In evaluating policy decisions, governments often leave out a very important group: the people of the future.  Economic and environmental decisions often fail to take into account the well-being of future inhabitants of the planet.

Economists and government workers use the discount factor in making economic policy decisions.  The discount factor attempts to compare how much something will be worth in the future with how much it is worth now.

If the discount factor is greater than 1, it means that the thing will become more valuable in the future.  If the discount factor is less than 1, it means that the value of the thing will decrease in the future.

Often economists assign values lower than one due to expectations of inflation, innovation that will make current products relatively less useful, and increased standards of living.

Because so many goods have discount factors of less than one, some people would argue that the current generation should not worry about future generations in this respect.  The current generation would only be sacrificing its own well-being, and growth will cause future generations to have higher living standards anyway.

Environmentalists would counter with an argument about internalizing externality costs.  They would say that externality costs should be given a discount factor of 1 or greater, rather than the conventional value of less than one.

Also, environmentalists would not agree that growth will always continue.  They would say that in certain areas little more growth could be accomplished.  Last, environmentalists would argue that because of these factors, we must uphold our moral obligation to future generations.