Since the publication of the Bruntland Report, a large literature has developed about making operational the goals of sustainable development. By definition, sustainable development is a vast concept in time and space, and yet we humans (and all organisms) are constrained in our actions by our evolved limitations of life cycles and natural dispersal abilities. Thus, no one (or nothing) has ever evolved to take future generations into account, or other individuals who are geographically separated, or (for humans) those who are ethnically or socially remote. What matters most is the here and now and our own offspring and social groups.
Given a very large cerebrum and our ability to hope, pray, empathize, and so on, no sane person would argue that humans are as limited as other species. Nonetheless, research and history have shown that, in many ways, we behave in analogous fashion to other long-lived social mammals, and...
