The Anthropocene and the Rewriting of Intergenerational Solidarity

Discussions about intergenerational solidarity mix notions of generation as a kinship relationship with those positing it as a social relationship. This underlying tension has emerged at times of social ferment such as the 1960s generational schism and now in the era of what has been called the ‘Anthropocene’ where human induced climate change is implicated in creating dangerous changes for both the world’s population and the planet. It has also potentially foreshortened any positive future for yet to be born generations. In this paper we address how ideas of generations and generational conflict have begun to be framed around climate change as the social generation once identified with the protest politics of the 1960s has been re-framed as a generation of ‘greedy geezers’. This ‘new’ generational conflict has come on the back of earlier arguments concerning generational conflict and generational equity centring on welfare provision toward older people. These arguments shifted ideas of intergenerational solidarity, and the deserts owed to older generations, to the negative position of households with children. Within this framework the idea of generational accounting emerged, based on the priority of creating generational stability in public spending. This led to a turn away from present to future inequalities.

In the 21^st century, this future orientation was turned to broader concerns regarding the planet as precariousness and risk became lodestones for politics. Sociologists such as Ulrich Beck identified a new generational line of fracture emerging over climate change, between young ‘global generations’ and old ‘homo neandertalis’. We focus on the implications of this transformation in the meaning of intergenerational solidarity in the context of a wider framing regarding the differential obligations and responsibilities for the past, present and future well-being of the planet itself.