c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) It’s the human condition: The future looms, and we grapple with how to plan.

Whether the issue is pollution, retirement savings or the state of education in America, politicians, scholars, interest groups and even Mom and Dad talk about leaving new generations a better world, one unencumbered by mistakes that adults make today.

Sounds good. But what determines our responsibility to the future? The question has no clear answer, yet purportedly guides how we live.

“It has to do with history and ethics and religion and morality,” said William Dunkelberg, economics professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. “There’s no law that says we have to think about the future. It’s something that we choose to do.”

Claire Irvan, 31, of Portland, Ore., has given much thought to this topic for her sons, ages 5 and 6. She said she fears deforestation and the country’s reliance on oil will leave her children an unfit planet.

“We have to begin to do things that we know aren’t going to hurt the earth,” she said. “What are we teaching our children? … What will be there for them?”

By many measures, American children today are better off than their parents were. Child mortality is down. A higher percentage finish high school and go on to earn bachelor’s degrees. Once-feared diseases and dangers, including polio and lead poisoning, have become lesser threats.

But other problems persist. The federal deficit is swelling. Social Security faces a shortfall. Natural resources shrink as energy consumption rises.

Those trends trouble David Walker, head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which audits federal programs and spending. Since the country’s infancy, he said, Americans have passed along greater opportunities and living standards. That’s now in jeopardy.

“We are at risk of not delivering on that longstanding tradition,” said Walker, who preaches “prudence today and stewardship for tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, policymakers and regulators ponder how far into the future they should reach. Sometimes that is far indeed.

In August, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revised its proposed limits on radiation exposure at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. The stated goal is to protect public health for 1 million years.

“Yucca Mountain is a great example of how tangled up you can get under the wrong paradigm,” said Robert Fri, visiting scholar at Resources for the Future, a Washington-based institute that examines environmental issues.

Fri, EPA deputy administrator during the Nixon administration, chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee in 1995 that _ at Congress’ request _ evaluated the EPA’s proposed standards for the Nevada site. In his view, the government’s regulatory framework encourages rigid long-term plans for fluid environmental problems that deserve periodic re-evaluation. Regulations crafted today may be inappropriate or meaningless in a million years.

So, he said, the question becomes: “How do you hand off a problem to the next generation in a way that we’re able to deal with, that doesn’t disadvantage them?”

The starting point rests in centuries-old, even ancient, thought.

“There are certain fundamental building blocks that have to be in place in order for people to pursue the kind of life they want to live,” said Alex John London, associate professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “We’re moral equals. You’re free to do what you want as long as you afford me access” to necessities, including clean water, food, even dignity.

“We don’t owe (future generations) wealth,” London said. “We owe them a just society and a safe living environment.”

It comes down to values. Historically, defining and practicing a nation’s values have proved challenging. Even families who love each other fight over their beliefs. Try getting a dozen, much less millions of Americans, to agree.

“We don’t have any single tradition of thought,” religious, philosophical or otherwise, said Mary Doak, assistant professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam all honor human rights, the Earth’s resources and the well-being of children. For decades, scholars have debated how those shared tenets should apply to tomorrow.

Practically speaking, supporting future generations can have a selfish twist, at least in the short term. Children eventually will carry the responsibility for aging adults, said Isabel Sawhill, a vice president of the Brookings Institution and co-director of its Center on Children and Families.

But the responsibility rolls both ways. Sawhill said grown-ups must ensure that children have the skills and knowledge to become productive adults themselves. She said that if adults don’t minimize foreseeable problems that children will inherit, such as the mounting deficit, it amounts to “a form of child abuse. It seems terribly irresponsible.”

Scholars use models, theories and equations to project into the future. They look at history. They chart. They guess. And they could be wrong.

“It’s ridiculous to suggest we would know what things would be like 100 years from now,” said Paul Thompson, environmental philosopher at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Look at a hundred years ago: The country had just 45 states. Not all women could vote. Movies were silent. A copy of The New York Times cost 5 cents. Las Vegas had no telephone lines, let alone twinkling casinos.

But Thompson said the country can’t use uncertainty as an excuse: “We have to be cautious about what we do today.”

Children are counting on it.

Miranda Taylor-Weiss, 11, a sixth-grader at Sunnyside Environmental School, a public school in Portland, said she wants communities to be safer.

“When you’re grown up, you shouldn’t have to go outside and be abducted,” she said.

Schoolmate Kyle Ebberts, 12, in seventh grade, said he hopes for more research and development of alternative sources of fuel.

“I don’t necessarily plan on getting a car when I get older,” he said, adding that he cringes when he sees the rainbow-shimmery spots left behind by cars: oil wasted. “It just really sickens me.”

KRE/LF/JM END MELENDEZ

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