tyranny should be at the heart of intergenerational ethics and political philosophy, in part because it constitutes a basic standing threat to human communities.Footnote ⁸

My second elaboration is that the current generation, and especially the most affluent, are vulnerable to moral corruption: roughly-speaking, to ways of thinking and talking about problems which are seriously distorted and self-serving. Such framings facilitate continued exploitation of the future by obscuring the threat of intergenerational tyranny. Elsewhere, I point out various ways in which moral corruption can be encouraged and facilitated. Perhaps the most obvious is unreasonable doubt, which continues to be prominent in public discussions of climate science. Here, I focus on pandering: to pander is to “gratify or indulge (an immoral or distasteful desire, need, or habit or a person with such a desire)” (Lexico, 2022). Sadly, the proposal to create a new institution with the specific objective of sparing the current generation from any sacrifice (by making the grandchildren pay instead) seems especially likely to engage this mode of moral corruption.

If moral corruption is a concern, we should pay attention to how MGP is discussed in order to avoid distortionary pressures. In particular, we should beware obscuring terminology that might downplay or make invisible abuse of future generations. In this spirit, let us now identify four terminological concerns and offer revisions that facilitate a better discussion.

The slogan “making the grandchildren pay” is primarily a catchphrase, intended to be memorable rather than literal. The first issue is that “the grandchildren” stands in for (loosely speaking) all those future generations who would benefit from mitigation in the longer term, and so be positively impacted by making a bargain with the current generation of decision-makers. Plausibly, this covers multiple generations who will live beyond the lifetimes of current decision-makers, stretching at least a couple of hundred years into the future, and perhaps much farther.Footnote ⁹ Those on the hook under MGP are not just one generation (“the grandchildren”) but many generations, indeed indefinitely many. The slogan obscures this: “the grandchildren” underplays the scale of what is being proposed, and so risks encouraging moral corruption. A more accurate label would be “making the future pay (potentially indefinitely)” (MFP).Footnote ¹⁰

A second issue concerns what is meant by “pay.” As it stands, this is ambiguous and likely to cause confusion. First, taken out of context, the phrase “making the future pay” might be understood in a very weak or minimal way, as meaning only that the future should contribute something to the project of climate mitigation, as part of some intergenerational burden-sharing scheme. Call this, “the contribution principle” (“MFC”). We will consider the contribution principle later. For now, observe that MFC is clearly not the principle in operation in our context. The central point of “efficiency without sacrifice” is that the current generation must be spared any sacrifice. This strongly suggests that they cannot be asked to take on any genuine burden. Thus, “efficiency without sacrifice” appears to rule out any burden-sharing scheme at all to which the current generation must make a real contribution. After all, the core goal is to shield the current generation from anything that may cause them to resist climate action.

Second, given this, in context “pay” must mean something stronger than “contribute.” Presumptively, the key idea is that the future must absorb the entire burden of climate mitigation (or at least those burdens that would otherwise be borne by the current generation). This yields “the saddling principle” (“MFS”): future generations should shoulder the full burden, and so bear all the responsibility. In other words, they should be saddled with the costs or “eat the bill.” The saddling principle (MFS) is very different from the contribution principle (MFC), since it repudiates intergenerational burden-sharing as a goal. Obscuring the difference behind the more general label of “MFP” risks encouraging moral corruption.

A third issue concerns the word “making.” In a weak sense, this means to cause something to happen; in a stronger sense, to make it so is to impose one’s will (on a situation or on other agents), typically in a way that ensures that it happens. In both senses, proposals to make the future pay go beyond abstract statements of principle as to what should happen: they license particular agents to cause or ensure that it will happen, often through imposing their own will. Thus, it is potentially obscuring to focus on distributive issues alone (as some discussions of MFP do) without also emphasizing agency.

What might emphasizing agency reveal in our context? On the one hand, emphasizing agency serves to highlight the power dynamics at play, and in ways that can be morally uncomfortable. Under MFP in general, the relevant agents are in effect us, understood as the current generation (whether groups or individuals). Under the future-saddling MFS principle, the general thought is that “we should make the future saddle the burdens.” However, pressing this thought exposes a number of issues.

First, we—the agents being licensed to implement the saddling principle—are hardly neutral bystanders. We stand to benefit from the implementation, so the risks of corruption (moral and otherwise) are high. In such a context, MFP grants us a license to exert our agency in a potentially dubious way. Indeed, on one reading, it invites us to double-down on our ongoing intergenerational tyranny.

Second, the background justification is paradoxical. We are licensed to do morally concerning things to others in order to overcome our own political inertia (i.e., our own resistance to acting more ethically). Though not incoherent, this is morally perplexing. One reason is that it suggests that we are encouraged (first) to treat ourselves as our own feasibility constraint, and then (second) to use our leverage over our victims to “help them” coax us into behaving better at their expense. Arguably, the paradoxical nature of this line of argument exposes a form of creative myopia about our role, perhaps signaling a kind of moral schizophrenia (cf. Stocker, Reference Stocker1976; Gardiner, Reference Gardiner, Burns and Strauss2013).

Third, the idea of “making” as imposing one’s will is particularly striking. On this understanding of “making,” in implementing MFP the current generation appears (i) to be taking further advantage of its asymmetric power over the future, (ii) in a more active and direct way, and (iii) (probably) one designed to ensure that it succeeds. Thus, among other things, “making” understood as “imposing one’s will” risks amplifying the original intergenerational tyranny, in part through embracing it more wholeheartedly and brooking no resistance.Footnote ¹¹

Moving on, the fourth terminological issue involves the phrase “world climate bank.” The mere form of words communicates only: (i) a single body; (ii) global in scope; (iii) focused on climate alone; which (iv) takes the particular institutional form of a bank. Yet Broome and Foley’s WCB is much more specific: (v) it has the central aim of foisting the full costs of mitigating climate change onto future generations; (vi) it is charged with achieving this aim in such a way that ensures that the current generation experiences no sacrifice; and (vii) it is structured so as to relevantly similar in nature (e.g., in character and design) to the International Monetary Fund and the existing World Bank. This specificity is obscured by the generic label “world climate bank.”

