The Stolen Future - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 73

This time around, however, acting too late will be even worse, thanks
to yet another strange aspect of our present dilemma. Because the carbon
dioxide we emit today will endure in the atmosphere for over a century,
and our actions today will have consequences over generations, a failure
to act will perpetually undermine and possibly erase any future action to
address climate change. Modern history is rife with revolutions that led
to counter-revolutions, movements to restore the prior state of things.
Today, our own inaction would constitute a perpetual counter-revolution,
a heavy hand destroying the inventiveness of future generations. It's as if
the minutemen of the future would endlessly be defeated by King George
III, no mater how resourcefully they fought on.
If that is so, we are simultaneously harming the future of the biosphere
and deliberately stealing from future humanity's ability to respond effectively
to that fact . Our emissions are not only harming the biosphere; they are
destroying the future history of humanity and the biosphere both. Carbon
dioxide, it turns out, is not only a molecule that can persist well into the
future, contributing to global warming for generations; it is also a histori-
cal pollutant, fogging up the future with past events, smothering poten-
tial brilliance with the stupidity of earlier generations. It's as if our own
moment, by some strange wrinkle in time, will come ater the generation
that follows us. The more carbon dioxide we emit, the more contempt we
show for the agency of our own descendants. In giving birth to them and
raising them, we may to some degree be showing them love and care, but
at the same time we hand down to them an inheritance of future disaster,
a legacy of the ashes to come.
Our situation is thus uterly bizarre. We have no real clue how to act
in time, yet our inaction will severely restrict the benefit of action when it
finally does take place. The revolution is not only going to come too late;
when it comes, it will be defeated in advance . Thanks to us, it will be far less
effective than it should be, even when it does come . We are the thieves of
the future.
Faced with this haunting realization, we might be inclined to pause
and listen to a viewpoint steeped in a cynical acceptance of human folly
and ecological destruction. Some people might remark, for example, that
our present inaction is nothing to lament. In their view, if we act against
our own long-term self-interest we will bear the consequences, as we so