Nuclear weapons and climate change do future generations wrong by externalizing potential existential harm in the long term and constraining their freedom of choice through extended policy trajectories. Focused on nuclear weapons, Franziska Stärk conducts a comparative analysis of intergenerational justice concerns in both contexts. Her work's principal argument emphasizes the distinct temporality of these challenges, revealing three crucial temporal disparities.

First, the externalization of intergenerational harm follows different timelines. Second, the sustainability of present generations' incentives to prioritize immediate benefits over future generations’ well-being varies. Third, while the visual salience of the intergenerational implications of nuclear weapons is diminishing, the gradual impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly evident.

Her comparison of how intergenerational injustice unfolds through continued reliance on nuclear deterrence and climate change not only highlights the oversight of intergenerational justice in nuclear ethics debates, but also carves out the distinct nature of intergenerational justice concerns in the context of nuclear weapons. Derived from this comparative analysis, a more nuanced understanding of intergenerational injustice in nuclear weapons facilitates a critical examination of mitigation and rectification strategies.