A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology

Exhaustible Resources

Energy consumption influences the welfare of future generations when it is based on fossil fuels that are exhaustible, since they will have less energy resources available than current generations.

Issues like that are addressed in the very rich international literature on sustainable development. This literature to a large extent emerged as a reaction to the growing interest in considering the interactions and potential conflicts between economic development and the environment. Sustainable development was defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development in the report Our Common Future as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987).

A core element in the economic literature on sustainable development is the extent to which different capital forms can substitute each other. In the case of exhaustible energy resources, the issue is to what extent fossil fuels in the future can be substituted by other energy sources, and the costs of these alternatives. In practice the equity dimension of welfare economics will then suggest that, if exhaustion of fossil fuels imposes higher energy costs on future generations, non-declining consumption possibilities can be maintained if investments that offset the exhaustion enable future availability of low-cost options. In this way, current generations should transfer resources ...