[E]nvironmental equilibirium [sic] is a part of any durable social order. The conception put before us by Burke is in fact one that ought to appeal to environmentalists. Burke's response to Rousseau's theory of the social contract was to acknowledge that political order is like a contract, but to add that it is not a contract between the living only, but between the living, the unborn and the dead. In other words, to speak plainly, not a contract at all, but a relation of trusteeship, in which inherited benefits are conserved and passed on. The living may have an interest in consuming the Earth's resources, but it was not for this that the dead laboured. And the unborn depend upon our restraint. Long-term social equilibrium, therefore, must include ecological equilibrium.
(Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy [London and New York: Continuum, 2006], 35 [footnote omitted])
Note from KBJ: If you like this quotation, you will want to read this.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 