This loss of a sense of the future, which is so characteristic of North America at this time, has a bearing on many of today's seemingly disparate social issues. Only a very present-centered society, for example, will lay waste the environment and leave it as a garbage heap for future generations. Only such a society will risk a global holocaust in order to preserve its present way of life. There is a dangerous myopia in mortgaging the future through spending policies in which the benefit to a few now will be paid for by many in the years to come.
— Mary Jo Leddy, Radical Gratitude