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A Sustainable Philosophy—The Work of Bryan Norton pp 49–70Cite as

Sustainability and the Currency of Intergenerational Obligations: Norton, Solow, Rawls, Mill, and Sen on Problems of Intergenerational Allocation

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Abstract

Concepts of sustainability guide policy and environmental management decisions. But when goals are articulated badly, they provide poor decision guides, and may lead to serious mistakes. This paper reviews and critically evaluates a series of popular conceptions of ‘sustainability,’ with special focus on a conception advocated by Bryan Norton. While no conception of sustainability (not even Norton’s) is problem-free, we gain by understanding the limitations of each. Adaptive management, as I understand it here, is not a conception of sustainability, but a view about how conceptions of sustainability might be used in practical reasoning about policy or management.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Philosophy, Political Science, and Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University, 435 Catt Hall, Ames, IA, 50011, USA

    Clark Wolf

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  1. Clark Wolf
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Correspondence to Clark Wolf .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Philosophy and Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA

    Sahotra Sarkar

  2. School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Ben A. Minteer

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Wolf, C. (2018). Sustainability and the Currency of Intergenerational Obligations: Norton, Solow, Rawls, Mill, and Sen on Problems of Intergenerational Allocation. In: Sarkar, S., Minteer, B. (eds) A Sustainable Philosophy—The Work of Bryan Norton. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 26. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92597-4_4

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