Who Should Pay the Reparations?

    We are still living with the repercussions of past events, and who are the people paying for the reparations they have cause? I'll tell you who isn't paying, the people that caused them. From the article Caney focused on the historical issue of anthropogenic climate change, but some of that ideology can be used when discussing other historical issues, like slavery. Both issues have caused a damaging affect on society, and frankly have caused irreversible damage. 

    Climate change has been happening for over a century. Whether pollution is caused by a factory, hazardous waste, or even just a standard automobile. Each one of these has contributed to the damaging effects of climate change. Unfortunately the majority of the damage has been caused by people that are no longer here, so now who pays for the reparations? Just like the majority of the people who used to keep slaves are no longer living, so how can they pay for their reparations? Something is wrong with society, when we were a kid it was drilled into our brains that we pay for our mistake, but no one is paying for the damaging mistakes that they have cause-actually the people that are paying for the effect of climate change are those of future generations.  

    It just doesn't make any sense, the people who had slaves, at least to the best of my knowledge, never paid for their wrongdoings. The people that paid for them were the slaves themselves, having to live with that horrible quality of life. Once slavery was abolished it's not like their lives got much easier, I mean we can still see racial injustice today. Overall, someone needs to pay for these mistakes, Caney has spelled out the causation for climate change, and we know the causation for slavery. The ultimate question is, how do we move forward? Caney mentioned the casual account and the beneficiary account, but both in my opinion don't work. Taking the causal account route would mean that the people who caused the damage would pay, which theoretically sounds good but most of those people are no longer here. When we look at the Beneficiary account would mean putting the reparations on someone associate with that individual which I don't think is fair. If they weren't part of the reasoning to cause the harm in the first place then why should the be paying? I think both of these accounts mean well but I just don't think this is how justice should be served, and frankly I don't see a better option at this time either.