Richard Treumann
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Richard Treumann commented on Paul Krugman's Big Question on May 6, 2009, 4:06 PM
There have been thousands of generations of human beings on the earth. Most of those generations have had no real ability to change the planet or deplete its resources. No matter what they did to their peers, they left the physical planet pretty much the way they found it. The last few generations have been different, not because we are more or less evil but because what we have done will leave the earth markedly altered and our children will need to live on the earth we leave behind. If you look at history you will see that there have always been situations in which people have been horrible to each other. There were 1000 years ago and there are today. For the most part, once everyone who was alive at the time has died off, we do not hate a prior generation for what it did to its contemporaries. The generation 100 years from now will not hate our generation for the attack on the World Trade towers or for war in Iraq or any other current travesty. If they hate us it will be because they have evidence about what the planet offered as a place to thrive before we did whatever we are doing to it. They will know what the planet they live on has become. If the damage can be pinned on the century you and I passed through the world, yes we may be hated for centuries.