62 a balanced and healthful ecology that is constitutionally guaranteed for present and future generations.298 Climate science has established with certainty that the impacts of climate change are long-term and widespread, and that GHGs persist in the atmosphere for centuries– thus denying future generations of their “right to inherit the same diversity in natural and cultural resources enjoyed by previous generations and to equitable access to the use and benefits of these resources.”299 This has been recognized by the UN General Assembly as early as 1988, when it expressed its concern “that certain human activities could change global climate patterns, threatening present and future generations with potentially severe economic and social consequences.”300 Climate change goes against the principle of intergenerational equity as it unfairly shifts burdens onto future generations.301 It “is an inherently intergenerational problem with extremely serious implications for equity between ourselves and future generations and among communities in the present and the future.”302 Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon noted in his report on intergenerational solidarity that “fairness between generations is embedded in the concept of sustainable development.”303 Even the religious sector has recognized the concept of intergenerational equity. In his encyclical, Laudato Si’, Pope Francis makes various references to “justice between generations.” He instructs that: The notion of the common good also extends to future generations. The global economic crises have made painfully obvious the detrimental effects of disregarding our common destiny, which cannot exclude those who come after us. We can no longer speak of sustainable development apart from intergenerational solidarity. Once we start to think about the kind of world we are leaving to future generations, we look at things differently; we realize that the world is a gift which we have freely received 298 Oposa v. Factoran, Jr., G.R. No. 101083, 224 SCRA 792 (1993). 299 J. K. Summers & L. M. Smith, The Role of Social and Intergenerational Equity in Making Changes in Human Well-Being Sustainable, 43 Ambio 718 (2014), doi:10.1007/s13280-013-0483-6. 300 United Nations General Assembly, Protection of Global Climate for Present and Future Generations of Mankind, A/RES/43/53 (Dec. 6, 1988). 301 IPCC, AR5 WGII, supra note 159, at 926. 302 Edith Brown Weiss, Climate Change, Intergenerational Equity, and International Law, 9 Vt. J. Envtl. L. 615 (2008). 303 Ban Ki-moon, United Nations General Assembly, Intergenerational Solidarity and the Needs of Future Generations: Report of the Secretary-General, A/68/322 (Aug. 15, 2013), para. 10.