I think of it as almost a paradox.
Our ability to affect the environment extends ever further in time but
our ability to predict those effects gets shorter and shorter.
Our own behavior is increasingly a dominant part of the system, and we
ourselves as a species are notoriously beyond the scope of our
predictive abilities. It seems that conventional wisdom leaves it to
our successors to have increasing ability to solve the increasingly
complex burdens we place on them.
This seems to me more like wishful thinking than like morally
well-founded behavior.
While technical progress is arguably monotonic, social progress seems
to have periods of substantial retreat. Coping effectively with
ever-increasing global environmental issues requires a maturity of
global decision making that seems beyond reach, and though there are
some bright spots on the whole I think the trends aren't good.
I believe that the more power we have over the environment, the
greater the amount of attention we should pay to far-distant
generations. As our physical power becomes ever greater, the
seventieth generation increasingly deserves to have their interests
accounted for.
Likely such a moral precept won't be taken seriously before a
generation arises that is severely impacted by a distant predecessor.
That distant predecessor will most likely be us. I don't take great
pride in that.
mt
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
