Our affluent, global civilization has a momentum of expectation that becomes entrenched as entitlement — what we have, we continue to want, usually in ever increasing amounts that we call progress. Such an idea is not particularly profound. In fact, it’s rather ordinary. But it deserves mention because, as is usually the case with the ordinary, we generally don’t notice how profoundly it affects us.

In simplest terms, this habit of expectation is based on the production, distribution and availability of material goods, and to a multitude of social services provided by our institutions. We also expect that the ecological framework in which all this occurs — nature itself — will remain resilient, predictable and unfailingly bountiful, as if it were somehow disconnected from our demands.

We expect, for example, that our incredibly complex systems of growing, processing and distributing food will be reliable and trustworthy, that weather will co operate to keep our supermarket shelves stocked with food. We live in a world of international commerce, where our local stores stock Central American bananas, Chilean grapes and New Zealand apples. We casually hop on a plane for a quick winter holiday in Mexico or a visit with relatives in Europe. If the Orient beckons, we just go. We fly shellfish, pineapple and mushrooms, together with entertainers, delegations and sport teams around the world to satisfy our expectation for fresh produce, novel entertainment and important meetings. New cars, computers, cell phones, sound systems, HDTVs, clothing fashions and household appliances all occupy our world as entitlements. Their availability is what we define as normal.

Until recently, these entitlements seemed to come without responsibilities or encumbrances. If we needed oil or gas, we drilled for it. If we wanted more food, we cleared more land. If we were inconvenienced by pests, we poisoned them. If we craved more consumer goods, we manufactured them. If we longed for bigger houses, we built them. If we yearned for exotic places, we travelled there. If these trends continue until 2050, about 10 billion of us could be imbued with the same consumer zeal. Until recently, our limits had been set by our own capabilities, not by the limits of the ecosystems that are supposed to absorb the impacts.

But entitlement is essentially a selfish process, an indulgence that gives little regard to the consequences of our demands. In a curious paradox, we have considered ourselves important enough that the planet should provide us with whatever we want, yet we have also considered ourselves too inconsequential to have any significant influence on nature’s essential functions.

Consequences are now beginning to haunt us. We are learning that our demands do have impacts. The biosphere is losing its capability to absorb and recover from the stresses we are placing on it. The end of convenient oil and gas is forcing us to drill and transport in more precarious places. Air travel produces massive emissions of high-elevation carbon dioxide that have significant global warming effects. Our farming practices not only displace species needed to maintain the planet’s natural ecologies but our fertilizers pollute waterways, our genetic engineering creates undetermined risks, and our massive populations of livestock produce substantial quantities of greenhouse gases. Mining too often contaminates landscapes and water courses. Forestry, practiced essential for the purpose of satisfying our industrial consumption of wood products, is really a euphemism for simplifying complex ecosystems. Most of the consumer products we use are discarded to become the garbage and toxins contaminating our land, sea and air. Our energy addiction, so linked to carbon-based fuels, is now being measured as a pact with looming disaster.

Entitlement is our psychological condition that expects, abets and thereby perpetuates this environmental damage.

But we are undergoing an inner change. Presently, this change is not so much a reduction in production and consumption as a dawning awareness that our entitlement comes with ethical attachments directly linked to environmental issues. Zipping around the planet on planes is no longer an ethically neutral behaviour. Buying a car, television or even a light bulb involves ethical considerations. Even purchasing food is loaded with ethical implications — read The 100-Mile Diet or any book on organic agriculture.

Ethical considerations are already changing people’s buying habits and travel plans. Direct economic constraints, triggered by the rising price of oil, are making certain products and behaviours less appealing. In the Middle East, where an undeclared war over oil is in progress, tourism has essentially collapsed. Ethanol production from grain is now causing cost and supply tensions in the global food chain. Mercury contamination is forcibly curtailing consumption of certain sea foods. Rising pollution levels are forcing us to be more responsible with the production, use and disposal of goods. International political stress, incited by food shortages, climate change and other environmental factors such as collapsing ocean fisheries, will further challenge our sense of entitlement.

This entitlement is slowly connecting to the inevitable reality of limits, evolving a social and environmental consciousness, developing a long-overdue semblance of environmental ethic. Entitlement is just beginning to lose its innocence.