Good question.  Someone else pointed out that _all_ societies have benefited from destroying the environment.  I get the feeling they were pointing this out to argue that &quot;we&quot; (modern day Americans) don&#x27;t really need to feel responsible.  &quot;Everybody does it, so it must be okay.&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t know what the answer is to the question of what actions I (and &quot;we&quot;) should take because of my responsibility (and our shared responsibility).  I do know that the responsibility I feel is greater the more tightly I am tied to a society or community.  I don&#x27;t feel much responsibility at all for homo sapiens&#x27; eradication of Neanderthals (assuming that&#x27;s what happened).  The actions happened too long ago and the &quot;society&quot; is too loose (homo sapiens).   I do feel some responsibility for what my country&#x27;s recent forebears have done; I feel a tie as an American and 100 or 200 years in the past is just a handful of generations.<p>For me it seems the minimum is to identify myself as an &quot;environmentalist&quot;.  Many (most?) of the objections to proper care of the environment come from people who argue against it because doing so will lessen business profits by a little bit.  Even assuming it&#x27;s true that it will lessen profits, seems like we need to devote more of our resources to preserving the environment.  At a minimum, that should mean that businesses in our society should have to accept somewhat lesser profits (perhaps by being taxed) in exchange for better preservation of the environment.<p>Also, I have no problem with businesses that affect the environment negatively bearing much more of the cost to replace past harms.  In the past, and even now, we&#x27;ve allowed businesses to pollute our environment (air, water, land) without them paying for the damage they&#x27;ve caused.  They are among the prime offenders, although everyone does share some responsibility for being part of a society that&#x27;s let those businesses operate as they have.