Although he was smack in the industrial revolution era, Thomas Jefferson could not be credited for what we can now call the sustainability development movement of modern times. It would be a stretch to even imagine that Jefferson could have foreseen that the industrial revolution would bring our planet Earth and indeed, her human race to the brink of their collective demise.

However, his wisdoms and visions are not lost in translation from the world of his time over to the language of our present world. That when mankind is left to its unchecked short-sightedness, “the earth’s usufruct can be eaten up and that it would then belong to the dead” was probably one of the earliest warnings of “the tragedy of the commons” (Garret Hardin) to come. The word “usufruct” is defined as “the right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property short of the destruction or waste of its substance.” One might see some similarities to today’s widely accepted statement of sustainability development: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations Brundtland Commission 1987).

In the framework of sustainable development, this words to the wise may finally wake us up to the irony of our impending demise: “Then no man can be natural right oblige the lands he occupied, or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the payment of debts contracted by him”.

Shall we now spare some thoughts to leaving the world just a bit better than it was when we arrived?