Intergenerational Justice and Environmental Ethics in the Age of Climate Crisis

Abstract

The global climate crisis is not only an environmental challenge but a profound ethical dilemma involving responsibilities between present and future generations. Intergenerational justice—the moral and political idea that current generations owe ethical duties to those yet unborn—provides a philosophical foundation for assessing climate policy, human behavior, and environmental governance. Environmental ethics, which considers human obligations toward the natural world, intersects with this notion by expanding moral consideration beyond human interests to include ecological systems and future life. This paper critically explores how intergenerational justice and environmental ethics inform responses to climate change, the challenges in operationalizing these concepts, and how ethical frameworks can shape policy, international agreements, and collective action. By evaluating theories such as utilitarianism, rights-based ethics, Indigenous philosophical perspectives, and policy-oriented approaches like carbon budgeting and climate litigation, we argue that genuine climate action must integrate ethical responsibility to future people, ecosystems, and justice across temporal and spatial scales.