THE PRESENT OR THE FUTURE? AN EXTREMELY DIFFICULT DELIMMA.
Are people today putting their own welfare above the condition of our planet and negatively impacting the prospects of future generations? What we do today WILL affect people in the future whether it is technology, economics, energy, healthcare, medicine, science, finance, agriculture, and so much more. Climate change is creating a huge conflict between this generation and all future generations. Choices we can make now that are most likely to improve the life prospects of future generations are generally unpopular because they necessarily involve making sacrifices to some extent. Many of the things we enjoy doing today will cause harm to future generations. However, to ask people to make major changes to their lifestyle or give up their comforts is a tremendous and unrealistic request. Our government will probably not be much help because government representatives with the authority to legislate, regulate, and formulate policy tend to respond much more favorably to the preferences of the current generation, which also has the power to vote these politicians in or out of office.
If we care to take an honest look around us and see how people are behaving, we may have to admit to ourselves that we indeed do care more about our own self-gratification and physical comforts than we than we do about the prospects of future generations. The tradeoff for today’s comforts and conveniences may very well impoverish the world that future generations will experience. But it is also very difficult for us to envision the future of earth because there are so many uncertainties and variables about the future. Although we may be able to imagine some things about the future, we do not KNOW what technology, energy, or everything else will look like in 100, 50, or even20 years. What we do know is that people do care, at least to some extent, what kind of world we may be creating for our children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren. Even though it may be difficult for most people to be invested for generations hundreds of years into the future, we need to begin thinking about tradeoffs and compromises we can begin making, if only for our families. Quoting Joanna Rogers Macy, a prominent environmental activist, author, and scholar of deep ecology and Buddhism, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes:
Joanna Macy speaks of the Great Turning, the “essential adventure of our time; the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization.” Restoration of land and relationship pushes that turning wheel. “Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” (p. 340).
Let’s keep these critical considerations, conflicts, and tradeoffs in mind as we learn about and discuss each of the environmental issues. Perhaps we can create our own think tank and come up with feasible and realistic compromises which may benefit both the present and the future generations of people and animals on planet Earth.
