Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.

Technologists practice faith too; 'Faith that problems have solutions before having the knowledge to solve them.'

What is needed now is a transformation of the major systems of production more profound than even the sweeping post-World War II changes in production technology.

Finally, since human beings are uniquely capable of producing materials not found in nature, environmental degradation may be due to the resultant intrusion into an ecosystem of a substance wholly foreign to it.

In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation; recycling is enforced.

Our assaults on the ecosystem are so powerful, so numerous, so finely interconnected, that although the damage they do is clear, it is very difficult to discover how it was done. By which weapon? In whose hand? Are we driving the ecosphere to destruction simply by our growing numbers? By our greedy accumulation of wealth? Or are the machines which we have built to gain this wealth-the magnificent technology that now feeds us out of neat packages, that clothes us in man-made fibers, that surrounds us with new chemical creations-at fault?

The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it.