Aleid’s Reviews > What We Owe the Future > Status Update

"Significance is the average value added by bringing about a certain state of affairs. [...] The persistence of a state of affairs is how long that state of affairs lasts, once it has been brought about. [...] Contingency represents the extent to which a state of affairs depends on a small number of specific actions." Or if it would not have occurred otherwise; "an alternative term would be 'noninevitability'."

"'The IPCC projects that in the medium-low emissions scenario, which is now widely seen as the most likely, sea levels will rise by around 0.75 metres by the end of the century. But it would keep rising well past the year 2100. After ten thousand years, sea levels would be ten to twenty metres higher than today. Hanoi, Shanghai, Kolkata, Tokyo, and New York would all be mostly below sea level."

"Distance in time is like distance in space. People matter even if they live thousands of miles away. Likewise, they matter even if they live thousands years hence. In both cases, it's easy to mistake distance for unreality, to treat the limits of what we can see as the limits of the world. But just as the world does not stop at our country's borders, it does not stop with our generation, or the next."