One reason this matters is that Broome and Foley’s proposal should not gain prominence, support, or a “free pass” from criticism merely because it is some kind of financial mechanism that may help with climate change. Many potential financial mechanisms might be proposedFootnote ¹², at various levels (e.g., local, national, regional, or global)Footnote ¹³, and these might be driven by principles other than MFP. For instance, if we are interested in financial mechanisms, perhaps we should be looking for a Climate Justice World Bank guided by ethical principles, or at least constrained by them (or even a more general “Global Justice World Bank”).

The point is that there are genuine rivals to “making the future pay” when it comes to thinking about how to design financial mechanisms to help with climate. Crucially, Broome and Foley’s proposal is not neutral. Their proposed “world climate bank” is essentially a present-sparing, future-saddling institution that embraces self-interest and eschews ethics. Moreover, the fact that they reject alternative strategies—including other climate world banks infused with justice—is a central part of their basic rationale. Surely, then, it would be distortionary to allow their proposal to become known as “the World Climate Bank.” A less obscuring label would be “the Generational Self-interest World Climate Bank” or (more descriptively) “the Future-saddling, Present-sparing World Climate Bank” (for short, “the Future-saddling WCB”).Footnote ¹⁴

Summing up, the usual arguments for MGP are troublingly acontextual.Footnote ¹⁵ Therefore, they fail to take seriously the fraught context within which the problem of political inertia arises, where the risk of intergenerational and other injustices is high. Arguably, some of the terminology in play risks facilitating this, and obscuring what is most distinctive and controversial about Broome and Foley’s proposal. For instance, there is an enormous difference between embracing a Climate Justice World Bank and some form of Generational Self-Interest World Bank. We should be wary of language that obscures such differences.

2.b. The playing field of possibility

My second basic point resonates with the first: much of the argument for “making the future pay” is conducted on what I shall call “the playing field of possibility.” Proponents treat establishing the possibility of Pareto improvements as their key move, and then pass quickly on from that to institutional proposals. For instance, Broome and Foley say:

As such passages make clear, the words “can” and “possible” are at the heart of how the central Pareto arguments for MFP are presented.

Unfortunately, this style of argument raises concerns. The first, most general concern is that establishing bare possibility seems a very low bar, both epistemically and practically. Epistemically, it is typically fairly easy for philosophers and economists to agree that something is possible. However, this shows little. For one thing, it is very permissive: many things are possible. For another thing, philosophers and economists are often accused of having unduly relaxed ideas of what is possible, especially by their colleagues in the policy world; this is particularly so when the arguments for possibility are made on theoretical grounds.

Practically, mere possibility is also a low bar from the point of view of action. Normally, we do not organize policy around pursuing outcomes merely because they are possible, nor should we. The principle “if a good outcome is possible, we should develop institutions to facilitate that outcome” is not a compelling principle for policy (or much else). Again, many good things are possible, and we cannot pursue them all. Moreover, policies that make good things possible often also make bad things likely. So, a more general assessment is needed.

Summing up, establishing bare possibility does not get us very far, for it falls well short of what needs to be shown to justify an actual policy initiative. I propose that what is required instead is to show that the favored, future-saddling approach is especially salient. This mandates further criteria. For instance, even to be salient the approach must be shown to be: (i) realistic; (ii) likely (perhaps very likely) to achieve central climate goals through building the relevant institutions and implementing the related policies; and (iii) attractive relative to the main alternatives. Yet it is at best an open question whether future-saddling satisfies these criteria.

To illustrate, consider whether the future-saddling, present-sparing strategy is realistic. Recall that the core ideas are that the current generation must be spared any sacrifice during the climate transition, that burdens will be imposed on the future to make this happen, and that future generations will be better off as a result. Unfortunately, it is far from clear that this approach is feasible: physically, politically or economically. For instance, according to mainstream projections, massive changes in infrastructure are needed and very quickly—i.e., within the next decade or so—in order not to breach the key climate targets of 1.5°C and 2.0°C; moreover, the mainstream projections may be overly complacent (e.g., Abrams et al., Reference Abrams, Hu and Bampton2026; Gardiner, Reference Gardiner, Brown and Gwiazdon2023b; Gardiner, Reference Gardiner2023c). Yet, crucially, it is at best an open question whether such massive changes can be achieved against the constraint of “no sacrifice” for members of the current generation or even more generally.

One issue is whether there are hard constraints around what can be done and what must be asked of the current generation, no matter how many burdens one is willing to impose on future generations. For example, perhaps sufficient resources and technology do not exist (or cannot be made available quickly enough) to make a fast energy transition happen if no sacrifices are permitted, or perhaps even if sacrifices are allowed.

A second issue is whether imposing further burdens on the future will always provide acceptable substitutes for enduring the transition. For example, perhaps the shift needed constitutes such a radical reorientation of the older generation’s way of life that many will regard any such change as so disorienting as to constitute a serious sacrifice in important respects. Consequently, there may be sharp limits to how far they can be “compensated” through future-saddling. For instance, suppose older people who are accustomed to single family homes must move into city apartment blocks in order to lower energy use. Plausibly, providing them with extra cash may not be enough to fully compensate them, to the point that they “feel whole.”

A third, broader issue is that proponents of future-saddling tend to make optimistic assumptions about the situation of future generations and our relationship to them, both in general and when it comes to navigating an energy transition. Notice that in the passages above, Broome and Foley assume that the current generation will leave future generations “nice things” like conventional capital (“roads and cities”) and natural resources. Moreover, they assert that future generations “benefit from the current generation’s conventional investment” and they seem confident that under their approach “future generations will end up better off.” Yet these claims are assumptions: none of this is guaranteed. For instance, perhaps the current generation will continue to build cities and roads in coastal areas but in the longer run these will end up underwater and so of no use to the future; or perhaps the current generation will exhaust most of the supply of critical minerals by devoting them to trivial, short-term pursuits; or perhaps current actions will unleash a climate catastrophe later this century that causes systemic collapses through widespread famine and nuclear war. We return to such concerns in Sections 3.b and 3.c. For now, notice that scenarios like these expose the contingency of the optimistic assumptions. Arguably, this contingency is itself obscured by emphasizing the playground of possibility.

