Excessive Individualism Today Threatens Liberty Tomorrow: Sustainable Use of the Planet

In no period of human history has the exercise of perceived individual rights been so extreme, especially in developed countries such as the United States. These perceived rights might have been tolerable in a frontier society (although it is questionable whether the exercise of perceived individual rights to overhunt was tolerated) with vast per capita resources and space, but not on a planet where resources are being fully (or over) utilized, billions are malnourished, and the range from the poorest to the most affluent in material and energy terms is the greatest in human history. Sustainable use of the planet requires some curtailment of individual rights as they are now perceived, not only for the well-being of future generations but for more equitability and fairness at present. In short, sustainability requires a new ethos (a set of guiding beliefs) substantively different from the current practices: (1) an intergenerational equity and fairness in the use of the planet's ecological life support system, (2) an intolerance of the possible high risk associated with human practices that may result from seriously altering the ecological life support system when the consequences of doing so are highly uncertain, and (3) a compassion and esteem for other species and other humans who are now living or yet to live—this should result from tempering often aggressive insistence on individual rights.