We've reached the point where this is true. Not only is it a remedy, it's the only remedy, unless we change our values drastically.

What do I mean? Consider the current total population of the planet. We're already over six billion. If you examine a graph showing the total human population of Earth over time, you'll notice something. For a long time, the planet had a population of about three-hundred million (estimates, of course, nobody could really know). This lasted for a long time - thousands of years. Why? Because without technology, the amount of food, density of population, lack of medical knowledge and care, it appears that this was the maximum that could be maintained. Plague, famine, war, and the like helped to control the population.

But sometime in the past, not that long ago on the scale of human civilization, science arrived, and people started learning more. They learned how to produce more food, how to cure sickness and injury, prevent plague, preserve food, improve sanitation, farm, and the like. Suddenly the population starting growing. A lot.

Technology is the only thing that has allowed so many people to live on this planet. But this technology has bad side effects, causing global warming and all those other things. So staying where we are is unacceptable. So we can either advance, or retreat.

Some people, notably the radical environmentalists and other luddites, want to go back to the ways things used to be done. But, the way things used to be could not support all the people on this planet. So do we just tell a few billion people "too bad, for me to live the way I want to, you have to die"? I don't think this is any better.

So we have to go forward. Develop more technology, that is safer, cleaner, better. We have no reason to think we can't do this. In fact, we HAVE to do this. It's the only way out.

Sometimes I run across the sentiment that technology is an evil of some sort. There generally isn't much actual reason behind the statement, but there is a lot of passion and feeling and conviction. When I point out that if we were to technologically regress even a thousand years or so (hardly a blink in our evolution) more than five billion people would die within a decade, I often get back something to the effect of, 'Oh, well, there's too many people anyways.'

If you're not chilled by that statement, your system of values is seriously out of whack.

Environmentalists especially tend to be rather catastrophic in their forecasts. If we could believe what they said when I was growing up, the ozone layer would be in tatters now, the entirety of South America would be paved over, and the only species of animal left on the planet would be geckos and very small furry mammals. Lo and behold, here we are. And we continue.

Yes, we are starting to exhaust some natural resources like coal and oil. But we are quickly developing safe, clean, efficient manners of producing energy.

Yes, we are slowly nibbling at the ozone layer. But we will find a way to repair it, and much more quickly than it would naturally heal.

Yes, there are some species of plant, animal, and insect that are being driven to extinction by our development. But others are 'naturally' dying out. Anyways, there are several dozen banks of DNA all over the world, with samples from rhinocerous, tiger, panda, and everything else that has died out or might die out in the future. We will bring them back. With technology. It can be done. Hell, they've got a good shot at resurrecting the Woolly Mammoth or Sabre-Tooth Tiger, some of the first casualties of man's expansion.

Human beings are part of nature too. The Hoover Dam is just as valid as a beaver dam. We're just better at it.

There's a reason wisdom and intelligence are two different words.

Over the last century we've created some amazing technology. Who could've imagined the radio, TV, cellular phone, or Internet? Who could've guessed we'd be looking forward to quantum computers? However, only recently have we gained the wisdom to understand the consequences of our actions. With that wisdom, we are able to use our intelligence to create replacement technologies and repair technologies, that will stop/fix any damage we've done. That is one reason that it is imperative we claim responsibility for our actions.
We can already see some evidence of new technology with the capability to address the problems created by previous technologies. The problem is that the implementation depends upon the benefits involved, as humans are inherently selfish and shortsighted.

Let's look at cars. Americans are in love with incredibly wasteful SUVs because they can get away with it. In Europe and Asia, cleaner, more efficient cars are the norm, because a large vehicle isn't cost-effective (if they could get away with it, they'd drive big cars, too.) However, once Americans decide to do so, there are technologies they can use to significantly reduce the amount of material used in an automobile's creation as well as its energy consumption.

Materials reduction in the manufacture of personal consumer goods, however, is a trend that thankfully, is supported by greed. The fewer materials used in the creation of a product and the more value a manufacturer can add in performance (or perception), the happier and more profitable they are. A new cell phone uses significantly less metal and plastic than a phone from a couple of years ago, and the entire worldwide materials demand for the next five years of OLED display manufacture can be filled by less than 100 gallons of chemicals. Compare a 40-inch LCD to a CRT, and even the most radical ecologist has to admit that there is a significant amount of material saved. The less material usd in manufacturing, the less damage to the environment by trash generation, manufacturing-related pollution, and mining and resources acquisition.

Ditto for device efficiency. That new cell phone is not only smaller, it uses less electricity, and gets that electricity from rechargeable batteries instead of disposables. Your desktop computer has an LCD monitor that uses less power than a CRT (and doesn't spray you with radiation), and its drives and processors are smaller and more efficient. Odds are that your computer's mouse is an optical device with no moving parts.

In medicine, for every antibiotic-resistant bug (which was caused by abuse of antibiotics) there is a life-extending technology, drug, or procedure. Things like minimum-invasion endoscopic surgery, stereotaxic radiosurgery, and better diagnostics are helping more people live long and productive lives.

Technology is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. There is no fundamental difference between a hand axe and a chain saw. The difference is how well it performs its task, and whether we wield it properly.

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