Living with limits: How individuals navigate climate responsibility in later life

This article investigates how older adults in French-speaking Switzerland perceive, understand, and enact their moral responsibilities regarding climate change. It foregrounds older adults' environmental action as situated within broader civic participation patterns and moral agency in later life. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups with older adults aged 65 to 83, it examines how both direct duties (such as reducing personal greenhouse gas emissions) and indirect duties (such as supporting institutional change) are interpreted and negotiated within the constraints of aging. The article shows how climate responsibilities are shaped by the constraints and opportunities of later life, pointing toward a more context-sensitive articulation of climate responsibilities and a more nuanced understanding of climate duties. It contributes to the understanding of how later life can shape, restrict, or reframe environmental agency, offering valuable insights from aging studies to environmental ethics and public policy.