Given the human tendency to favor current needs over future risks, some environmental and legal scholars are proposing that governments at various levels appoint a “legal guardian of future generations” to consider the impact of policy choices on citizens yet unborn.

A leading proponent of this idea is Carolyn Raffensperger, the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, a group seeking changes in American environmental and public-health policy.


She is proposing that such a guardianship begin with the next presidency. Below you’ll find a note she recently sent outlining her idea.

I was casting about for an illustration of how this could play out and realized one decent example is the situation of polar bears in a human-warmed world. Their populations have risen in recent decades because of hunting controls. So, for the moment, all is well. But the long-term picture is bleak, according to the latest analysis by government bear biologists. How quickly do we act to change energy choices now to limit chances that Arctic sea ice will disappear entirely in summers later in the century (something most biologists agree would greatly diminish bear numbers)? Is it good enough (from the standpoint of future human generations) to preserve the bears mainly in zoos (as in this Wildlife Conservation Society video clip)?

I spoke with Ms. Raffensperger briefly before the holidays. She explained that even in some of the most forward-looking environmental statutes in the United States, like the legislation creating the national parks, the language on safeguarding this asset “unimpaired” for future generations is in the preamble, and thus not “hard law.”