The World Future Council, a group of 50 activists, politicians
and thinkers from around the world, is focused on finding ways
to prevent today’s actions from constraining tomorrow’s choices.
The group just wrapped up a two-day symposium in Montreal at
which more than 100 experts in international law explored ways
to use legal tools, most of which are oriented toward doling out
justice among those alive now, to avert what amount to crimes
against the future. These include such actions as driving
species to extinction and adding long-lived greenhouse gases to
the atmosphere in ways that have few impacts now, but could
disrupt climate patterns, ocean ecosystems and coastal
settlements in decades to come. In a news release, the council
said that world leaders, through decades of statements on
sustainable development, have pledged to balance current needs
with the obligation to avoid impoverishing the future. “But the
legal enforcement of these agreements is still very limited,” it
noted. In a news release, C.G. W