Do unto the biosphere what you expect others to do: a universal ethos and the carrying capacity of a finite planet.

Editorial A democracy is based on the concept that the impetus for any law originates with the citizens. In the United States, poll after poll has shown that the citizens favor protecting the environment, although the polling results vary with how the questions are stated. Also, individuals vary widely in the how much they are willing to change their personal behavior and how much of their own funds they are willing to pay to protect the environment. On complex issues such as the environment, laws tend to favor the minimal amount essential to offer protection, but not necessarily to ensure robust health. A societal ethos or set of guiding beliefs is usually more effective than laws because compliance results from peer pressure, not from surrogates of society who are enforcing the law. In the case of the global environment, individuals can make a difference if there are enough of them; however, the relationship is between the two complex systems of human society and the planet's ecologic life support system. The ecologic life support system provides signals that indicate its condition or health to those skilled in interpreting the signals and measuring the conditions. Skilled individuals include a wide variety of disciplines, such as atmospheric scientists, ecologists, chemists, engineers, scientists, economists, and modelers. In short, the average citizen may espouse a reverence for natural systems and acknowledge a dependence on the planet's ecologic life support system, but may not have the training or time to gather the evidence necessary for making informed judgments. Evidence on the condition of the ecologic life support system is generally gathered by teams of individuals with a variety of professional skills. As is always the case for complex, multidimensional systems that are continually changing, all projections will be probabilistic with varying degrees of confidence in them, depending on the robustness of the evidence. Furthermore, trust must be placed in the relatively few individuals who are charged with maintaining environmental quality since correc-tive action may often be necessary in a short time span. Human society has only one planet, so prudence requires that human society take precautions to prevent damage to Earth, even if uncertainty exists about how much damage will occur, or even if damage will occur, and if the damage is likely to be catastrophic. Nature follows universal laws that were in existence long before the laws of human society were developed. Most societies that …