These three issues—hard constraints, unacceptable substitutes, optimistic assumptions—cast doubt on whether future-saddling is ultimately a realistic approach. In doing so, they illustrate why focusing on especially salient strategies rather than the merely possible is important. Of course, proponents of future-saddling believe that their proposals are realistic, and indeed their appeal to realism is central to their argument. Specifically, they maintain that “making the future eat the costs” has the major political advantage of appealing to self-interest of the current generation as a way of unlocking political inertia. However, to make good on such a claim we would need further arguments, beyond the mere possibility of Pareto improvements. We would also need more concrete visions of both the future-saddling/present-sparing strategy and the specific institutional proposal for a Generational Self-Interest World Climate Bank. Moving forward, ultimately one must also consider the prospect that there are more salient alternative strategies that undermine the appeal of the future-saddling approach by pointing in a different direction. Particularly important are those alternative strategies that satisfy additional ethical criteria, such as protecting against serious injustices, not encouraging or facilitating extortion, and promoting well-being over the long-term (see below). Before turning in that direction, let us continue our disruptive examination of the rosy picture painted by the standard argument for “making the future pay.”

2.c. Pareto-violating cases

My third basic point focuses on Pareto-violating cases: situations where at least some are made worse off, perhaps very substantially worse off. Such outcomes are surely possible. They also seem clearly salient in the climate case, and indeed more generally when it comes to relations with the future. For instance, advocates for future generations will be concerned about cases where the current generation runs up intergenerational debt in the name of “efficiency without sacrifice” but ultimately does not deliver the expected benefits to the future.

One obvious example would be if the current generation were to set up a future-saddling world climate bank, draw loans from it under the pretext of enhancing climate mitigation, but then ultimately divert those funds to other purposes, such as (say) short-term consumption for its own benefit. Less obvious, but still plausible, examples would include cases where the funds are used for projects that would have proceeded anyway, or to fund low-hanging fruit with significant co-benefits for the current generation, and where this may be done in ways that are not sustainable in the long-term. Abuses of funding programs are, after all, hardly unprecedented in other areas. Indeed, those familiar with the difficulties that have confronted other climate policies will notice that there is ample precedent for such shenanigans. For instance, many are critical of REDD (“reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation”), the CDM (“clean development mechanism”), and offsetting schemes (e.g., Amakoromo, Reference Amakoromo2025; ClimateChange.Academy, 2025; Friends of the Earth, 2008; Hyams & Fawcett, Reference Hyams and Fawcett2013; Sharma, Reference Sharma2024; Suiseeya, Reference Suiseeya2016).

Of course, the standard argument assumes that the policies that will be pursued under future-saddling are only those that involve genuine Pareto improvements. Yet this is merely an assumption. Crucially, there is no magic involved that guarantees that pursuing future-saddling policies will actually serve to make the future better off. As the other examples mentioned above (CDM, REDD, offsetting) attest, having high hopes for a climate mechanism is not sufficient to ensure that it will deliver. Among other things, generational bad faith is possible (and perhaps likely, given the problems of intergenerational buck-passing and moral corruption). Moreover, even if at the outset there is generational good faith, so that early proponents of MFP genuinely want to benefit the future (as I am confident that current philosophers and economists who advocate MFP do), what those who initially propose policies intend and what actually results (in practice and over the longer term) are two very different things. The fact that a group of academics advocates for a proposal that could do some good does not guarantee that it will evolve in that direction. For example, good policy ideas are often hijacked by powerful interests; sometimes this happens quickly, sometimes it occurs slowly and inexorably over time.

In summary, in my view, the possibility of Pareto-violating outcomes remains salient even if one grants (perhaps only for the sake of argument) the assumption in the standard argument for MGP that Pareto outcomes are possible. In particular, advocates for the future are right to be suspicious of institutions that do not take seriously the threat of outcomes that make future generations worse off, including worse off than under the status quo or “business-as-usual” baselines.Footnote ¹⁶ There is too much at stake to be complacent (and too much history of intergenerational buck-passing and moral corruption in international climate policy).

2.d. Disturbing Pareto baselines

My fourth basic point concerns another category of salient possibilities: cases of future-saddling that technically count as Pareto improvements, but nonetheless remain deeply morally troubling.Footnote ¹⁷

Let us begin with the perspective of the older, decision-making generations. For example, consider the relevant Pareto baseline (i.e., the baseline from the point of view of strictly generational self-interest of a simple, narrow sort) for an older, decision-making generation of (say) those aged 50–80. This baseline is likely to be high—and perhaps very high.Footnote ¹⁸

One reason is that the benefits of keeping close to the status quo over the next few decades are likely to remain appealing to this older generation. In the short- to medium-term, the status quo largely preserves ways of life to which they are accustomed. Transition is risky and likely to be costly. This may seem particularly true of the kind of fast, radical, “unprecedented” transition mainstream scientific reports say is now needed for even moderate chances of respecting the 1.5°C and 2°C targets (e.g., IPCC, 2018, 2021; UNEP, 2025), let alone more ambitious goals (e.g., Gardiner, Reference Gardiner, Brown and Gwiazdon2023b, Reference Gardiner2023c, Reference Gardiner2026). This status quo bias is likely to be especially prominent among those with the most resources and political power in the current generation, whose influence may make the biggest difference in practice.

