Where foragers, with their immediate-return economies, invested their labor effort to meet their spontaneous needs, and farmers, with their delayed-return systems, invested theirs to support themselves for the following year, we are now obliged to consider the potential consequences of our work over a much longer time span. One that recognizes that most of us can expect to live longer than at any time in the past and that is cognizant of the legacy we leave our descendants. This in turn imposes complex new trade-offs to be made between short-term gains and longer-term consequences that may
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