We discuss how transgenerational communitarianism deals with public decisions involving tradeoffs between different generations’ wellbeing and having global consequences. Policies for tackling climate change are an example. Although there is a natural, evolutionary, basis for intergenerational altruism, most people lack the competencies for constituting a transgenerational community. Moreover, greater attention to future generations’ wellbeing need not substitute for collective action: a lower discount rate reflecting a stronger concern for future generations may even worsen their wellbeing. Finally, in a world of irreducible value pluralism, there is no community of persons sharing moral values that can legitimize common policies for addressing global problems: only the common interest of avoiding destructive consequences may motivate collective action to face problems like climate change.

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We study how public policies affects an economy where production emits pollutants and investment in productive assets raises the economy's overall productivity. We explore two hypotheses about how the accumulation of pollutants affects human well-being. Under the first one, there is no limit to the possibility for households to defend themselves against environmental degradation by increasing the use of manmade artifacts, while under the second one there is a threshold beyond which the effects of the accumulation of pollutants cannot be offset by devoting more output to this scope. Under both hypotheses, we compare the laissez-faire (LF) to the socially optimal (SO) path. Then, we check whether the latter can be decentralized by using the policy instruments available to the government. Under the first hypothesis, GDP and pollutants grow slower along the SO balanced growth path (BGP) than along the LF BGP, while people's well-being is greater along the former. Therefore, green policies driving the economy along its OP tend to reduce GDP growth. Under the second hypothesis, LF may lead to a "climate catastrophe" by determining unbounded growth, which-without incentives to invest in green technology-drives the amount of pollutants beyond its maximum compatible with life on earth.