A second reason is that, when thinking of the downsides of the status quo—bad climate impacts—there are considerable time-lags which are likely to be highly salient to the older generation (at least if, as the standard argument implies, they see things primarily from the point of view of narrow generational self-interest). For one thing, even if they would prefer to avert the worst climate effects, for the older generation “avoiding the worst” is complicated by the fact that some of those effects are relevantly distant: they will likely not arise for at least decades, often centuries, and sometimes thousands of years into the future; in short, not until they are dead and gone, or at least have little time left (e.g., massive sea-level rise caused by the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet). At least for these impacts, the conventional narrow self-interest of the older generations is not particularly salient. For another thing, given the time-lags, even if some bad impacts will occur relatively soon—e.g., over the next few decades, while the older generation expect still to be alive—many of these are already “in the cards,” in the sense that they either cannot now be avoided, or at least cannot be avoided through emissions reductions that are likely to prove physically and socially feasible (e.g., Gardiner, Reference Gardiner2009, Reference Gardiner2011, Reference Gardiner and Williston2023d). For both reasons (relevant distance; “in the cards”), it seems likely that some, probably substantial, portion of climate mitigation does not benefit the older generation directly, at least to a very large extent or to the same extent as younger generations (e.g., Gardiner Reference Gardiner2021b, 94-94).

Given the pressures from each side (the appeal of the status quo; the influence of time-lags), if we assume that the older generation’s main relevant motivation is generational self-interest (per the standard argument for MFP), it is likely to demand more “compensation” for deviations from business-as-usual than one might initially think. Indeed, it seems very plausible to hold that the baseline against which a strong Pareto strategy must benefit the current generation of decision-makers is likely to be high.

More generally, we must beware of the comfortable language of “efficiency without sacrifice” and Pareto improvement. On the surface, both phrases are compatible with—and indeed tend to highlight—the idea that the current generation of decision-makers is merely made no worse off than under the status quo. However, arguably the wider MFP argument needs to go further: it must establish that the current generation will actually benefit from MFP, and so undergo an improvement in its condition. The reason is that the MFP argument appeals to self-interested motivation, rather than moral motivation, but leaving people no better off than they already are does not seem to offer the current generation a narrowly self-interested reason to accept MFP. In essence, then, the key motivating thought (and slogan) ought not to be “efficiency without sacrifice” but efficiency with profit. Without some positive motivation that gives the current generation reason not to prefer the status quo, the self-interested argument cannot get off the ground. (Of course, an ethical argument could fill this gap—see below—but this would compromise one central appeal of MFP highlighted by its proponents.)

Even more importantly, if self-interest is the key motivation, then it seems that the relevant baseline should not be “no sacrifice” or what the current generation expects without MFP. Instead, it should be whatever they can realistically get away with demanding. However, unfortunately this baseline is likely to be very high. The simple reason is that it will be the current generation itself that implements MFP and creates the new intergenerational climate bank. It therefore has profound asymmetric power over both the situation and any steps toward solutions. Thus, at first glance, it is not clear what would prevent the current generation from aiming to maximize its possible gains from the venture. (One might add: neither is it clear why subsequent generations will not do the same once in power.) As we shall now see, “maximal gains” appears to be a very high baseline; it is also likely to be a morally horrifying benchmark. Instead of the moderate, comforting language of “efficiency without sacrifice,” sadly it seems more realistic to talk of the prospect of intergenerational tyranny. Rather than simply “sparing the present” from sacrifice (as “efficiency without sacrifice” might suggest), under the “maximizing its own gains” approach (a form of “efficiency-with-profit”), the salient risk is one of “sticking it to the future”Footnote ¹⁹.

Let us turn now to the perspective of the young and other future generations threatened by climate change. The Pareto baseline for these future generations is likely to be low; indeed, dangerously low. For the salient threshold there is making future generations better off than they would be in a genuine climate catastrophe; but this is, by definition, a very bad state of affairs. Arguably, this distorts the MFP argument.

Consider the climate context. Many of the multiple threats posed by climate change are clearly catastrophic on a range of scales (e.g., local, national, regional, global). Moreover, they become manifest at different levels of global warming, some of which are uncertain. Here it is sobering to observe the levels being discussed in mainstream science. For instance, by 2100, the IPCC suggests temperature rises of 3.3–5.7°C under a very high emission scenario and 2.1–3.5°C under an intermediate scenario (IPCC, 2021, p. 17); by 2300, the projections are 6.6–14.1°C under a very high emission scenario, and 2.3–4.6°C under an intermediate scenario (IPCC, 2021, pp. 2–10). At the higher end, plausible catastrophes include scenarios that involve rises in global average temperature of somewhere in the region of 4°C, where some say that this threatens the collapse of global agriculture and so the food supply of humanity (e.g., Anderson, Reference Anderson2012; Kemp et al., Reference Kemp, Xu, Depledge, Ebi, Gibbins, Kohler, Rockstrom, Scheffer, Schellnhuber, Steffen and Lenton2022; Lynas, Reference Lynas2020). Notably, mainstream science suggests that we should also at least consider threats of (say) 5–7°C or more, as well as possible abrupt changes in the climate system (e.g., “tipping points”; cf. Lenton et al., Reference Lenton, Rockström, Gaffney, Rahmstorf, Richardson, Steffen and Schellnhuber2019). Among other things, it is plausible that rapid, high-magnitude climate shifts might potentially undermine conventional social systems altogether and may even render large parts of the world uninhabitable for human beings. The upshot is that the spectrum of outcomes taken seriously by climate science suggests that many of the relevant Pareto baselines for future generations are very low. At the extreme, some may bring on truly dystopian circumstances, such as those depicted in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Margaret Atwell’s MaddAddam trilogy. Indeed, both authors were partially inspired by the climate threat.

This brings us to a crucial point: making future generations better off than under baselines of genuine global catastrophe is (i) not very demanding, and so (ii) barely a constraint at all. First, it is not very demanding because satisfying the Pareto criterion for future generations can be met merely by bequeathing them a condition slightly better for them than genuine global catastrophe. Yet this is compatible with bequeathing all manner of severe circumstances to the future.

