Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

late-night thoughts about democracy S 75
accountable. It is rather like Churchill’s description of genocide as
“a crime without a name,” but on an infi nitely larger scale. 11
Other than those in the present willing to speak and act on their
behalf, generations to come have no defenders. In contrast to the
fetus, they exist only in prospect, but like a fetus, that prospect can
be radically crippled or aborted by the indifference or dereliction of
the present generation. And in contrast to the individual fetus, future
generations pose a collective challenge both to the law and to our
capacity to make moral decisions. To do so, we must imagine their
lives at a scale for which we are unaccustomed and must summon
the wherewithal to act on their behalf as well as the intellectual acuity
to know how to act effectively to defend their interests. Since it is
within our power to grant or to withhold life, what can we do?
Any posterity capable of making such judgments will regard
the policy and behavior changes necessary now to limit and reverse
the damage of climate change to them as obvious and necessary.
The real fault line in American politics is not between liberals and
conservatives or between Democrats and Republicans. It is, rather,
in how we orient ourselves to the generations to come, who will
bear the consequences, for better and for worse, of our actions.
Some say that we cannot know precisely what the consequences
of rapid climate change may be and that we should not act until
they are known in great detail. Others, mostly devotees of the
faith of neoclassical economics, say that we cannot afford to act
and must wait until we are richer still. There are still a few who
believe that climate change is a hoax and prefer to do nothing—
come what may. There are many, perhaps still a majority, who
will say nothing because they have not thought much about such
things. But a growing number believe that we must act now.
The long emergency will be a test of our beliefs, institutions,
and character as a people. We all hope fervently that we
and our children and theirs will come through what biologist
E. O. Wilson calls “the bottleneck” with a more tempered but
improved and more vital democracy. But I do not believe that
to be even remotely possible without extending our boundaries