Benjamin Todd

We were first exposed to these by researchers at University of Oxford's, modestly named, Future of Humanity Institute.

So what's the reasoning?

First, future generations matter.

But they can't vote, they can't buy things, and they can't stand up for their interests.

This means our system neglects them.

You can see this in the global failure to come to an international agreement to tackle climate change that actually works.

Second, their plight is abstract.

We're reminded of issues like global poverty and factory farming far more often.

But we can't so easily visualize suffering that will happen in the future.

Future generations rely more on our goodwill, and even that is hard to muster.

Third, there will probably be many more people alive in the future than there are today.

The Earth will remain habitable for at least hundreds of millions of years.

We may die out long before that point, but if there's a chance of making it, then many more people will live in the future than are alive today.

To use some hypothetical figures, if each generation lasts for 100 years, then over 100 million years there could be 1 million future generations.

This is such a big number that any problem that affects future generations potentially has a far greater scale than one that only affects the present.

It could affect one million times more people and all the art, science, culture, and well-being that will entail.

So the problems that affect future generations are potentially the largest in scale and the most neglected.

What's more, because the future could be long and the universe is so vast, almost no matter what you value, there could be far more of what matters in the future.

This suggests that we have much greater reason than people usually realize to help the future, and not just the near future but also the very long-run future, go well.

But can we actually help future generations or improve the long term?