Just say "NO!" to modern technology. We need to start by making the Prius and the Tesla and the Chevy Volt/Bolt illegal. Indeed, all of electronics is bad - get rid of all of it. Not only do they use rare earth minerals that are dirty to mine and process into useful materials, they use copper, which is also a nasty hazard.

I embrace modern technology but if we allow corporations to run roughshod over the environment there will be consequences. That's why cannot allow corporations to determine environmental law and protection. No foxes guarding the hen house.

Remember that airline ad where a husky-voiced boss expressed his regret that they didn't visit their customers face-to-face anymore, but only communicated by phone, fax, and email? Sure, the airlines would love for you to convert several gallons of fossil fuel to greenhouse gases and noise pollution, flying to meet every customer! But corporate bean-counters would rather modulate a few electrons and communicate around the globe for pennies' worth of electricity -- which, by coincidence, has *much* less environmental impact (not to mention fewer fatal crashes). Can you imagine anything like DU functioning by mail, or national meetings in person? Willing to give up your computer for the sake of the environment? I hope not, because it would be a mover backward, to lower material efficiency.

One *good* thing about technology is that for a long time its hallmark has been increased efficiency -- "moreing with lessing", in Buckminster Fuller's phrase. We couldn't support a modern society on hunting and gathering, or even on horse and buggy technology. Try reading a little about one of the first great international crises -- the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894.

It's worth noting that many developing countries rely almost entirely on cellular technology and satellite uplinks, without ever having installed telephone landlines, or even roads. It's both cheaper and more efficient than last century's technology, and as a bonus, it has less environmental impact.



ETA: Copper ?? Oh, we're tilting at windmills now! Remember something called the BRONZE AGE, named after a copper alloy which dominated technology a few millennia ago? SRSLY? Copper is too valuable a resource not to recycle, so every ounce that's dug out of the ground gets used over and over, and has been for millennia -- the most efficient way to use any resource. Copper prices crashed after WWII, when all the brass shell casings hit the recyclers' market, and it didn't profit to mine any more for a while. If it weren't for increasing population, the copper already above ground would probably be sufficient to our needs.

Hey! We have birth control today. We have hygiene in maternity wards. Our babies get immunized so that they don't get diseases that used to kill so many of them.

We have to learn how to handle the technology we have and how to deal with the waste and new problems our technology creates.

Very young women, so many women, used to die in childbirth. They had babies young and often. We learned to save the women's lives as I said above and we also learned to save the lives of babies and young children. But that means we have to adapt and change our attitude towards the size of our families. Most people understand that. My great-grandmother could have umpteen pregnancies and six living children. Today if you have umpteen pregnancies, you will have umpteen children. It's a technological problem.

So is this waste problem. It is a technological problem that we need to solve. And we can.

It's not a choice between technology and no technology. It is a choice to allow our consciences to guide us to demand the development of technology that protects our environment and then to decide to pay for that technology.

We are truly a throwaway society. And we need to change that at least in our own lives.