Technology accelerates
the liberation of resources, yes, but it is not creating them;
it is finding them and using them up, then looking for the energy
to repeat the process with progressively poorer materials, moving
them faster, making them into smaller, less recoverable fragments
for a diminishing proportion of the earth's growing masses of
people. Wisely used, technology should enable us to do more with
less, but the change to such use has barely begun. We have not
yet learned to ask,before undertaking a vast project, what does
it cost the earth?
