The Stolen Future - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 78

using immense quantities of fossil fuel, overusing the available water, and
befouling the groundwater and seas with the effluent of nitrogen fertil-
izers tells us that under sustainable methods it would be much more dif-
ficult to keep us all alive. Like climate change, we ourselves are symptoms
of an immense excess that has been going on for generations.
If that is so, then we, too, live in a future created by a particular past.
We did not choose to exist in these numbers; we are in our own bodies
the heirs of decisions not our own. Furthermore, the very fact of our pres-
ence in these numbers is a huge constraint on our action today. Much as
we are stealing the future from our descendants, our own present actions
are seriously undercut by the actions of our ancestors.
But it hardly works to suggest that in retrospect, we would repu-
diate their decisions—for if we did so, we'd be choosing not to exist.
We're caught in a tragic contradiction between our own love of life and
an awareness of what that life costs the biosphere. We are the agents
of a new future and a danger to it at the same time. This contradiction
appears as well in our relation to the modern, industrial era: we are grate-
ful for past revolutions, happy to have been liberated in more ways than
we can remember, amazed at the abundance of knowledge and enjoy-
ment that have been made available to us. Whatever we may say, we are
inevitably the products of the modern world. But we also know that this
world is killing the biosphere and cannot continue. The modern way of
life is our life, our own breath and blood, yet if we stick with it, we will
destroy the Earth.
Insofar as our dilemma comes from our sheer numbers, we cannot
help but realize that our future, too, has been stolen from us . We already
overtax the Earth, whatever we do. Even now, the revolution is far past its
time. From an ecological perspective, that event should have taken place
long ago—simultaneous with the adoption of large quantities of fos-
sil fuels to power the modern economy. In liberating us from an ancient
scarcity, the coming of cheap fossil fuels also set into motion the ecologi-
cal destruction to which we must now respond. Our task is thus in part
to bring about a transformation that is long overdue. Yet in doing so we
cannot denounce our ancestors; they could not have known the ultimate
consequences of their actions. They stole the future from us without
meaning to do so in the least. We are immersed in an immense historical