ABSTRACT
Perpetual obligations are actionable goals that need to be addressed by contemporary public policies. The perpetual obligation, to preserve the essence of nature, is motivated by more recent developments in, and concerns stemming from, new genetic engineering technologies. All generations have a perpetual obligation to prevent human extinction. The obligation is clearly subsidiary to the obligation to prevent human extinction and in fact can be understood to merge into this obligation if the accumulation of involuntary environmental risks threatens human extinction. For the purposes of establishing an ethical threshold for the risk of human extinction, the issue here is that current generations will need to invest resources to ensure not only the ability of future generations to live but also to have freedom to shape their lives. Extreme social controls in the absence of existential risks can threaten the ability for current generations to bequeath sustainable societies, and pathologically, actually increase existential risks.
