The Holy Grail of Sustainability
Does Not Reside In Technology

“ America is the archetype of what happens when democracy, technology, urbanization, capitalistic mission, and antagonism (or apathy) toward natural environment are blended together. The present situation is characterized by three dominant features that mediate against quick solution to this impending crisis: (i) an absence of personal moral direction concerning our treatment of our natural resources, (ii) an inability on the part of our social institutions to make adjustments to this stress, and (iii) an abiding faith in technology.”
Moncrief 1970.

Almost thirty years ago Garret Hardin pointed out in his essay, The Tragedy of the Commons, that the Holy Grail of sustainability cannot be found in technology. Society today has yet to recognize the truth in this statement. We continue the search for sustainability, pounding square pegs into round holes with the technological heavy hammer. The myth of the technological panacea, whether biotechnology, electric cars or the internet, continues to drive our scientists [with ample funding and direction from their corporate financiers (Suzuki, 1991)] to search for answers to society driven sustainability problems in the laboratory rather than society.

History demonstrates that solutions to our sustainability conundrum do not lie in technology. In fact, the technologies we have created to improve our lives have been utilized, purposefully or not, to sever our connection to land, environment, and, as such, meaningful work. It is this severance that drives our inability to grasp the concept of, and ultimately achieve, a sustainable life style. Since the industrial revolution, technological ‘progress’ has shifted to hyper drive. The new machines and factories destroyed the concepts of ‘artisan’ and ‘farmer’ replacing them with mass-production worker and agribusiness. With artisan and farmer a balance between dignity, pride, and the bottom line sustained cottage industries at a human level. Since the industrial revolution, dignity and pride have been deleted from the balance now wholly focused on bottom line. Meaningful, productive work by many has been replaced by monotonous, unfulfilling work by many, and the unproductive but lucrative work of shuffling capital from location to location by the managerial/corporate elite. Adding the new information-based technological revolution to this mix has resulted in rapid globalization and with it worldwide unemployment levels reaching their highest since the 1930’s great depression. “More than 800 million human beings are now unemployed or underemployed in the world” (Rifkin, 1996).

The utopian view of high technology is that it will free up time, allowing humans more freedom to pursue those activities that provide feelings of accomplishment and value. This situation has yet to occur and in fact seems to be presenting diametric results. Those countries’ citizens that are considered less technologically advanced appear to have more leisure time than those with all the technological bells and whistles (Moncrief 1970). Also, the new technological information revolution has introduced an until recently unheard (or conceived) of phenomenon: the ‘jobless recovery’. Corporate mergers, downsizing, and restructuring are creating more economic wealth and affluence than the world has ever known, but amongst a small growing elite. Fortune 500 magazine used to be able to print the names of the world’s billionaires but now can only list the top 200 (Dobbin 1998). In 1995 “357 people (billionaires) in the world owned more combined wealth than 2.7 billion other people” (Dobbin 1998). The Reaganites’ and Thatcherites’ trickle-down economy is now unquestionably recognized as a mythical dream world, since along with this economic wealth has been an unprecedented growth in unemployment, hunger, uncertainty, and an ever deepening chasm between ultra rich and ultra poor (Rifkin 1995, Barber 1996, Dobbin 1998, Saul 1995). The implications of the new corporate world order on our environment are severe since full employment is a public good and not a corporate good. The danger lies in priorities. Priorities of the ever increasing number of desperate people in the world is feeding themselves and their families, not global warming, acid rain, ozone depletion or extinction. Relying on high technology to solve this social issue and create an egalitarian society appears to be akin to putting out fire with rocket fuel.

Even so, we have numerous technological tools that if utilized could bring us considerably closer to sustainability. Are we capable of putting them to work? The ones we do put to work are done so out of context. Generally, these tools have been used to increase efficiency, not target overall sustainability. Thus, they merely serve to twist a few more drops of natural resource from an already rung out planet.

