What a child is worth in 2100

Every big climate decision runs through one number, the discount rate. At 3 percent, a harm done to a child born in 2100 counts for about a ninth of the same harm done today. Robinson's Ministry exists to speak for that child. This page lets you turn the dial.

A discount rate is a number that decides how much a child not yet born counts. At the rates governments use, a child born in 2100 counts for about a ninth of one born today. That's a moral choice, and it's hidden inside a number most people never see.

Drag the dial or tap a marked rate. Each child is drawn at the size of how much a dollar of harm to them counts against a dollar of harm today. The dial follows you down the page.

The number

A discount rate says how much less a cost or a benefit counts for each year it lies in the future. It's how a government compares spending money now with harm that arrives later. Pick 3 percent, and every year of delay shaves 3 percent off what the harm counts for.

Here's a worked example. Say a flood in 2100 will do $1,000 of harm. At 3 percent, the test divides by 1.03 once for every year between now and then. Do that 74 times and the $1,000 counts for about $112 today. Spending more than $112 now to prevent the flood fails the test, even though the harm is $1,000 and the people who suffer it are children who haven't been born yet.

In The Ministry for the Future, Robinson's characters trace their whole problem back to this number. It looks like arithmetic. It's a decision about who counts.

“If we were working for them as well as ourselves, then really we should be doing everything for them.”

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future, loc 1863

Takeaway.The rate decides how big the child is. Set it at zero and every child is the same size.

Who sets it

Somebody picks the rate. It has been picked, and changed, in public.

1. 2003The US Office of Management and Budget's Circular A-4 tells federal agencies to discount at 3 percent and at 7 percent. At 7 percent, the 2100 child counts for less than one percent.
2. 2006The Stern Review on the economics of climate change uses a pure rate of time preference of 0.1 percent. With growth added in, its effective rate comes to about 1.4 percent.
3. 2023A revision of Circular A-4 lowers the US default to 2 percent.
4. 2025A January executive order directs OMB to revoke the revision. In February, OMB reinstates the 2003 Circular, and with it the 3 and 7 percent rates.

Takeaway.It's a choice. It was changed, and then it was changed back.

A ministry for the child not yet born

In the novel, the Ministry is set up in 2025 under the Paris Agreement, based in Zurich and led by Mary Murphy. Its job is to speak for the world's future generations as if their rights counted as much as ours. In its early days, the question is put plainly.

“Do you really think we can get significant legal standing for people who don’t exist yet?”

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future, loc 610

A real country has tried. Wales passed the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act in 2015. It requires public bodies to think about the long-term effects of what they decide, and it created a Future Generations Commissioner, an office whose job is to look out for people who aren't born yet.

Even the space novel on the roadmap runs on the same motive. In Critical Mass, a man who no longer wants money for its own sake wants power for something else.

“A goal that would matter to his son’s generation more than his own.”

Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass, loc 2122

Takeaway.Someone can be given the job. A commissioner with standing turns the dial toward zero from the inside.

The children already here

The dial is about children not yet born. The same arithmetic shows up in how we treat the ones alive now: what we spend on them today, against what it pays back over their lives.

“We have to live, we have to give this place to the kids with the animals still alive and a chance to make a living. That’s not so much to ask.”

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future, loc 3437

On the roadmap: Local AI and tutors → · Clean air at home →

Takeaway.Children alive now get discounted too, every time a system decides early which of them are worth the investment.

Born into safety

Turn the dial to zero. All four children stand at full size. That's the whole promise, and it fits in one line.

“Every child is born into safety.”

Josh Gold

Ministry puts the same idea as a floor that holds for everyone.

“Enough should be a human right, a floor below which no one can fall; also a ceiling above which no one can rise.”

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future, loc 879

A zero rate doesn't mean money is free or the future is certain. It means a child doesn't count for less because of the year they're born. The rest of the arithmetic can stay. That one assumption has to go.

The same floor in energy: Earth is a starship too →

Takeaway.The floor is the dial at zero. Every child, every year, full size.

The Ministry for the Future is a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson; The Dispossessed is a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin; Critical Mass is a novel by Daniel Suarez. Sapiens is nonfiction by Yuval Noah Harari. Quotes are given word for word with their Kindle locations. This is an unofficial reading, not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the authors. The dial is plain compound discounting from 2026, an illustration, not a cost-benefit study.