Yet some trends are clear. The rate of change appears to have increased throughout the world's existence. While several hundred million years at least seems a safe bet for the possibility of life on earth, we nevertheless find ourselves:
- Using up in at most a very few centuries the world's store of mineral fuel for the purpose of daily living;
- Destroying large capital reserves of forest, fish and genetic variety, and seriously damaging the habitat of most other life forms;
- Multiplying our own species beyond all reasonable bounds, making the sustenance of this excess possible only by the destruction of anything in the biosphere which does not contribute to that greedy process, and consuming anything that does.
We have become like this because we fostered images of ourselves which are not only disastrously arrogant but fundamentally in error.
We are escaping slowly from the fear that we may destroy ourselves collectively by unrestrained war, or individually by the depressing limitations of our psyche. The pessimism of the recent past is demonstrably curable; but it requires the widespread acceptance of a more loving picture of ourselves, our environment and of human purposes. The acceleration of change has so reduced our perspectives in our worries about our own persons and the uncontrollability of human conflict that we have forgotten the world, as if its state were of secondary importance to ourselves. The evident power of today has made us lose sight of the billion years ahead.
To extend our feeling of community with all of life, which has been lost from those human societies who wondered at the incomprehensibility of space and time and the mystery of life, to extend the sense of responsibility which we undoubtedly feel towards our own young children, to the multitude of generations ahead, and to keep their environment beautiful, we need a new priesthood who will tell us the story of humanity as we have only recently (in the last 200 years) come to know it through science. I would call this a Council for Posterity.
To establish this we would naturally draw on our experience in the past of setting up learned bodies to inform and guide us into truer perceptions of our own reality. But we may prefer to make it more personally anonymous than assembling a collection of grey eminences. We cannot presume at first to specify any limiting terms of reference, but can require it to teach us to love the world we scarcely yet know. It will be necessary to specify new concepts of greatness beyond the individual. At the moment of history when we have at last learnt about our own evolution we have to halt our destruction of the very foundation of that marvellously creative process.
Above all we have to learn that the greatest benefit and opportunity we can give our descendants is that there be fewer of them. Even if we can divert our impatient energies into games, philosophies and space 'toys', we still need to understand individually the exciting and absorbing story of life, of which we are but one manifested form among many whose silent genetic wisdom surrounds us.
We are one of the atmosphere's children, and if we may call ourselves the most glowing of the brood, we must remember that it participated in the evolution of all mammals and was not designed or made for for us, but we evolved in it. It may yet produce in the eras stretching a million times a human generation forward a species which, when telling its offspring of their origins will speak of us with admiration or contempt. Which shall it be?
The Council for Posterity must also take on the role of Counsel for Posterity. It must consist of people who can devote their deepest thoughts to the theme and muster all the arguments to call the present generation away from its myopic trends.
It will need:
- Scientists who can speak with authority about the believed facts of global evolution;
- Ecologists, in particular, who can gather together a responsible statement of the danger in the present trends;
- People with experience in politics, economics and historical interpretation who can imagine the themes which will make people want to act in a way so that when future generations describe us we would be proud to hear what they say;
- Writers who can present a picture of humanity which young people can absorb, and be stimulated to want more of, and to develop a hope that they can be part of the road into the future - rather than become the refuse of the present.
The Council will need young and old, people from various traditions, but not anyone who believes his own tradition (eg Islam or Christianity) has authority of a superior kind not possessed by others. Each is merely one of the experimental traditions of history (which itself is a very new thing in the world). The Council must merge science with morality. It must destroy the dichotomy which sets the individual on a pedestal while sending conscripts to death in defence of individualism. It must recognise the limitations of all human issues, for time dissolves them. Thus human rights, animal rights, sacredness of human life, sacredness of all life, territorial property and ownership concepts, limits to personal wealth and poverty, legitimacy of political authority - all these require new definition in the light of scientific knowledge and the ecology of nature.
If the Council is sponsored by Government it must be free from any threat or pressure, and must have no national or racial commitment. Thus it needs a promise of about a decade of support, which would give it time to demonstrate its value as a force in formulating human self-images, and visions of the community of life on earth, which are intelligible to ordinary school children. It must generate a humility together with a sturdy commitment among the young. This means understanding the motivations of the present self-oriented generation; and by capturing its imagination to draw it into new objectives without overtly criticising the viewpoints from which they are to be weaned.
In order not to be invidious a list of names from the past who are not available but who typify the qualities required could be:
H.G. Wells, Julian Huxley, John Boyd Orr, Tom Paine, Francis of Assisi, Peter Medawar, Isambard Brunel, Albert Schweitzer, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Erasmus, Chief Seattle, Martin Luther King, Aesop.
