Sustainability
Meeting needs today without using up the ability of the people who come after us to meet theirs.
What the essays say
The capitalism essay uses the image of a car driven hard for years: is it running clean and maintained, or are we deferring the costs for someone else to pay?
And did we leave the people who come after us with at least as much capacity to build prosperity as we inherited?
Where people disagree
- A widely used definition asks development to meet present needs without compromising future generations’ ability to meet theirs.
- People disagree about what must be preserved: natural resources specifically, or total capacity, including knowledge and technology.
- Philosophers debate what we owe future people at all, and how to weigh their interests against ours.
