USE OF ENGLISH GNS

PASSAGE

Advances in technology which is used broadly here to mean the application of knowledge to an activity offer, at least, a partial way out of our predicament.  In most cases, “appropriate” technologies will no longer be engineering schemes, techniques, or methods that enable us to claim more of nature’s resources but, instead, systems that allow us to benefit more from the resources we already have.  As long as the resulting gains are directed toward bettering the environment and the lives of the less fortunate instead of toward increased consumption by the rich, such efforts will reduce human impacts on the earth.

The power of technology to help meet human needs was a critical missing piece in the world-view of Thomas Malthus, the English curate whose famous 1798 essay postulated that the growth of human population would outstrip the earth’s food-producing capabilities.  His prediction was a dire one-massive famine, diseases, and death.  But a stream of agricultural advances combined with the productivity leaps of the Industrial Revolution made the Mathusian nightmare fade for much of the world.