Peter d'Errico: Making policy with seven generations in mind

When Eduardo Porter, an economics reporter for The New York Times, recently wrote about "fixing the future," did he know he was recapitulating an Iroquois perspective? He posed this question: "What would you pay to protect the world in which your great-great-grandchildren will live from hurricanes, drought and the like?"

Onondaga Chief Oren Lyons has put it this way: "One of the first mandates given us as chiefs, [is]… to make every decision that we make relate to the welfare and well-being of the seventh generation to come… What about the seventh generation? Where are you taking them? What will they have?"

According to Porter, the Obama administration published a set of estimates of the costs of future damage from such things as floods, pandemics, and depressed agricultural productivity from releasing heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He pointed out that the estimates show a likelihood of substantial harm, but suggested that the analysis raises questions about "how much weight the people of the present should give to damages caused by the climate in the distant future."