The right way to handle intergenerational tradeoffs is to ask what future generations would want: sometimes they would want us to take precautions, but often they would say 'grow, and we will come up with ways to cope,' since being wealthier enables coping—so we should neither control all pollution nor none of it.

normativepending

Speaker

Russ Roberts

Evidence Quote

I think the right way to think about it is what would they want and the answer is sometimes they'd want us to take precautions a lot of times they'd say no grow and we'll come up ... with ways to cope with these things if we're wealthy enough ... it's equally stupid to say we should never allow any pollution because that would would harm future generations

Source

Cass Sunstein on Worst-case Scenarios 11/19/2007EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:17:23 AM

My Notes

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