Every summer, the Intergenerational Foundation hosts a Worldwide Blog Week, inviting writers here in the UK and from around the world to contribute to a week-long discussion on issues of intergenerational fairness. This international and cross-cultural dialogue deepens our understanding of the many frontiers of intergenerational justice, and helps us to understand how academics and activists from around the world are pushing for progressive change for younger generations. In this blog, Liam Hill introduces IF’s Worldwide Blog Week for 2022.
A hot topic
As we begin our Worldwide Blog Week, here in the UK the importance of intergenerational justice cannot be divorced from the sweltering heats and record temperatures that we are set to encounter. A century and a half of pumping greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere has brought us to where we are now. The climate is not merely changing: the climate has changed.
Feeling that fact, understanding that this will get worse, that billions of people in every continent and region will be affected by this during our lifetimes, should focus our minds. Intergenerational justice demands bequeathing to the next generations a world in which it is just as possible to live and thrive. That is a test this generation of leaders is yet to pass.
Volatility
Everything changes, and it can change in the blink of an eye. If 2022 has a watchword, there’s a strong case for ‘volatility’. In politics and economics, changeability is keenly felt.
A situation being volatile, however, doesn’t have to mean everything gets worse. Fatalism never made the world a better place and every failure, each problem we see with total clarity, is an opportunity to argue for something better. That holds as true for the climate crisis as it is for economic injustice, lack of opportunities, or inequality in housing, wealth or access to basic rights and essential services.
Choices to make
Speaking of arguing for something better, this Worldwide Blog Week comes in the middle of the campaign that will decide who will be the UK’s new prime minister. Our UK-based writers during the next few days will have much to say about inequality, fair taxation and investing in the future that feels especially relevant. Meanwhile, our contributors from the rest of the world explore ideas about how to conduct politics, how to conceptualise our responsibilities to future generations, and on addressing and mitigating climate change.
Candidates and campaigners would do well to take note.
A lot to look forward to
Welcome to our Worldwide Blog Week. We hope to provide some useful and informative context on intergenerational fairness, both here in the UK and around the world.
We’re deeply grateful to each of the writers for their generosity and patience. We hope you enjoy reading their contributions!
Help us to be able to do more
Now that you’ve reached the end of the article, we want to thank you for being interested in IF’s work standing up for younger and future generations. We’re really proud of what we’ve achieved so far. And with your help we can do much more, so please consider helping to make IF more sustainable. You can do so by following this link: Donate