Humans have been technologists from the beginning and managed to live in a sustainable way as technologists. Humans have also been agriculturalists from the beginning, in the sense that we have always fostered the regrowth of the foods we like—and we managed to do that sustainably. So neither technology nor agriculture is the problem.
Wouldn’t it be handy if we just had to “eliminate” something! The problem is to rediscover how to live sustainably as agriculturalists and technologists. My task is be forever reminding people that this is POSSIBLE, that it was done by humans for hundreds of thousands of years. I’d like to get a couple million of our best and brightest (or a couple HUNDRED million) working on this problem.
To BEGIN working on it, those millions of our best and brightest have got to stop thinking that all they have to do is ask ME—and if I don’t know, then they might just as well give up. All too many people seem to be saying, “Well, I personally don’t know how to do this, so I guess we’re just doomed.”
ID: 43
Posted: 1997
