Lawrence Lessig is brilliant in his Wired column this month.
As a society, we have become fundamentally selfish, trading short-term gains and perceived - but not actual - security for a truly sustainable future. As Lessig puts it, "the future doesn't vote," so we've taken to screwing the future, which I shouldn't have to remind you is made up of our own children and grandchildren, in order to have a more convenient and shallow existence for ourselves.
Lessig says it better:
This is the shameful application of a simple political truth: The future doesn't vote. And when tomorrow's generations get their turn at the polls, they won't be able to punish those who failed to consider their interests. The cost of shifting burdens to the future is thus quite small to us, even if it is quite large to them. And we, or the politicians representing us, happily follow this calculus.
--snip--
Gone is the sense of duty that made so compelling Kennedy's demand "ask what you can do for your country." We don't even ask what we, as a nation, can do for our kids. The rhetoric of self-interest so deeply pervades politics that an ideal as fundamental as building a better future has been lost.
Totally.