17th September 2025
Intergenerational justice asks us to embrace “the interconnectedness of all things, the recognition of the inherent value of nature and its interdependence with the human world.” (1) Such insights are not new – in 1624 Donne wrote ‘no man is an island’ and in1224 St Francis wrote about all creation as being our brothers and sisters. Rather is seems as if it is our industrial world, our market economy, that has separated our activities into discrete silos. Traditionally economic theory only considered demand and supply of a product and not its impact on society (for good or ill) nor any damage it may cause in terms of pollution or diminishing future supplies. Indeed as regards the latter, a diminishing supply can in fact boost profits for the supplier!
The free market economic model does not protect future generations – it is not even capable of caring for present generations. We need alternative approaches to manage our economies – such as Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics (2) (More on this next week).
(1) https://gceurope.org/intergenerational-justice-or-how-to-be-a-good-ancestor/
(2) https://doughnuteconomics.org/about-doughnut-economics
The Green Tau 