One of the key features of an environmental ethic or perspective is its concern for the health and well-being of future generations. Questions about the rights of future people and the responsibilities of those presently living are central to environmental theory and practice and are often asked and analyzed under the term intergenerational justice. Most traditional accounts or theories of justice have focused on relations between contemporaries: What distribution of scarce goods is fairest or optimally just? Should such goods be distributed on the basis of merit or need? These and other questions have been asked by thinkers from Aristotle through John Rawls. Recently, however, some philosophers have begun to ask about just distributions over time and across generations.

The subject of intergenerational justice is a key concern for environmentally-minded thinkers for at least two reasons. First, human beings now living have the power to permanently...