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Here’s a conundrum for you: If the answer to this question—do we have a moral duty to leave a world as intact as our own to future generations?—turns out to be yes, then future generations may be doomed.
If it turns out to be no, however, there may be a chance for future generations to have a beautiful and functional Earth, even an Earth recognizably similar to our own.
Certain changes that we’ve already set in motion, of course, will have to play themselves out. Fifty years from now, the world will inevitably be somewhat altered. Shorelines will have shrunk some—or a lot, in fact, if the best current advice isn’t heeded. Vegetation will have moved around: temperate forests are already edging pole-ward in either direction, and the tropics may dry out for a spell.
But this won’t be the first time that nature has responded to dramatic global reconfiguring. Witness five previous extinctions, some far more devastating than even the one we’re currently perpetrating, due to cataclysmic events like encounters with asteroids. Yet eventually the Earth always comes out looking gorgeous. Gorgeous, but different: An Age of Reptiles gets replaced by an Age of Mammals, et cetera. But if we act soon, a fair amount of what we see around us may remain.
Speaking of mammals, here’s why a moral imperative to save the planet as we know it is likely a deterrent to actually doing so:
First, we’re mammals ourselves. We arguably have no more—or less—right to be here than any other species. But do bears, birds, beetles, and the rest also have an obligation to posterity?
I know, that sounds dumb. But why should it? What’s the difference?
In his posthumous collection, Pensées, Blaise Pascal likened humans to “thinking reeds” suspended, somewhat miserably, somewhere between angels and animals. (There’s an implicit assumption here suggesting that compared to us, animals don’t think. We really have no way of knowing; an alien appearing on Earth might be far more impressed by the acumen, ingenuity, and equanimity of several species other than our own, ranging from ants to crows to cetaceans.)
But back to the point: When we describe ourselves as thinking creatures, what we mean is that we can imagine the consequences of our actions. Again, I’m not sure that makes us unique—a squirrel storing nuts for the winter seems to know what he’s doing, and why. But fine; I’ll grant that we can do that. Nevertheless, as we’re increasingly reminded, being able to forecast likely results doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll act on that knowledge. These days, we’re practically swimming in knowledge, bobbing around in a great swamp of the stuff called the Information Age, with more gushing in continually via electronic pipes that are constantly being fed.
Doesn’t seem to help solve anything, though.
It would be nice to kick the Information Age up a notch, into an Age of Wisdom. The problem is, philosophers, sages, and moral leaders—religious and secular—have been trying to do that for several thousand years. Yet as a whole, we don’t pay attention. Lip service, maybe.
Our libraries are filled with literature and histories of great enlightened men and women. But they and their moral descendants have always been in the minority. In the big picture, that’s never really mattered until now: It was a big world, with room for all kinds of opinions, including horrific ones, because even Holocausts eventually pass, and we’ve just gone on repeating cycles of history, as if, like the rising sun, there’d always be another tomorrow and another chance to try to get it right.
But for the first time in history, something is actually new under the sun, and although the sun itself will go on rising for quite some time to come, suddenly there are grounds for wondering whether our own chances will keep coming around, as they always have until now...
[W]e all know that we humans have rejiggered the atmosphere. Our CFC refrigerants and methyl bromide agricultural fungicides have dug a still deepening and broadening ozone hole, which we can only hope begins to shrink as we gradually replace culprit chemicals with more benign substitutes. However, the solution to chunks the size of Connecticut calving off Antarctic ice shelves, freshwater flooding seaward from beneath Greenland glaciers, and methane bubbling up from thawed permafrost all along the coast of Siberia and Alaska may be far trickier. All the more reason to stop splitting hairs over whether we know enough to act already.
But I suspect the motivation to do so has to be more compelling than morality. Because if history shows us anything, it’s that baser instincts get more of us moving quicker. Rather than trying to appeal to reason or higher values—things that most people either don’t grasp or care about, or too often simply ignore—I suggest we appeal to greed and selfishness. It simply takes too long to change enough people’s minds and hearts to make them act out of obligation to a good greater than themselves. Not that it isn’t worth trying. But if we put all our best efforts into raising the masses’ consciousness regarding the eco-errors of their ways, the planet will likely be destroyed long before we’ve swayed a majority.
Where the environment is concerned, majority rules. Wise leaders throughout history may have been able to steer policies or economies without having to enlighten every citizen, because most citizens had little or no power in such matters. But environmental impact is different. Every person adds his garbage to the pile or her exhaust to the atmosphere. Collectively, the sheer numbers of populations and their demands are the deciding factors in the environment’s fate.
In fact, attempts to impose environmental awareness, even by the gentlest persuasion—such as touching images of children, accompanied by a narration asking what kind of planet we want them to inherit—have regularly undermined themselves by igniting a backlash. The decade following the first Earth Day will be remembered not so much by the raising of global environmental awareness as by the rise of a great gobbling globalized marketplace on a wave of world trade pacts. The unintended response to the message that the planet’s natural resources were limited was a rush by free marketeers to go out and grab all they could while the resources were still around.
So my vote is to stop trying to tap everyone’s highest moral self to persuade people of their obligations to posterity or eternity. Let’s aim for the lowest common denominator that anyone can grasp: self-interest. For purely selfish reasons, everyone alive has a stake in fixing what ails the planet right now, because the future’s already upon us. Forget what our children may face years down the road: Already it’s hotter and stormier, so our own personal survival is at play here. That’s a warning that every organism on Earth is hardwired to hear. And in the same breath, let’s suggest that the surest way to prosperity from here on is by designing and selling new systems, tools, dwellings, and services that mimic nature by turning every waste product into something useful, over and over again.
Let’s show everyone why it’s in our own selfish interest to limit population: not just because it will leave more room on the planet for other species, reduce demand for resources, and lessen the amount of CO2 expelled skyward, but because in every family there’ll be more to go around if there are fewer mouths to feed and bodies to clothe. Let’s tempt them with examples like Italy, a country so charming we all want to visit it, yet also a Catholic country whose growth rate surprisingly vies with Catholic Spain’s for the lowest on the planet, simply because they educate their women. Italy has one of if not the highest per capita number of female PhDs. An educated woman defers her child-bearing until her studies are through, and then doesn’t have so many kids that she can’t exercise the interesting and useful profession she’s trained for. And because she inevitably contributes something meaningful to her society, everyone benefits from her self-interest.
Everyone, but especially posterity: A world with fewer people in it will be that much easier for our descendants to manage and will present that many more opportunities for them. And will be that much more beautiful.
There’s some wisdom in old farmers’ adages and Buddhist koans that equally suggest that the future takes care of itself if we take care of today. Be in the moment. The now.
I wrote that—and you read it—in the past. In a second, it’ll already be the future. Because we’re still part of this little slice of time’s continuum, we selfishly—come on, let’s admit it—dearly wish it to be the best future possible. If each of us Homo sapiens starts to do something about fixing the future for our own selfish pleasure and sustenance, there may be more future to come, a future with others of our kind still around to enjoy and exult in it.
ALAN WEISMAN is a Laureate Professor of Journalism and Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona and a senior radio producer for Homelands Productions. His most recent book, The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books), has been translated into 33 languages.
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