Usufruct

No, not a misspelling, and no, it has nothing to do with high fructose corn syrup or inedible holiday Fruit Cake.  I came across this word almost three decades ago when reading Peter Onuff’s Jeffersonian Legacies, an edited compilation of essays following a scholarly conference celebrating Thomas Jefferson’s 250^th birthday.  

Herbert Sloan’s essay “The Earth Belongs in Usufruct to the Living,” deconstructs Jefferson’s September 1789 letter to James Madison.  Usufruct, basically as Jefferson knew the word, was the right to use something during one’s lifetime, like land or other property, but not destroy the value of the property through misuse, or, in in some instances, generating debts that are worth more than the property.  

He expresses his concerns in the letter whether one generation can “bind” the next generation to its debts. He thinks this issue has not been thoroughly thought through as the new Constitution comes into effect, at least metaphysically. Jefferson wrote, “[T]he earth belongs in usufruct to the living, that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.  The portion occupied by an individual cease to be his when himself ceases to be. & reverts the society.”  That is, when a generation dies off, so too should its debts. Those debts are more than pecuniary, he implied.

He expands on this theme throughout the letter, thinking aloud, and through his own arithmetic of averages of life expectancies, argued to Madison that a constitution, and laws the emanate from it, should expire after 19 years.  An average, he surmised when one generation succeeds another.   Every generation, he argued should be able to make its own laws and government, and I would surmise, even remake the social contract.  Basically, new generations should not be bound or governed by outdated laws or drown in the debts contracted by a generation long dead.  He was particularly concerned with debt.  Yet ironically, he died a debtor.

He gave one example of how the new Constitution, ratified and placed into effect in 1789, addressed this issue of government debt.   The Constitution gave congress the enumerated right to wage war, vice the chief executive:  “We have already given in example one effectual check to the Dog of war, by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body, from those who are to spend to those who are to pay.”  

We, as a nation, squandered that gift of restricting a King — or a President — from declaring or making war.  Congress handed back the ability to wage war beyond our borders to the President with the War Powers Resolution Act of 1973 (ironically an act designed to limit executive powers).  This limited power to wage war by the Executive was dramatically expanded in 2001, after Congress gave the President power to wage war against terrorism, in the so-called global war on terrorism.  But I don’t want to write about Trump’s march to war against Venezuela using those 2001 powers, or his new Monroe Doctrine of imperialism to dominate the Western Hemisphere through force of arms, but to a real existential threat to our country: anthropogenic climate change.

For generations, fiscal conservatives have used a version of Jefferson’s usufruct principle to argue against a growing national debt.  They contended that future generations should not be burdened by huge debts, which sap economic growth and weight workers with heavy taxes.  At least that was their argument, until it wasn’t.  When it comes to saddling the next generations with huge climate debts that must be paid as mother nature demands it, conservatives are not only mute about this principle of usufruct, but chant along with Trump, “drill baby drill.’  

This Administration’s policy of increasing fossil fuel consumption, destroying renewable energy initiatives, undermining electric vehicles, and hobbling renewable energy manufacturing and infrastructure — so that Trump and wealthy elites can profit and live in splendor — at the expense of unborn generations, is astounding.  It is immoral and criminal to condemn unborn children to a dystopian world of climate disaster by a bunch of fat old white men who will be soon moldering in their own graves.   

Jefferson was right.  A generation — our’s in particular — has an obligation to be good stewards of America’s natural resources and bounty so that future generations are not bound by destructive practices that degrade and pollute our water, our air, our food, and our climate out of greed and ignorance. 

The baby boomers had a chance after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, but like the war powers fiasco, we squandered our chances long ago to do right by Mother Nature and future generations.  Shame, shame on us.  The next generations have no obligation to forgive us, nor should they.  Sorry Gen Z and the Millennials, we royally screwed you by binding you to a no-win situation regarding climate change.  Mother Nature is not as forgiving as an accountant in the Congressional Budget Office.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Yes, even in these trying times one must have hope. I will be taking a break over the holidays so see you in the new year. Thanks.