Second, in context this threatens to render the Pareto principle barely a meaningful constraint at all. Consider just one salient scenario. Suppose the current generation were to hand on to the future a climate 3–4°C warmer and saddled with heavy intergenerational debt. Climate change in that world is severe, and well above the conventional thresholds of 1.5° and 2°C for dangerous anthropogenic interference. Suppose that the combination of climate damage and inherited debt were sufficient to depress the quality of life well below that common in affluent countries now. Imagine, for instance, that it would set back human progress by hundreds of years. Still, the outcome might be “better than genuine climate catastrophe” (of say 5–7°C, or crossing one of the worst global tipping points) for the future; therefore, it would satisfy the Pareto principle. In other words, the standard argument for “making the future pay” would appear to justify a policy of “efficiency without sacrifice” (or more aptly, “efficiency with profit”) that licenses passing on a toxic combination of serious climate change and heavy debt to the young and other future generations.

At this point, we have entered morally horrifying territory, for this result appears deeply objectionable. For one thing, intuitively, “making the grandchildren pay” in such ways seems seriously wrong. For instance, it seems to violate any reasonable duty of care we might have toward future generations, especially given that other options are on the table. For another thing, painting this and similar scenarios as a simple “win-win” is deeply misleading, and obscures what is at stake, ethically speaking. For example, imagine the current generation saying: “we’ll hand you ‘only’ a 3.7°C rise – and so spare you complete agricultural collapse – in exchange for your accepting a huge intergenerational debt.” Arguably, for the current generation to insist on such a bargain seems much more accurately cast as a coercive imposition—perhaps intergenerational extortion—than as a “mutually beneficial transaction.”

This last point about coercive imposition puts additional pressure on the Pareto argument. First, even if future generations would accept such a minimal improvement for themselves as part of an intergenerational bargain, they would be doing so under compromised circumstances. A realistic threat of catastrophic climate change is being made against them. Their choice is therefore made under duress. For example, consent under extortion is morally compromised. It has little or no moral value.

Second, future generations and their advocates may resist and refuse to accept bargains made on such horrifying terms. Notably, in real life, some people resist extortion. They do this even in cases where the extortionate bargains look to be Pareto improving, and so good in one respect. Importantly, refusal is not obviously irrational. For one thing, well-being is not the only value and it can be outweighed or silenced by others (e.g., self-respect). For another thing, even if it is beneficial in the short-term, acceding to coercion might well undermine well-being in the longer-term. For example, even those who prioritize well-being may have reasons to resist extortion.

In short, in context, the claim that future generations would accept the bargain being offered by the current generation becomes seriously misleading. It may not be true; and if true, it is likely of limited moral relevance. (These points are quick to state, but nevertheless of central importance.)

Summing up, once we notice the different baselines for the current generation (high or very high) and for future generations (low), the achievement of Pareto superiority is cast in a different light. For one thing, rather than Pareto appearing evenhanded—“both generations benefit!”—the asymmetry in relevant baselines implies a deep bias toward the current generation and against the future. For another thing, crucially, Pareto alone offers little to no protection to future generations (“the grandchildren”). The baseline seems not only low, but dangerously low. As a result, the standard argument for future-saddling opens the future up to all kinds of treatment that would otherwise appear objectionable. In my view, these are highly salient possibilities that any proposal for MFP, or concrete policy recommendations like establishing an intergenerational climate bank, must take seriously.

2.e. Overreach

This brings us to my final basic point, which concerns the persistence of perverse incentives. The greatest risk of all may be that “making the future pay” (including the new institutions charged with implementing it) itself poses a dramatic new threat to the future in terms of its potential for overreach. Once norms are established that legitimize MFP, and institutions are put in place that can make it happen, then new rationales for further payments can easily emerge.

Most notably, what ensures that the new system based on MFP will not itself become an agent of, or otherwise facilitate, intergenerational buck-passing? The temptations are clearly still there. The current generation can use the new institutions to take more from the future than is justified, and also benefit the future less than is needed. Once more, it is not clear what would stop them. Again, those not yet born are unavailable to play a substantial role in running the institutions, or holding them accountable, while the young probably lack the necessary social power as things stand. (By “the young,” I mean at least children, tweens, and teenagers. Plausibly, young adults should also be included.)

Overreach may occur within the climate domain. The initial official remit for Broome’s “efficiency without sacrifice” is financing mitigation, and especially research and deployment of energy technologies. But why would the current generation stop there? Many other “burdens” can be connected to climate. So, what is to stop the current generation demanding that the future is saddled with these too? Broome himself has already suggested that MFP be used to compensate for historical climate emissions, even though these are not matters of climate mitigation (Broome, Reference Broome, Walsh, Hormio and Purves2017, 17). Presumably, it will not be long before we see further demands: for instance, that the future pay for adaptation measures, loss and damage, relocation of climate refugees, ecological restoration, and much else besides. Once launched, what is to stop Broome’s future-saddling World Climate Bank from rapidly expanding beyond mitigation to cover all these other areas and more?

Yet climate-specific overreach is only the tip of the iceberg. Pressure for further expansion seems likely to arise much more generally. In time, we might see demands that the future should pay to address all manner of other threats that arise to them, for example, for nuclear disarmament, pandemic preparation, toxic waste disposal, and so on. Once there is a future-saddling, present-sparing World Climate Bank, how long before we see calls for “making the future eat the costs” of many other things too: for example, through future-saddling versions of a World Disarmament Bank, a Global Biodiversity Bank, a Weapons of Mass Destruction Bank, A Global Reforestation Bank, and so on? Indeed, ultimately, there may be calls for a grand simplification. Plausibly, the current generation will end up arguing that they need an overarching Future-Saddling and Present-Sparing institution, such as an All-Purpose Intergenerational World Bank or perhaps country-specific Intergenerational National Banks, for them to call on whenever the “need” strikes them, for whatever purposes they choose.