“I think that it would be interesting if concerns about the environment led people to reject consumerism, to refuse to work forty hours a week, to live more modestly. But I don’t think that is what’s happening. Instead, an environmental sensibility is being incorporated into laws and regulations and production prices. This mitigates the problems. It draws us away from the brink. It allows this society to crank up the old jalopy for another spin around the track.”
Environmental journalist Martin Mittelstaedt
(Fletcher and Stahlbrand 1992)

A prime example of what Mittelstaedt is referring to is the push for private electric automobiles. Amory and Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute point out that the big three automakers have great technical skills but lack vision (Lovins and Lovins, 1997). The automobile’s current internal combustion engine has been made extremely efficient and can be made even more so with further automobile design efficiencies. Instead of heading in this direction, automakers, governments and the public are encouraging the development of electric cars and fuel cell technologies. Los Angeles, California is leading the way in this area by “driving technology”; they are instituting law that requires 10% of new automobiles to be zero-emission by 2003 (Tenenbaum, 1996). Californian legislators seem to be parishioners of the high technology panacea church. Curiously, California now has four of the highest air pollution zones in the US, and is also a leader in clean air technology (Tenenbaum, 1996). Clearly, the answers to California’s air quality problems do not lie in technology but in society. Yet most people cling to the belief that they can continue on with business as usual and leave the scientists to fix any problems.

Supposing Californians could clean up their air with zero emission technology, the solution is merely a bandage on a gangrenous wound. The damage done by the fossil fuel age requires drastic and immediate action. Only a small portion of the problem lies with what Californians are driving, yet this small portion receives the lion’s share of attention and funding. A larger portion of the problem lies with what Californians are combusting in their engines. And the most important cause of the environmental crisis in California and the world for that matter is why they have to drive so much.

There are countless examples of new technologies designed to correct ‘problems’ which have inadvertently generated at least two new problems (e.g., DDT – bio accumulation endangering bird populations; genetically modified BT corn - vectoring the BT gene via pollen grains into neighboring milk weed plants and killing Monarch butterflies; nuclear power.... An interesting project would be to investigate the overall benefits achieved by high technology ‘fixes’ contrasted with the unintended negative spin-offs). Electric cars will add to this list. Lead-acid batteries, the energy source of choice for most electric vehicles, are considerable polluters. "A 1998 model electric car is estimated to release 60 times more lead per kilometer relative to a comparable car burning leaded gasoline… these vehicles do not deliver the promised environmental benefits" (Lave, 1995).

A second example of relying on high technology to fix our social problems is the attempts by auto manufacturers to downsize fuel cells to fit into private automobiles. Although fuel cells seem to be a sound low pollution technology, water vapour will be emitted from exhaust pipes. The ramifications of a worldwide automobile fleet emitting water vapour into the atmosphere are unknown (water vapour is also a green house gas). Perhaps the most frightening aspect of fuel cell technology is that fuel cells will likely be a clean cheap source of energy. With our current world order and its expansionist paradigm, a clean, cheap source of fuel would be the death knoll for remaining natural resources. Even with massive government subsidies, fossil fuels are still expensive enough to play a key role in cost-benefit analyses, and the costs do impose restrictions on development (Rees, 1993). The potential of cheap unlimited energy could spark a new plague of sprawl into our natural areas as the prohibitive cost of electrical grid hook-up or the technically difficult alternative energy generation methods no longer restrict such activity. Without strong coercive legislation to deal with the social aspects of this new technology, it can be more of a hindrance than help.

Our addiction to high technology encourages us to throw the baby out with the bath water. Although local air quality issues are driving the push for zero emission vehicles, a more pressing issue is that of global warming, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. It would be very possible, prudent and cheaper for society to shift to burning bio-fuels in the already-available, super-efficient vehicles, rather than spending millions of taxpayer dollars on the development of new emission-free technologies.

For all intents and purposes, ‘emission-free technologies’ is a misnomer anyway. The second law of thermodynamics ensures that emissions are released during energy transfers. Relying on new transportation technologies that focus on private modes of transportation is self-defeating. Bare with me while I explain why. We have to go a long way back…

