here they call that "pulling up the ladder"; you are missing the sentiment -- one side sees it as "leaving my family a secure home" and the other sees it as "tax dodging generational wealth transfer"
The term "pulling up the ladder" has always been interesting to me, since even though there's a continuous tradeoff between the priorities of incumbents and newcomers (in any domain), it tends to be cast in very concrete and black-and-white terms in any debate where it's used (at least as far as I've seen).
For instance, single-family homeowners voting to keep their areas single-family zoned are cast as "pulling up the ladder". This is fair: incumbents are trying to keep newcomers from changing the things they prioritize.
One could make a similar case for public lands, though: why is it fair that residents of a city should allocate huge tracts of land for public parks, when that land could otherwise be used to build dense housing and make the city more affordable for newcomers? It feels strange, but this seems like the same tradeoff: incumbents enjoy the presence of parks, so they prioritize them over the potential needs of newcomers (more affordable housing).
Or at a more global level, we could make a similar (very controversial) case for climate change regulation: the current rich-world countries built up their economies largely on the back of environmentally damaging practices. Now that we're developed, though, there is a large push for global regulation of climate policy, punishing polluting countries. This is because the incumbent rich countries prioritize a solution to global warming over the desires of some (though certainly not all) developing economies looking to grow rich through the same environmentally-damaging practices we used.
The phrase "pulling up the ladder" feels like it's always used to illustrate the greed or selfishness of those who want to deny others the privileges they had. It's very clear, though, that there are some cases where we're totally fine with "pulling up the ladder" when it's the things that we ourselves prioritize (in this example, public parks over affordable housing, or climate-change prevention over economic development).
> the current rich-world countries built up their economies largely on the back of environmentally damaging practices. Now that we're developed, though, there is a large push for global regulation of climate policy, punishing polluting countries
While tangential to your point, it should be emphasized that when the current rich-world countries built up their economies, low-emission energy such as solar, wind, and nuclear were not available (or much more expensive). And it is those same rich countries that developed those technologies, that the rest of the world now has access to. In this light, requesting that countries minimize fossil fuel use is not so unfair.