Over time, it is not difficult to imagine a major erosion of intergenerational ethical norms, as we slide toward making the future pay for a huge range of things formerly thought to be the responsibility of each current generation in turn. Eventually financial institutions based on MFP may simply become unconstrained revolving lines of credit for whatever the current generation sees fit to demand funds to do. Of course, the mechanisms of moral corruption are such that such activities will not be framed in these ways. But that does not ensure that the framing is not apt.

These various possibilities are already morally shocking. They pose a profound threat to future generations. Nevertheless, there is a further possibility that is even worse. MFP writ large also puts at risk humanity’s progress. If institutions are set in place that license MFP to such an extent that the generations in power at any particular time can effectively claw back from the future whatever they like, this puts at risk the accumulating “gains of human history.”Footnote ²⁰ It also makes humanity in the future more vulnerable to existential risks. In my view, these are at least among the salient possibilities that should be considered in any serious assessment of the MFP approach and the institutions empowered to deliver it. They may even be the most salient possibilities.

Again, recognizing the perverse incentives invites another comparison to paradigm cases of extortion. People say that once an extortionist has his claws into you, he never stops but keeps coming back for more. This is a central reason why some resist extortion even when acceding to the initial threat appears to represent a strong Pareto improvement for them. For to accede may be merely the first step in a downward spiral, with no end in sight. Here, the initial Pareto improvement is at best short-lived, and in the end short-sighted. Given this phenomenon, one can see why defenses of “making the future pay” and a future-saddling World Climate Bank might be resisted—and for good reason. Claims about the theoretical possibility of strong Pareto improvements, or “win-win,” fail to take seriously the underlying risks of the situation. As Tony Soprano says, “I won’t pay; I know too much about extortion” (Gardiner, Reference Gardiner2017).

One might even go so far as to argue that worries about intergenerational extortion and the threat to humanity’s progress make resisting mechanisms of MFP itself a high priority for intergenerational ethics. Even if this is too much, the issue deserves discussion. Moreover, it is worth emphasizing that this point contrasts markedly with the strong moral case for “MFP with no or few reservations” made by proponents of the standard argument.

To sum up, in this section we raised five basic points relevant to assessing MFP and the (future-saddling, present-sparing) Generational Self-interest World Climate Bank proposed by Broome and Foley. I argued that the discussion is worryingly acontextual, and that the standard Pareto argument relies too much on the bare possibility of Pareto improvements. In doing so, it avoids taking seriously the risks posed by Pareto-violating outcomes, the problem of skewed, asymmetric baselines, the extremely minimal protection afforded future generations by the Pareto criterion in the climate context, and the threat of overreach once new norms and institutions are established. Yet all of these should be central to any ethical analysis of intergenerational climate policy, and of intergenerational institutions more generally.

3.a. More attractive baselines?

I suspect that part of the answer is an optimism bias: advocates for “making the future pay” simply assume that their policies will benefit future generations against high baselines, and protect the current generation only against lower ones. Even though the standard argument is pitched in terms of Pareto improvement alone, MFP proposals are often implicitly—and occasionally explicitly—carried forward on the basis of a presumption that much more demanding baselines will be met.

Typically, these baselines pick out a subset of Pareto improvements reflecting a particular, optimistic vision of the future. The vision goes something like this. First, the economy will continue to grow into the future once the climate threat is brought under control; second, future generations will be benefitted by that growth to such an extent that they will be much richer than the current generation is now; third, these riches ensure that the amount the future would need to pay to induce the current generation to engage in climate action does not threaten their (superior) prosperity; therefore, fourth, the future can fully compensate the current generation either at low cost to itself, or at least while remaining substantially better off than the current generation, or against some other attractive baseline of prosperity. The upshot is that those attracted to the vision ultimately appeal not to the Pareto principle as such, but rather to different, more specific background ethical principles that imply that the threats to the future I discuss above are not salient after all (e.g., Heath, Reference Heath2021).

Some evidence for the optimistic vision is found in Broome. Considering future generations, he asserts:

In this passage, Broome is presuming that an optimistic baseline will in fact be met: that his future-saddling approach will make future generations better off than the current generation.

On one plausible interpretation, suggested by Broome’s comment about investment, he is claiming that future generations will be much better off than people now. This interpretation is plausible because Broome is imagining continued economic growth, compounded over many decades and then centuries. Given this assumption of ongoing growth, the thought seems to be that future generations will have such a high level of wellbeing that whatever burdens they must bear to cover the costs of climate mitigation will be of small account. This vision is not only “win-win” against the baseline of “business as usual” under severe climate change, but also in light of very high baselines of genuine benefits and absolute advantage in the future.

An alternative interpretation of the new baseline is more modest: perhaps the salient claim is only that future people will be at least as well off as current people. This interpretation may be signalled by Broome’s remark that we are more than fully compensating our successors through growth. This remark might be read as suggesting that "being as well off as current people" functions as the relevant baseline for calculating “sacrifice”.Footnote ²¹

In addition to invoking optimistic baselines, proponents of MFP occasionally also appear to introduce additional and unexpected, yet serious constraints on their strategy. In particular, Broome and Foley sometimes make major claims that appear to restrict the scope of “compensation” for the current generation. For example, at one point they claim that “leaving consumption constant ensures the present generation makes no sacrifice” (Broome & Foley, Reference Broome, Foley, Gonzalez-Ricoy and Gosseries2016; emphasis added). Here, the focus on “leaving consumption constant” suggests that their operative assumption is that MFP will merely not decrease the consumption of the current generation; they do not say that MFP must actually increase the consumption of the current generation, and so positively benefit it. Similarly, elsewhere they say that “we can transfer some of the [future] benefit [from climate mitigation] back in time to ourselves – enough to compensate us fully for the sacrifice we make and leave us at least as well off as before” (Broome and Foley Reference Broome and Foley2022, 5). This passage appears to claim explicitly that full compensation for the current generation requires only leaving them as well off as before.