Some 3.3 billion years ago the first photosynthesis took place in cyanobacteria (Christopherson, 1994). This marked a drastic turning point in the evolution of the earth’s atmosphere, which had until then had little or no free oxygen. The oxygen atmosphere then increased to less than one percent over the next million or so years. Then, what Lyn Margulis (1986) has termed the “oxygen holocaust” occurred. “Our precious oxygen was originally a gaseous poison dumped into the atmosphere” (Margulis and Sagan, 1986). The earth to that point was inhabited by a rich and diverse group of chemosynthetic, and single level photosynthetic microbes. The ancestor of today’s cyanobacteria (previously termed blue green algae) developed a second photosynthetic center that is likely the single most significant genetic mutation to occur on this planet. “This single metabolic change in tiny bacteria had major implications for the future history of all life on Earth” (Margulis and Sagan 1986). Oxygen, being extremely reactive, destroyed much of the community of life on earth over the next two billion years or so, as its atmospheric concentrations increased from 0.0001 to 21 % (Margulis and Sagan 1986, Christopherson 1994).
Ancient earth’s life forms’ diet of carbon-hydrogen compounds severely depleted carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which was likely initially at the levels of Venus and Mars today, that is 95 % CO2 (Margulis and Sagan, 1986). This, combined with the ‘oxygen holocaust’, formed today’s 21% oxygen/0.03% carbon atmosphere. Where did all that carbon go? According to Dr. Paul Falkowski of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Science and Dept. of Geology at Rutgers University, much of it has been stored in the form of coal and oil (Falkowski, 1994). Falkowski asserts that phytoplankton in coastal waters fed by iron rich river and stream run-off played a key role in removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the form of coal and oil (Falkowski, 1994). By dumping soluble iron into the middle of the Bearing Sea, where a phytoplankton bloom could not otherwise occur, Falkowski and his colleagues measured the total intake of atmospheric carbon consumed by the ensuing phytoplankton bloom. It was very significant. Falkowski was concerned about publishing the data for fear that society’s technocrats would ‘solve’ our carbon sink problem by dumping mass quantities of iron into the oceans, which would surely have unknown and likely negative side effects. Falkowski pointed out that damming rivers for hydroelectric power and rerouting them for irrigation has severely impacted biological and geological cycles. Phytoplankton blooms are no longer occurring to the extent they once did, prior to modern humans’ major alterations of natural river systems. Iron supplies that have traditionally flowed with rivers to feed the low levels of the food chain in the coastal waters (thereby enabling carbon extraction from the atmosphere), are no longer available (1994).

Alberta’s oil industry is the result of plate tectonics, terrane movements, phytoplankton, roughly 190 million years elapsed time, and massive government subsidies. Alberta used to be ocean frontage, and a multitude of phytoplankton lived and died in those coastal waters. When the phytoplankton died many of them sank into anaerobic environments and were later compressed by migrating terranes (migrating crustal ‘pieces’ which attach to tectonic plates) accreted into what is now known as British Columbia (Falkowski, 1994). Interestingly, as the news media and Alberta premier Ralph Klein boast of Alberta’s booming economy, a very relevant statistic remains unreported: Environment Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory. The 1996 summary report reveals that Alberta has contributed 31.1% to the national pollutant release (MELP, 1999). This number is surpassed only by Ontario at 39.2%. Compared to Ontario’s population and industry, Alberta is dumping an un-proportional amount of pollutants into our atmosphere. Considering British Columbia was the third highest polluter at only 6.4%, media and political claims that Alberta’s economic boom is due to conservative spending and budget cuts are preposterous. It is very evident that Alberta’s economic performance is based on depleting natural capital and using (without paying) the public good of a clean environment for an industrial dumping ground.

“ Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.”
World Scientists' Warning to Humanity
Some 1,700 of the world's leading scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued this appeal in November 1992. The World Scientists' Warning to Humanity was written and spearheaded by the late Henry Kendall, former chair of UCS's board of directors
(Union of Concerned Scientists, 1992)

Global warming is perhaps the most significant news item of all time. Especially considering its predisposition for causing mass extinction. Humans, are not exempt. “Climate change, although by no means the only factor in mass extinction, has been the most important one” (Stanely, 1987). The legitimacy attached to statements regarding anthroprogenically induced global warming is tremendous. It is unfortunate that the corporate controlled media chooses to give an unproportionate amount of press and airtime to the few tremendously illegitimate voices denying global warming (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1996, Gelbspan, 1997, Wilkinson, 1998). In his well-referenced, well-researched, balanced book, The Heat IS On (1998), Pulitzer Prize winner Ross Gelbspan exposes the trillion-dollar-a-year coal and oil industries very successful disinformation campaign. We as a species are taking colossal risks and our continued existence is at stake. If we are to reduce the risk, public good must be prioritized over corporate good. To do this, we need to gain control of media and make it egalitarian. Then, we need to make the social changes required to live more sustainably. In Garret Hardin’s (1968) words, I believe “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon” is our best shot at this.

