Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.
Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?
Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.
In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.
Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.
A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.