Interestingly, this nonworsening approach may initially appear to block worries such as ours that (i) each current generation may leverage MFP so as to enrich itself further by appropriating numerous benefits from the future, and plausibly maximally so. It may also make my more specific complaints less plausible, such as that Broome’s strategy (ii) permits or encourages clawing back humanity’s gains; (iii) threatens humanity’s progress; and (iv) may undermine humanity’s very survival in the longer-term.

A second example of restricting the claims of the current generation arises when Broome and Foley sometimes assert that current owners of fossil fuels need only be compensated for the true value of their assets, and not their current market value. Their idea here is that economic theory tells us that greenhouse gas emissions are externalities that should be internalized in their price of fossil fuels so that the price reflects their true costs. Current market prices do not reflect the true price, and so are overvalued in the market. Since these fuels cannot be burned without causing catastrophic climate change, Broome and Foley say, owners of fossil fuels should be compensated for the true value of their holdings, not their present market value: “[fossil fuel investors] cannot and need not be compensated for having made a bad investment” (Broome & Foley, Reference Broome and Foley2022, 8). Again, this appears to be a serious constraint on the demands that can be made by the current generation.

In summary, proponents of MFP sometimes seem to presuppose more ethically attractive baselines, principles, and constraints than we have so far discussed. For example, strikingly, Broome and Foley appear to maintain that their strategy will end up: (1) satisfying more demanding ethical criteria than mere potential Pareto improvement in practice; (2) imposing serious constraints on the current generation’s pursuit of its own self-interest, and (3) invoking criteria that are in some sense generous to future generations. These three moves suggest a startling switch in the dialectic, and one which uncovers very different lines of reasoning that are not reflected in the standard Pareto argument.

3.b. Preliminaries

Does the implicit appeal of these new, more demanding criteria—those lurking in the shadows of the optimistic vision—undermine my criticisms of the standard, Pareto argument? Are those criticisms now rendered simply irrelevant? I think not. Let us begin with four preliminary points.

First, I agree that the optimistic vision opens up a world of possibility. So, (again) I will concede that versions of MFP that satisfy more attractive criteria are possible in principle. Nevertheless, I have already said that mere possibility is not enough. Less attractive outcomes of MFP are also possible, including ethically compromised or even disastrous outcomes. So, if establishing mere possibility is the point, we have not yet made much progress. Possibility is not where the action is.

Second, when we come to the action, it will be important to assess whether the economic optimism championed by Broome and others is itself realistic, and (importantly) sufficiently realistic that we would be justified in relying on it. After all, there are significant reasons for skepticism. For example, [a] many will complain that the optimistic vision effectively assumes away the most severe threats posed by climate change, such as risks associated with regional collapses, systemic collapses, abrupt shifts or runaway climate change, some of which may already be “in the cards.” Similarly, [b] one might argue that the economic optimism fails to consider wider threats to human prosperity, some of which are live and accumulating. So, for example, the optimism fails to consider other environmental threats, such as those signaled in the Planetary Boundaries analysis and similar scientific assessments (e.g., Rockstrom & Gaffney, Reference Rockstrom and Gaffney2021). It also fails to mention nonenvironmental threats, such as from nuclear war (Rendall, Reference Rendall and Gardiner2022).

Third, proponents of MFP need to specify which more attractive baselines they wish to endorse. There are countless possibilities, and considerable variations between them. One concern is that it is difficult to assess the plausibility of the optimism completely in the abstract. Another, vital consideration is that specifying the principles implicitly being assumed to be satisfied under optimism will likely shape concrete proposals, such as the future-saddling World Climate Bank, in central ways. For instance, we might expect it to reveal critical constraints on how they operate, some of which must be incorporated at the level of institutional design. Such questions are much closer to the core issues we are interested in than discussions of mere possibility. (More on this below.)

Fourth, crucially, it seems likely that ethics will need to play a central role in making the more attractive baselines salient (cf. Gardiner, Reference Gardiner2021b). On the one hand, if the current generation is really to settle for leaving its own consumption constant, and to accept that future people will be much better off, how is this to be justified on the grounds of simple forms of generational self-interest, and that alone? Alas, the whole idea seems implausible on its face. Thus, at the very least, those arguing that morality should be set aside in favor of simple self-interest need to explain how the more attractive baselines can be reliably achieved without ethics.

This demand seems especially pressing in the case of the two baselines mentioned above: the “nonworsening constraint,” and the “true value of fossil fuels constraint.” Why would the current generation or very powerful actors within it (such as fossil fuel companies) accept such low bars for compensation? Simple self-interest does not seem to provide an answer: for on those grounds, surely the current generation as a whole will demand being made better off, and the fossil fuel barons will demand compensation that is at least close to the present market value of their holdings. Without ethics then, there seems no way forward in mobilizing the two new constraints.

By contrast, the more compelling positive approaches seem to be infused with ethics, not self-interest. So, for example, we might argue that members of the current generation are entitled to some level of protection against the negative effects of a climate transition, as a matter of (say) showing appropriate respect for their human rights, or ensuring they have access to central capabilities and functionings, or avoiding undue suffering. This, we might claim, flows from considerations of justice.

Notably, this kind of argument would be very different from a blanket appeal to “no sacrifice” based in narrow self-interest. For instance, it is plausible to think that justice would not imply that protection for the interests of the current generation should be unlimited, or that the key objective should be to protect high levels of conventional consumption, or that protection must include (say) an abundance of luxury goods. Moreover, though justice might suggest that perhaps some of the burden of climate mitigation should be shouldered by future generations, it is also plausible to think that it would require that some burdens should be borne by other parties (e.g., the rich, or those especially responsible for climate change) and in ways that constitute a genuine sacrifice on their part.