If the fossil fuel industry were honestly concerned about getting at the truth of climate change, it would contribute to a blind trust pool of private research funds that the federal government would allocate to researchers, with guidance from bodies like the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Science and the National Research Council. Strangely enough, despite the vociferous defense of private funding by oil and coal lobbyists, none has volunteered to fund such a pool.
Ross Gelbspan (1997)

The oil industry alone has sales exceeding two billion dollars every day and society’s political and corporate leaders all rely on a portion of that money. In order to maintain the status quo, the coal and oil tycoons utilize what their spin-doctors have directed the media to call ‘greenhouse skeptics’. I will refer to them more aptly as heretics, as their high paying job is to mystify “the public, casting doubt on every new piece of evidence that confirms global warming” (Gelbspan, 1998). The fossil fuel industry writes the checks for their heretic employees and they are getting their money’s worth. The public is now very apathetic towards the issue of climate change, wrongly believing that the issue is “terminally stuck in scientific uncertainty” (Gelbspan, 1998). The fact remains that 2500 of the worlds leading scientists studying and analyzing the already rapidly changing climate have been relegated to the outskirts of media while four heretics take center stage Gelbspan 1998, Ehrlich et al. 1996).

The information Council on the Environment (ICE) was the creation of a group of utility companies. In 1991, using the ICE, the coal industry launched a blatantly misleading campaign on climate change that had been designed by a public relations firm. This public relations firm clearly stated that the aim of the campaign was to ‘Reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.’ Its plan specified that three of the so-called green house skeptics – Robert Balling, Pat Michaels and S. Fred Singer – should be placed in broadcast appearances, op-ed pages, and newspaper interviews”
Ross Gelbspan (1998)

