Man, as he seems bent on proving, has it within his power to render the earth a barren and hostile environment for posterity. The increasing awareness of this fact has led many to argue that we have a moral duty to preserve in unpolluted form the earth’s resources for the benefit of future generations. I shall assume that morally sensitive people will find this claim to have some cogency. I intend to examine a non-utilitarian foundation for such a moral requirement. When I speak of future generations, I mean generations that do not overlap our own. The problem of what we are morally required to do for the people who are now children and will constitute the next generation is interesting, but it is not the one I will be discussing. I am interested here in what the present generation can be said to be morally required to do in non-utilitarian grounds for future, nonoverlapping generations.
