摘要
Technological innovation does not create new human capabilities and production processes ex nihlio. It only finds new ways to tap into and harness existing natural processes and energy flows and directing them to human ends. Our ability to manipulate natural processes are doubly constrained: (1) by the attainable efficiencies of our devices with which we manipulate natural processes and (2) by the characteristics of the natural processes with which our appropriation of nature interferes. We have not understood the natural limits to technological innovation or accepted their consequences. Exponential economic growth has been possible only by greater and greater appropriations of the natural processes of the Earth's biosphere. Increasing appropriation of the biosphere has caused increasing damage and disruption to the very natural systems upon whose continued operation we depend. We have not counted and have usually sought to deny, the rising negative feedback produced by technological innovation in service of economic expansion. The degradation of these natural systems signals we have already exceed the limits of sustainable levels of demand for resources and waste absorption capacity. That we have not taken appropriate action to curb increasing environmental degradation signals we have systematically overestimated our technological achievements, mystified how we have produced them, ignored their limitations, and failed to reckon their rising cost accurately.