ABSTRACT
We will now go on to examine the position that we must leave our descendants more than we have ourselves. This idea resonates, for example, in the declaration of the groundbreaking United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in 1972 in Stockholm, which called for us not only to protect the environment, but also to improve it. Such a “duty to improve” or “duty to promote growth” seems to be a demanding requirement that requires justifi cation. A supporting argument can be found in a prominent current in ethics-namely, utilitarianism. More than any other theory, utilitarianism focuses on aggregate well-being. Aggregate well-being is the sum of the well-being of every singleincluding every future-human being. From a utilitarian perspective, politics should always do what best promotes this aggregate well-being; all other ethical considerations-such as those of distributive justiceare ignored. But why does the utilitarian requirement to maximize aggregate well-being lead to the requirement to increase the level of well-being for future generations?
