Earth will survive. Will we? What is our responsibility to future generations?

• Author: Havel, Vaclav
• Position: OPINION - Viewpoint essay

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Over the past few years, the questions have been' asked more and more forcefully: Do global climate changes occur in natural. cycles, and to what degree do humans contribute to them? What threats stem from them, and what can be done to prevent them?

While there is much that is unclear, we do know that changes in temperature and energy cycles on a planetary scale could mean danger for people across the globe. It is also clear that human activity is a cause of this change; what we don't know is how big its contribution is.

Maybe we should consider our sojourn on Earth as a loan. For the past century at least, Europe and the United States have been running up a debt, and now other parts of the world are following. Nature is warning us that we must not only stop the debt from growing but start to pay it back.

White the effects of climate changes are hard to estimate, it's crear they could have vast and unforeseeable effects on the global ecosystem--and at some point we may have to ask whether human life will continue to be possible.

We can't endlessly foot ourselves that nothing is wrong and that we can go on cheerfully pursuing our wasteful lifestyles. Maybe there will be no catastrophe in the coming years or decades. But that doesn't relieve us of...