## Intergenerational Responsibility What do we owe the future? It is a question that *Films from the Future* approaches not as an abstraction but as a practical and urgent challenge. The technology choices we make today will shape the world inherited by people who have no voice in those decisions. Several films in the book force us to confront this asymmetry and ask how we can act responsibly toward generations that do not yet exist. ### The Climate We Leave Behind The Day After Tomorrow provides the book's most direct engagement with intergenerational responsibility. The film dramatizes catastrophic climate change, a global weather system thrown into violent upheaval by decades of greenhouse gas emissions. The politicians in the film ignore the warnings of scientists until it is too late, and the consequences fall hardest on people who had little role in creating the problem. The book uses the film not as a prediction of what will happen but as an illustration of a pattern that recurs across many technologies. The benefits of fossil fuel-driven industrialization have been enormous, but they have been concentrated in the present while the costs are deferred to the future. This temporal asymmetry is at the heart of the climate challenge: the people making decisions about emissions today will not be the ones living with the worst consequences. The book connects this to the broader concept of the Anthropocene, the recognition that human activity has become a geological force, reshaping the planet in ways that will persist long after the people who caused the changes are gone. Our technologies have given us the power to alter the composition of the atmosphere, the chemistry of the oceans, and the trajectory of biological evolution. With that power comes a responsibility that extends far beyond our own lifetimes. ### Systems That Outlast Their Creators Never Let Me Go illustrates a different kind of intergenerational burden. The clone-organ system depicted in the film was presumably created by a previous generation, one that made the decision to develop human cloning for medical purposes. By the time the story takes place, the system has become so embedded in society that dismantling it seems impossible. The current generation inherits both the benefits and the moral costs of a choice that was made before they were born. The book draws out the parallel to real-world technologies that create long-lived legacies. Nuclear waste, persistent organic pollutants, antimicrobial resistance: all are cases where the actions of one generation create problems that persist for decades or centuries. The technologies may have been developed with the best of intentions, but the people who will live with their consequences had no say in the decision to create them. This connects to what the book describes as the Collingridge dilemma, amplified across time. Not only is it difficult to change a technology once it is established, but the people who might want to change it may not yet be alive when the critical decisions are made. ### Responsible Citizenship in the Anthropocene The book's final chapter grapples directly with what intergenerational responsibility means in practice. Writing from the Scottish island of Arran, the author reflects on the tension between the comfortable pace of a place seemingly untouched by technological change and the recognition that emerging technologies, when developed responsibly, can genuinely improve lives. The book argues that we have an obligation to explore new ways of using science and technology to improve the world. But it also insists that this obligation comes with tremendous responsibilities, including the responsibility to think beyond our own immediate interests and consider the long-term impacts of our choices. This is not just about avoiding harm. It is about actively working to ensure that the technologies we develop leave the world in better shape than we found it. This is a high bar, and the book acknowledges that meeting it requires a kind of humility that does not come easily to a species that tends to prioritize the immediate over the distant. But it argues that the alternative, continuing to defer costs to future generations while enjoying the benefits ourselves, is a form of moral failure that becomes harder to excuse as our understanding of long-term consequences improves. ### Questions for the Present - What do we owe future generations through the technology choices we make today? - How do we make responsible decisions about technologies whose impacts will be felt long after we are gone? - What does "responsible citizenship" mean in an era where human activity has become a planetary force? - How do we give voice to future generations in decisions that will profoundly affect their lives? - Is it possible to build technologies that serve the present without burdening the future? The book does not offer a formula for resolving these questions. But it argues that asking them honestly, and allowing the answers to shape how we develop and deploy technologies, is the minimum that responsibility demands. For the technologies that raise these long-term questions, see [Climate Science and Geoengineering](/est_climate_science.html) and [Gene Drives](/est_gene_drives.html). For how societies become locked into technologies they cannot easily abandon, see [Too Valuable to Fail](/rei_too_valuable_to_fail.html). ## Further Reading - [The Day After Tomorrow — Moviegoer's Guide to the Future (Episode 12)](https://www.futureofbeinghuman.com/p/riding-the-wave-of-climate-change) — Andrew Maynard uses the film to explore the intergenerational dimensions of climate change, examining how the decisions of one generation create consequences that fall on people who had no voice in those decisions. The episode connects the film's dramatic climate collapse to the real-world challenge of acting responsibly toward a future we will not live to see. - [Designing the technological futures we aspire to](https://www.futureofbeinghuman.com/p/designing-responsible-technological-futures) — Maynard argues for proactive engagement with the long-term consequences of technology choices, rather than leaving future generations to deal with the fallout. The piece explores practical approaches to designing technologies that serve both present and future needs. - [Intergenerational Justice — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-intergenerational/) — A thorough philosophical examination of what obligations the present generation owes to future generations, including how to weigh current benefits against long-term costs. The entry addresses foundational questions about how to represent the interests of people who do not yet exist in current decision-making. - [The Hastings Center — Bioethics Research](https://www.thehastingscenter.org/) — The Hastings Center is a leading institution in bioethics research that addresses the long-term ethical implications of emerging technologies, from genetic engineering to environmental science. Their work provides frameworks for thinking through the responsibilities that come with technologies whose impacts extend across generations.