Planning in the Shadow of the Future: Intergenerational Ethics and Environmental Decision-Making

Planning in the Shadow of the Future: Intergenerational Ethics and Environmental Decision-Making By David W. Laws A.B., English Cornell University M.R.P., M.L.A. University of Massachusetts, Amherst Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology June 1998 © David W. Laws 1998. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. Signature of Author Department of L<n Studies and Planning May 29, 1998 Certified by Professor Lawrence Susskind Ford Professor of Urban and Envirom-ental Planning Department of Urban Studies and Planning Thesis Supervisor Accepted by P I. fSesLo T ran k LTevy MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE Chair, Ph.D. Committee OF TECHNOLOGY Depart ent of Urban Studies and Planning JUL 0 2 1998 LIBRARIES Planning in the Shadow of the Future: Intergenerational Ethics and Environmental Decision-Making by David W. Laws Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ABSTRACT Most environmental policies express explicit commitments to consider how public choices will affect the welfare of future generations. This is often one of the primary rationales for public action. At the level of principle, this consensus is broad and largely unchallenged. Efforts to translate these commitments into practice, however, invariably highlight the same tensions and ambiguities that characterize theoretical discussions. This thesis examines two efforts by public agencies to address intergenerational ethics in the context of practice. The Department of Energy's effort to translate principles of intergenerational equity into a formal, analytic approach to making policy decisions failed. Their experience highlights the indeterminacy of policy principles under conditions of uncertainty and value pluralism, and the need for public involvement to reach a politically legitimate interpretation of intergenerational obligations. The efforts of the Maine Low-Level Radioactive Waste Authority provide a distinct contrast. They also emphasized public involvement, but chose to create an interactive forum that involved citizens directly in the evaluation of technical information, the exploration of political obligations, and the shaping of policy. With an open set of groundrules and help from a team of experienced facilitators, a distinctive form of conversation developed that enabled participants to respond directly and intuitively to concerns about future generations and the broader legitimacy of the process. The Maine experience highlights a distinctive option that is open to administrative agencies when they face concerns about intergenerational impacts or similar problems. This process drew on and contributed to the competence of citizens. The Maine experience underscores the importance of having an experienced facilitator who can organize and manage this kind of complex conversation. It also highlights the possibility that deliberative forums can be created in the context of administrative action with direct implications for how intergenerational ethics and similar problems might be handled. Thesis supervisor: Lawrence Susskind Title: Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgments 4 Chapter One - The Policy Consensus on Intergenerational Ethics Overview 5 An emerging consensus on intergenerational ethics 7 From policy to practice 12 Chapter Two - Deciding for the Future 15 The context of administrative decision-making 16 NAPA's effort to derive practical principles 25 The problem is political 32 Chapter Three - Creating the Historical Present 40 Historical Context 42 Taking Responsibility for Ends 48 Consensus and Disagreement 78 Managing History 91 Conclusion 105 Chapter Four - Common Sense 108 Reason Giving and Conversation 109 The Importance of Conversation 110 Reasons Promote Understanding 114 Reasons Opened Proposals to Scrutiny 116 Play and Justification 121 Justification and Validity Claims 130 Keeping an Open Mind 134 Common Sense and Constitutional Reason 137 Future Generations and Conversation 145 Addressing concerns about future generations 145 requires an appropriately shaped dialogue. People need a model of how to speak to the future. 149 Agencies and citizens need help organizing and 150 managing such conversations. Intergenerational dialogues should be draw on and 154 develop the reason and common sense of citizens. Common Sense and Conversation in a Research Society 157 References 160 List of Interviews 164 ACKNOWLEDGMENT I want to first thank my advisors Larry Susskind, Martin Rein, and Josh Cohen for their insight and generous support over the long course of this project. Beyond this there are so many people who have helped that I have to apologize to those I have left out but I must thank a few. Mike Wheeler who is always a source of insight, Marjorie Aaron for helpful comments, Ambuj Sagar for many helpful discussions. Peggy Levitt for thoughtful comments and support throughout. Kathleen Merrigan, Rob Beattie, David Thacher, and many other colleagues at MIT contributed to the development of my ideas. Analia Penchaszadeh contributed editorial help at a crucial time. I owe a great debt to my family and especially my wife Diane for her patience, support and understanding and my daughter Emma whose energy and curiosity and have been an inspiration. Finally, I want to acknowledge two debts that I am unable to repay. First, to Don Schon, who contributed so much to the development my understanding of these issues. Second, to the citizens and others actors who made the Maine Citizens Advisory Group work. Any credit should go to them, because they made the story. Chapter One The Policy Consensus on Intergenerational Ethics OVERVIEW The point of departure for this thesis is the consensus that future generations should be given consideration in the design and implementation of environmental policy. This consensus is apparent in policy makers' consistent reliance on future generations when they must explain why they believe environmental problems demand public attention. In this chapter I highlight this consensus and the tie to democratic legitimacy that makes it especially pressing. This consensus reveals at least a strong "overlapping" intuition that questions about intergeneration ethics are not just a matter of private conscience or morality.' They are part of the subset of moral questions that constitute the political sphere in our democracy. When questions about future generations come up they raise questions about the foundations of political legitimacy that and must be addressed in a way that is consistent with this status.2 This consensus opens rather than closes the question of what this commitment means. Figuring out what we have said in making these commitments now involves making the bridge from policy to practice. The "practical social task" of resolving questions about intergenerational ethics at this practical level opens questions about the role of institutions and the basis for legitimacy in a democratic society. These, in turn, shape the ' In the sense that Rawls uses overlapping in his discussion of "overlapping consensus." See Rawls 1993 p. 38 f. 2 "While a political conception ofjustice is, of course, a moral conception, it is a moral conception worked out for a specific kind of subject, namely, for political, social, and economic institutions." Rawls 1985. P.224 efforts of actors, like administrative agencies, who must find a way to implement these commitment along with their other responsibilities. I want ultimately to contrast two approaches to this practical social task. In one the responsibility for articulating this consensus and exploring its implications was retained by the administrative agency. In the second, the agency shared the responsibility for articulating and interpreting the practical force of intergenerational legitimacy with a group of citizens. Here the foundation for legitimacy moved from the agency to the form in which citizens reasoned freely with each other over controversial questions that the policy raised. In this first chapter I characterize the existing consensus about the significance of intergenerational ethics for environmental politics by reviewing a variety of policy statements. A set of examples illustrate this consensus. They are taken from the early stages of policy-making in which actors describe the rationale for public action. References to intergenerational ethics (obligations, fairness, responsibility .. .) are common. I also want to highlight a second characteristic of these statements. They speak about intergenerational ethics with a confidence and command that stands out when pontrasted with the uncertainty with which these issues are treated in the context of practice. I conclude this section with an explanation of why these references are so common, or at least how we can understand the political significance of the existing consensus. AN EMERGING CONSENSUS ON INTERGENERATIONAL ETHICS The concerns of future generations have become difficult to avoid when talking about the goals of environmental policy. Whether we look at national policy-making, international treaty making, or local politics, intergenerational relationships provide a touchstone that people use to gauge the

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