Pat Michaels, Robert Balling (Arizona State University), S. Fred Singer (University of Virginia), and Richard Lindzen (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) were recruited by the Western Fuels Association and other fossil fuel interests primarily to cast doubt on new, peer reviewed, solid scientific evidence with regards to global warming. Michaels was recruited by the Western Fuels Association to write the association’s self-financed and self-published quarterly World Climate Review magazine (Gelbspan, 1998). All four heretics are very ‘critical’ of any Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publication but as the World Climate Review (and a number of other magazines guised as scientific journals) is gray literature and not peer reviewed, the only opportunity for rebuttals come during congressional hearings or senate committees when the scientists and heretics are questioned. These situations seldom appear in mainstream corporate news media. During a congressional hearing we learn that Singer does not publish in peer reviewed journals (Gelbspan, 1998). Climatologist Richard Lindzen is the fossil fuel industry’s poster boy. Lindzen’s claimed that global warming was a non-event was based on his theory that convection currents that transport water vapour through cloud formations into the upper atmosphere where they were then dried out imposes an upper limit on vapour build up that would otherwise fuel global warming (Gelbspan, 1998). This theory contradicted the findings of satellite imagery and weather balloon observations and was disproved in 1995 by researchers at Princeton University (Gelbspan, 1998).
During a congressional hearing while being questioned by Al Gore Lindzen announced that his hypothesis was withdrawn. Four years later he used the withdrawn hypothesis to claim that global warming will not occur, while being interviewed by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Not surprising considering Lindzen is a paid consultant for the fossil fuel industry and served on the advisory board of the George C. Marshall Institute, an institute that does no original research and is funded by ultra-conservative political foundations (Gelbspan, 1998). Lindzen was also featured in a comical video produced by the Western Fuels Association and narrated by another heretic Sherwood Idso. In it , botanists and agronomists make proclamations about the wonderful warmer climate the fossil fuel industry is bringing us… how it will end world hunger due to longer growing seasons and increased carbon content. The audacity to make such a claim in a world where human beings evolved with a 0.03% carbon atmosphere and require such to exist is outstanding (Margulis, 1994). Amidst all of the banter by the heretics lies the peer-reviewed science of the IPCC. “The IPPC is a conservative organization that includes scientists and policy makers working on behalf of governments. Its reports are written and reviewed by hundreds of scientists from all over the world, including the cream of the climatological community, without significant interference from governments – which are then obliged to confront the results” (Ehrilch et al. 1996)
We have a long way to go in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and the high-powered and well-connected fossil fuel industry is doing its best to ensure we do not get there. Utilizing new technology, Tom Burns, manager of economics for Chevron Corporation, points out that “today more oil is known to exist in the world than can be produced at today’s technology and prices than has ever been available in the past, both in terms of total volume and in years supply” (Business 2000, 1999). The World Energy Council is glad to hear what Tom Burns has to say as their central forecast is that by the year 2020 we will require 4.5 billion more tons of oil added to the 9.2 billion tons we burn now. Global warming, according to Dr. Subroto, secretary general of OPEC, is “nonsense” (Business 2000, 1999).
In light of the corporate and institutional inertia to maintain the status quo, and the very likely-hood that we have, as a society, already crossed an ecological line leading to ecosystem collapse, optimism is a hard sell. One promising, or at least noteworthy fact that disproves a regular cry by industry and governments is that over the “past two years the global economy has grown by 6.8%, while carbon emissions held steady” (Pearce, 1999). The argument against reducing green house gas emissions has always been that a reduction in emissions would mean a reduction in economic growth. Not surprising when the World Bank utilizes pollution output as an economic indicator. A second more promising note is the fact that the world’s citizens shut down the World Trade Organization’s meeting in Seattle during their meeting November, 1999. These global citizens were telling the corporate and political elite that there are far greater priorities facing humanity than economic growth. Hopefully the message was taken to heart.
The World Trade Organization and the like are parishioners of the high-technology church and fail to see the real problem through the research and development grants. Has the ‘medium become the message?’ Has our purpose become that of technology? Is what we are doing necessitated by what we are using? Are we now living for the sole purpose of making technology that destroys us? Could we reach our sustainability goal with appropriate technology? I propose that although not a solution in itself, technology can be involved in a solution as long as it deals with a dilemmas root cause and does not create more dilemmas. The technology Hardin speaks of simply makes the status quo efficient so we can continue to conspicuously consume. Appropriate technological tools, applied and utilized in a proper context, will never require an ‘efficiency experts’ axe. The question is, will we ever implement such appropriate technology prior to its necessity, which is inevitably too late?
Physicist, Amory Lovins is a great believer in technology as a solution. He and his wife Hunter have gone to great lengths to show our policy makers and industrial elite the benefits that could be had by design efficiencies. The Lovins along with Ernst von Weizsacker penned the book Factor Four (1997) in which they claim we can double wealth and halve resource use. “The millions of small improvements made by individuals, firms and communities – with insulation, caulk guns, duct tape, plugged steam leaks, slightly better cars – now provides 2/5 more energy each year than the entire domestic oil industry, which took a century to build” (Lovins, Lovins and Weizsacker, 1997). The book is full of simple and complex technological solutions. The authors, like society, however focus on techno fixes that do not solve our underlying sustainability problem. Many great ideas are put forward, but in a somewhat hypocritical tone, as the book begins by condemning pessimists and misanthropes, the authors make pessimistic remarks as to why we are not and in some cases will not embracing these terrific ideas: the reason being our societal problem of conspicuous consumption and corporate/bureaucratic inertia. The book is based on the idea that we can continue on consuming, not living more modestly. The problem with this situation is that the current human expansionist paradigm will not leave any efficiency-recovered resource. Our current worldview will compel us to use any such resource. We have seen this with fossil fuel consumption. Efficiency driven gains have simply turned those gians into capital ‘surplus’ and have fueled an increase in automobile production and fossil fuel consumption. The result, an overall increase in green house gas emissions. Technology was not the answer for this concern.
Technology, quite simply, is the practical application of knowledge and as such both relies on and creates culture. A society’s technology reflects that society’s values. Aronold Pacey (1983) defines technology as “the application of scientific and other knowledge to practical tasks by ordered systems that involve people and organizations, living things and machines”. One of the major problems with today’s hard technology is that it was developed with a knowledge base that has yet to recognize the importance of natural capital and the second law of thermodynamics. Our natural capital is being liquidated with reckless abandon because the true cost of the energy utilized to perform this liquidation is not being accounted for. As Lewis Moncrief points out, “there appears to be an almost universal tendency to maximize self-interests and a widespread willingness to shift production costs to society to promote individual ends.” A society’s technology, when produced and managed under such a regime, will inevitably be both inefficient and inappropriate. Appropriate technology is technology which is low in capital cost, uses local materials wherever possible, uses local skills and labour, is easily understood, controlled and maintained, uses decentralized, renewable energy, and is flexible/adaptable to changing circumstances.
Today we are witnessing the ecological collapse and human suffering that Thomas Malthus understood in the 1838. Africa and India have hit an ecological wall and are experiencing immense human suffering. The most significant ecological crisis human beings have ever experienced, anthropocentrically induced and accelerated global warming, is occurring and, aside from token jesters, is being virtually ignored by media, politicians and industry. The most conservative estimates of our top scientists concerned with the issue is that humanity must reduce carbon emissions from 6 billion tons per year to 2 billion and there is no significant evidence that we are going to realistically reach this conservative target. Technology has played the lead roll in maintaining society’s collective cognitive dissonance. Like an addictive drug, technology has placed us in a narcotic haze, where we are always looking for the next fix. Technology must be brought down off of the shrine and placed on equal footing with the social sustainability tool that Garret Hardin mentioned three decades ago. “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon” (1968). If we continue to rely wholly on technology to solve our society driven problems, then the time has come (perhaps passed) for planners to plan for the collapse. Some may question the reasoning for such a planning activity. My response in turn is a question: Why does society plan build and maintain palliative care wards in our hospitals?