To gather the nucleus requires about L1m capital or L100,000 a year, or a rich publisher or industrialist's foundation to sponsor the experimental stage. I do not favour a UN or EEC base because much would be wasted that way in bureaucracy and in generating political acceptance.
There already exist many texts which will provide the basis for most of the educational documents required. In an era of less urgent change and growth they would probably suffice by gradual permeation of the educational systems. But that progress is slow, and the recrudescence of dogmatic religious and political beliefs requires a counter force.
The Council must be competent continually to examine the behaviour of governments and to re-examine the assumptions on which their policies are based. For this reason, a broader than scientific authority is required, and verbal power will be useful.
The Council would formulate political and social objectives consonant with Earth System Science. It would not concern itself with the promotion of scientific research, but with its political and economic impact and the legitimacy of technological exploitation. It must concern itself with the prospect of widespread dearth of resources, starvation, and the present uncontrollable growth of human numbers and its incompatibility with the hope of future freedom.
And it must inspire with words of pride the objectives of the young.
The following names are some of the people who have provided thematic texts on which some of the Council's work could be based: David Attenborough, David Bellamy, Jean Medawar, Richard Dawkins, Paul Ehrlich, Donald Mann (Negative Population Growth), the Chinese government's one child policy, Eric Deakins, James Lovelock, NASA - Earth System Science. A much fuller bibliography is possible.
Today, the biggest task is probably to bring the interests of posterity as a force into the marketplace where finite resources are sold, where the use of territory is determined, and political ideals are scrutinised and put to the test. I am not advocating any new ideal, but for the introduction of a new factor in decision making. One can readily imagine how the interests of posterity might have been affected, for instance, by differently planned consumption of North Sea oil. Those who would oppose requiring the interest of posterity to influence decisions might have a good case on the grounds that the future cannot be predicted. Those who think that their profession does already take posterity into account will probably find that their time scale is far shorter than I am saying is needed. But those of us who think posterity should have a presence with power in the marketplace need to show by examples where it would have been beneficial in the past. The opposition will, no doubt, easily invent cases where the influence, as they imagine it, might have been bad because of new discoveries and inventions. Moralists will be extensively employed sorting out how much we in the present ought to sacrifice so that posterity may benefit.
The purpose of Councils for Posterity is to introduce a more perceptive note about what we are doing inadvertently, as well as intentionally, in the world. It is, however, not simply an attempt to gather together the good intentions of the numerous existing activists in environmental protection. A main aim is to make a moral approach acceptable in a world where it is considered foolish not to be selfish and opportunist. Morality is about abstinence and sacrifice; it is about self-discipline; being intelligent as well as clever (which means examining and criticising objectives as well as pursuing them); it is about the beauty of relationships with all of life, about the experience of love which transcends indulgence.
The Council is the involvement of ourselves in the passage of time. We are created by the past, and are creating the future not only as we can see it around our home, but also through participating in the great adventure of creative evolution where our effort is meaningless by itself. It entails being humble and bold.
Professor Richard Scorer (of the Department of Mathematics, Imperial College); home address, 2 Stanton Road, London SW20 8RL (tel 081 946 1313 h; 071 589 5111 w). This scheme won a main Social Inventions Award.
- To provide legal representation for the interests of future generations at any inquiry or assembly looking into developments with potentially very harmful long-term effects.
- To stimulate the development of Declarations of the Rights of Posterity and to publicise their contents. (See the Council's own draft in the box to the right.)
- To involve young people through a L1,000 Adopt-A-Planet competition in schools, where classes caretake local areas that have been vandalised and carry out imaginative plans for environmental improvements. (See the chapter on Education for more details on this.)
- To present awards for the best published articles or books about future generations. The authors will be invited to present their themes at dinner-discussion award ceremonies.
- To encourage the formation of similar Councils in other countries.
- The Council for Posterity, 20 Heber Road, London NW2 6AA (tel 081 208 2853; fax 081 452 6434).
- Hilary Caruana, International Liaison, Global Network on Responsibilities Towards Future Generations, International Environment Institute, c/o Foundation for International Studies, University of Malta, Valletta, Malta (tel 010 356 224067 / 234121 / 234122; fax 356 230551; Greennet 'FutureGen' or 'Dialcom 75:cmi025').
This Declaration was published on April 22nd 1990 by the Council for Posterity, 20 Heber Road, London NW2 6AA (tel 208 2853; fax 081 452 6434). Please send in your suggested improvements or alternative versions.