Mellert sets out five assumptions, four of which we agree with, as presented.
Robert Jastrow would call assumption 1-that "as members of the human species, future generations will be essentially the same as we are" - chauvinist.
Yet the advanced silicon intelligence that Jastrow sees superseding our human race appears many thousands of years away; we are inclined, in the short run at least, to agree with Mellert.
And we agree with assumptions 3,4 and 5; that we are born into a given generation as an accident; that our survival as a species is more important than our survival as individuals; and that we share indirectly in the lives of our descendants.
Assumption 2-that "future generations will seek their own pleasure, just as we do"-does cast into doubt, however, Mellert's advocacy of sacrifice today for the sake of future generations.
As he says, the pleasure principle is a powerful motivator; we are not sure that a majority of people in our generation or in the future generation-even those agree with him-would be ready to act on a broad suggestion that the sacrifice is an important ethical responsibility.
Picture the resistance that mom and dad would encounter if they told the kids that the trip to Disney World was off because relatives two hundred years from now will need the petroleum reserves for their own enjoyment.
this is not to say Mellert is mistaken, but merely to point out, again, that acting on principles is difficult - especially this principle, at this particular moment in history.
It seems to us that our relationship to the future differs in a crucial respect from the relationship of our forebears to us: at some point in the recent past, during the industrial revolution, we gained the capability of radically altering our environment in ways that had never before been possible.
Mellert contends that we stand in relation to future generations in the same way that earlier generations stood towards us.
We disagree.