I've been told the concept of 'owing to the future' was pitched as antidote to 'future discounting', but it ends up supporting the same ends.

Wingnuts used #FutureDiscounting to argue that climate change mitigation didn't make financial sense, & so, should not be done.

#Longtermists use #ExistentialRisk-language to argue hypothetical future lives resulting from an astronomically unlikely scenario are of greater value than billions of living humans, so nothing should be done.

Same result.