References
Barber, B. (1995). Jihad vs. McWorld: how globalism and tribalism are reshaping the
world. New York. Ballentine Books.
Business 2000. Films for the humanities and sciences. Princeton, New Jersey.
Christopherson, R. (1994). Geosystems: an introduction to physical geography. 2nd
edition. New Jersey. Macmillan College Publishing Co.
Ehrlich, P. and Ehrlich, A. (1996). Betrayal of science and reason: how anti-
environmental rhetoric threatens our future.
Gelbspan, R. (1997). The heat is on. Massachusetts. Addison Wesley.
Moncrief, L. (1970). The cultural basis for our environmental crisis. Science, 170 (Oct)
508-512.
Falkowski, P. (1994).Lecture Atmospheric carbon content, phytoplankton and oil
futures. The Vancouver Institute Lecture Series. University of British Columbia.
Fletcher, F. and Stahlbrand, L. (1992). Mirror of participant? The news media and
environmental policy. In R. Boardman (ed.), Canadian environmental policy: ecosystems, politics, and processes, 1179-1209. Toronto. Oxford University Press.
Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162 (Dec), 1243-1248.
Lave, L. (1995). Environmental Implications of Electric Cars. Science, 268: (May), 93-
995.
Lovins, A., Lovins, L. and Weizsacker, E. (1997). Factor four: doubling wealth, halving
resource use. London. Earthscan Publications.
Lovins, A and Lovins, L. (1997). Reinventing the wheel. The Rocky Mountain Institute
Hyper Car website [on-line]. Available: http://www.rmi.org/hypercars/Reinventing_the_Wheels.html
Margulis, L. (1994). Lecture. The Vancouver Institute Series. University of Northern
British Columbia.
Margulis, L. and Sagan, D. (1986). Microcosomos: four billion years of microbial
evolution. California. University of California Press.
MELP. (1998). Environmental indicator: toxic contaminants in British Columbia.
[on-line]. Available: http://www.elp.gov.bc.ca/sppl/soerpt/fineparticulates/fineparticulates1.html
Pacey, A. (1983). The culture of technology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Pearce, F. (1999). Richer and Cleaner: emissions are falling as the global economy
surges ahead. New Scientist, (7, Aug) 23.
Rees, W. (1993). Personal interview. September.
Rifkin, J. (1996). The end of work. New York. Tarcher Putnam.
Roodman, D. (1998). The natural wealth of nations: harnessing the market for the
environment. New York. Norton.
Saul, J. (1995). The unconscious civilization. Concord, On. Anansi.
Stanely, S. (1987). Extinction. Scientific American Books, Inc.
Suzuki, D. (1991). Inventing the future: Reflections on science, technology and nature.
Toronto. Stoddart.
Tenenbaum, D. (1996) Pulling the plug: California backpedals electric vehicle rule.
National Institute for Science Education, [on-line]. Available: http://whyfiles.news.wisc.edu/005electcar/index.html
Union of Concerned Scientists. (1992). World scientist’ warning to humanity. [on-line].
Available: http://www.ucsusa.org/
Wilkinson, T. (1998). Science under siege: the politicians’ war on nature and truth.
Boulder Co. Johnson Publishing Co.