Everyday Choices For Future Generations

Most ethical questions have a face attached: the friend you might let down, the stranger at the door. Obligations to future generations are strange because the people we owe do not exist yet. They cannot argue their case or thank us. Yet nearly everyone feels the pull of the thought that we should leave the place habitable — soil that grows food, rivers that run clean, a climate a child can grow old in. The question is not whether we owe the future something, but how an ordinary day can honour a debt to people we will never meet.