Our Responsibility to Future Generations

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In recent years, lawyers have begun to join ecologists in debating whether there are—or should be—obligations to protect the interests of future generations. This legal debate was preceded by a philosophical one, dating back to the early 1970s, on the emergence of a new or “ecological” ethic redefining the relationship between man and nature in such a way as to ensure the survival of the human species on earth. The background to the various ethical approaches has been the indisputable fact that humanity has accumulated a monstrous potential to destroy life on earth, and that it is using natural resources and the environment in a way that threatens the survival of future generations—at least, at a standard that we today consider worthy of human beings.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: