Shue, Henry

“Deadly Delays”

The Bush/Cheney attitude toward climate change is awesomely irresponsible because (1) failing to deal with climate change constitutes not merely failing to help future generations, but inflicting harm on them; (2) failing to deal with climate change constitutes inflicting harm on additional future generations who could have been spared all such harm; (3) failing to deal with climate change constitutes not simply continuing to make it worse, but unnecessarily creating opportunities for it to become significantly worse by feeding upon itself through positive feedbacks that would otherwise not have occurred; and (4) failing to deal with climate change constitutes not only unnecessarily creating opportunities for the planetary environment to become significantly worse, but also unnecessarily creating opportunities for it to become catastrophically worse and subjecting future generations to this completely unnecessary risk. Rejecting current federal policies can create opportunities to provide future generations with the magnificent legacy of salvation from vulnerabilities against which they could have had no defense of their own.