In short, it seems likely that the crucial arguments for more robust constraints being added to MFP would need to be based in ethics, and reflect conventional debates in climate ethics, rather than an (allegedly) transformational approach based on self-interest. Similarly, it seems deeply plausible that the appeal of the more attractive baselines that may be lurking in the background (given the optimistic vision) ultimately rests in their respecting central ethical guardrails. Thus, it is essential that these guardrails are specified, and a persuasive account offered of why they will end up being respected in practice. Ultimately, that is where the action is, not in abstract appeals to possible Pareto improvements, generational self-interest, and “efficiency without sacrifice.”

3.c. Key questions

With these thoughts in mind, how might one move forward? We know the “making the future pay” argument must eventually move beyond possibility. Recall that a central motivation for the approach, grounded in Pareto improvement, is pragmatic. It concerns what will work. The future-saddling strategy is supposed to break the political logjam and put an end to ongoing inertia on climate mitigation. An intergenerational climate bank is the mechanism through which it is going to do this. Given this, we must ask some key questions (or clusters of questions):

As far as I can tell, current discussions of MFP and Broome and Foley’s World Climate Bank do not really address these questions. They effectively assume promising answers to them, rather than providing such answers. This is perhaps the optimism bias at work. Still, the door is open to enthusiasts for future-saddling to develop the view further by providing answers. Speaking for myself, I would welcome the effort. The possibility of meeting attractive baselines is worthy of further discussion.Footnote ²²

Nevertheless, I admit to thinking that the most plausible answers to the key questions are worrying. Consider first, Q1. Unfortunately, I suspect that the emergence of forms of MFP that embodies attractive baselines for each generation is unlikely under present circumstances. This is partly because I believe that there is a governance gap. Current institutions may be good at capturing short-term concerns, especially of particular kinds (such as narrow economic concerns). But they are not good at protecting the future. Why then should we assume that pursuing MFP in such an institutional environment will actually result in better outcomes for future generations? It seems like a triumph of hope over experience.

Turning to Q2, I would argue that we need genuine intergenerational institutions to fill the governance gap and consider appropriate structures and safeguards. These institutions would need to satisfy requirements of procedural and substantive legitimacy, embody appropriate ethical ideals, and respect various constraints of justice. Consequently, the silence of the future-saddling approach on the need for more general, and distinctively intergenerational, institutional reform (beyond an intergenerational climate bank and its distinctively financial function) is a concern. Without wider intergenerational institutions, and especially the safeguards they would put in place to protect future generations, I do not see how we can have confidence in “make the future eat the costs” as a strategy.

Third, on Q3, considered in isolation, Broome and Foley’s Generational Self-interest World Climate Bank appears to be a limited, and in various ways inappropriate, institution. It is not clear what its international and intergenerational legitimacy would be, nor why it could be relied upon to respect ethical ideals or constraints of justice. Moreover, while some kind of global financial institution could perhaps play an effective role within a more robust and intergenerationally appropriate governance regime, within the current global system it appears ripe for disfunction and also for moral corruption. Note, for example, that Broome and Foley’s climate bank is to be modelled on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. These are run on the basis of financial contributions from national governments of the most powerful countries, and so often at their behest. However, these governments have so far failed to address the climate crisis, and arguably this failure is in large part due to their short-term, narrowly economic focus. If it copies the World Bank and IMF in these respects, Broome’s WCB appears poised to recreate as part of its essential structure the central dynamic that explains past political inertia.

In light of all this, should we go in a different direction? Broome and Foley’s climate bank is justified by and conceptually linked to MFP and the “efficiency without sacrifice” (Pareto) argument. Instead, perhaps we should argue for a different kind of global finance proposal, such as one that asks for a bank that is not essentially tied to these ideas. For instance, perhaps we should call for a Climate Justice World Bank. Perhaps this would allow for some contributions from future generations, in accordance with norms, principles, and ideals of global and intergenerational justice. Couldn’t this bank legitimately impose some burdens on the future?

Perhaps it could. After all, many approaches to climate responsibility might endorse the contribution principle (“making the future contribute” to climate action), including ones based in justice. For instance, in general, it seems plausible that most ethical approaches would allow that both future generations and the current generation should contribute something to climate mitigation as part of an intergenerational burden-sharing scheme. Indeed, as far as I know, no one has insisted that the current generation should bear all the burdens of climate mitigation, no matter what the wider circumstances. On the contrary, it often seems plausible that some burden-sharing across generations is appropriate. One reason that the contribution approach seems reasonable for climate is that at this point in history the climate problem has been evolving over many decades, so that one thing that needs to be addressed is how to share the burdens created by the moral failures of past generations (e.g., those in charge in 1990–2019 or 1960–1989). Thus, there is perhaps a presumption that just intergenerational institutions, including a Climate Justice World Bank, would allow for some intergenerational burden-sharing (cf. Corvino, Reference Corvino2025; Pattison, Reference Pattison2024).

Nevertheless, we would need to be extremely clear that the call for a Climate Justice World Bank is a very different proposal than Broome and Foley’s “future-saddling, present-sparing” Generational Self-interest World Climate Bank. Consider four initial ideas. First, the Climate Justice World Bank is motivated by ethics and constrained by justice, rather than driven by self-interest. Second, since it aims to reflect norms, principles and ideals of justice, the design of the CJ-WB should not be left solely, or even primarily, to economists. Instead, it should draw on the expertise of disciplines and professions centrally tied to concepts of justice, such as philosophical ethics, law, and political science.Footnote ²³ Third, in my view, the CJ-WB should be specifically constructed so as to combat the central threats of intergenerational buck-passing, the tyranny of the contemporary, and moral corruption. Fourth, I would emphasize that any call for a climate justice World Bank is probably best seen as part of a wider institutional proposal, rather than a standalone institution. Isolating finance from the rest of the political world is a deeply flawed strategy, and unlikely to produce a result that respects key ethical values. In summary, I conclude that the call for a Climate Justice World Bank is one with a strikingly different flavor to Broome and Foley’s call for a Generational Self-interest World Climate Bank where future generations are forced to “eat the costs” of climate mitigation.