B---Life is valuable in the present because of our participation in inter-generational projects---activism, research, philosophy, and culture all depend on a view of ourselves as furthering human endeavors that were started by prior generations and completed by future generations---addressing extinction risks is necessary to preserve that value now and in the future

Thus we find ourselves faced with a dilemma. We can’t appeal to future generations’ rights against harm to explain why we must change course now. Yet appealing to duties of beneficence doesn’t do justice to the felt urgency of the issue. Is there no way out? The American philosopher Samuel Scheffler has recently proposed a novel solution. He suggests that some of the most powerful reasons to prevent disaster in the distant future may be the interests and concerns of those alive now.

According to Scheffler, we are already deeply committed to the existence of posterity as part of the procession of human generations in which we, too, take our place. Most obviously, this commitment is exemplified by the despair most people would feel if humanity were faced with imminent extinction, as well as the grief many people do feel in the face of the climate crisis.

But we may also be committed to the survival of humanity through the many meaningful endeavours that presuppose the existence of future generations. Medical researchers and political activists who aim at the improvement of the human condition, for instance, understand that the goals towards which they are working may be attained only after they themselves are gone.

We also engage in activities that give our lives meaning by virtue of their place in an intergenerational enterprise with a history and a narrative of its own, such as the practices of philosophy, literature, sport and religion. Finally, we engage in activities whose value lies in the way they help to transmit wisdom, traditions or achievements across generations, or in the way they enable us to think imaginatively about possibilities for human society. Much education, art and conservation fits this description, as do many festivals and commemorations.

The value of all these endeavours depends on the expectation that humans will survive in conditions conducive to their flourishing long after we ourselves are dead. On Scheffler’s account, we do not think of activism, scholarship or sport as “ephemeral, one-off manifestations of idiosyncratic purposiveness”. Instead, they have their value as parts of projects and narratives that extend over generations, formed for us by our predecessors’ contributions and passed on by us – incorporating contributions of our own – to successors.

If Scheffler is right, then we depend much more than we may realise on the survival of humanity far into the future – and not just its bare survival, but its survival under conditions that enable it to flourish and carry on the traditions, collaborations and conversations that give our own lives so much of their meaning and purpose.

We want our lives and the lives of those around us to go well, which means we want our pursuits to be meaningful and the things we care about to survive. And we depend on the well-being of future generations to secure much of what we do and care about, even if we don’t appreciate it now and won’t be around to appreciate it later.

In the face of widespread unwillingness to prioritise the systemic transformation needed to address the climate crisis, activists might draw on Scheffler’s insights in order to show us just how much we ourselves have to lose. Rising greenhouse gas emissions, environmental destruction and mass species extinctions undermine the ability of future generations to secure much of what makes our own lives meaningful. Whatever duties we owe to future generations, we ourselves have an enormous amount at stake in their flourishing.