The planet is undergoing a global change in climate that has begun to negatively affect populations and is predicted to accelerate in the coming decades. The human beings now on Earth are the first to exist when the climatic dynamics of the planet are scientifically understood. That understanding makes patently clear that the aggregate effects of human activities have a distinct impact on planetary climate and the way humans will live, if they survive, in the future. This appears to be a tipping point time in human history when future climatic catastrophes that threaten generations of humans might be preventable if governments, institutions, and organizations now take mitigating actions. That suggests that the people currently alive on the planet bear a collective responsibility to address the negative human impact on climate.

Peter A. French is the Lincoln Chair in Ethics and the Director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics at Arizona State University. Formerly, he held the Cole Chair In Ethics at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and served as Exxon Distinguished Research Professor in the Center for the Study of Values at the University of Delaware. He is the author of seventeen books and has published dozens of articles in the major philosophical and legal journals and reviews, many of which have been anthologized.

Howard K. Wettstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He has taught at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Minnesota-Morris, and has served as visiting professor at the University of Iowa and Stanford University. Wettstein has published articles on the philosophy of language and the philosophy of religion.