Abstract

In this paper we identify and explore a dimension of intergenerational injustice that we call ‘intergenerational blinding’: roughly-speaking, the ethically objectionable imposition by one generation on another of various kinds of generational ignorance. Work in ecology has identified a phenomenon called ‘shifting baselines syndrome’. We argue that this phenomenon shows the potential for intergenerational blinding in the environmental realm. Yet, the emergence of intergenerational environmental blinding as a distinctive form of injustice has not received much attention from moral and political philosophers. Here, we make the case for taking this injustice seriously as a potential accelerator of our environmental crises, and as a distinctive form of intergenerational epistemic injustice.