Intergenerational Ethics and Climate Change

Abstract

Global climate change is a multigenerational challenge that raises significant questions of intergenerational ethics. What do we owe to future generations? How should we think about intergenerational relations in the context of climate change? Many common moral theories—particularly those that assume a shared community of contemporaries who have the capacity to make agreements among themselves—encounter challenges in relation to intergenerational ethics. These challenges include the nonexistence and nonidentity problems, as well as issues involving power asymmetries, motivation, and accountability. This review suggests that the prominence of generational individualism—in which generations are conceptualized as distinct and potentially in conflict—can be an impediment to the robust consideration of future generations in climate ethics and policy. Conceptions of intergenerational ethics that emphasize transgenerational community and mutual flourishing over time may help to temper generational individualism, alleviating “intergenerational buck passing” on climate change and supporting climate action that takes past, present, and future generations more fully into account.