>>What prevents us from having wilderness AND the garden??
Indeed. That's my preferred outcome. Islands of self-contained urban splendor (in commerce with the outer worlds) swimming in a sea of effectively wild land, either original or restored to be indistinguishable therefrom.
I think the next coupla centuries will be telling. Industry always seeks the lowest-cost approach to production. In the short term (and two centuries is just 800 fiscal quarters) we will see shortsighted use of resources driven by market prices. In the long term, those prices will progressively reflect broader definitions of the cost of doing business. If technology advances quickly and broadly enough to keep up with society's needs, the transition will be smooth. If a gap widens between the technology of sustainable industry (incl. food) and the consumer base, there will be large-scale troubles as the cost of keeping it going outstrip society's capital base. This would yield a Great Depression, a drop in birthrates planetwide, a mortality spike as food and medicine become too expensive, and perhaps a growing community sentiment to Not Let It Happen Again. Trouble is that technology shapes society much more than society guides the development of technology. Think about it: the entire counterculture leading into today's New Age movement with its Luddite undertones is a reaction to "modern life" in a high-tech setting. (A rash simplification, yes, but I'm having fun here) And precisely that high-tech, high-standard-of-living environment gave two generations the free time to pursue their cultural odyssey.
If the huge battle happens, I'd wager that "noone really wins" is pessimistic. The mythos of God's closed cosmos is broken; the scientists and their children, the engineers, have shown a path to real power. We might be set back ten, a hundred, a thousand years, but the idea that we can change our world without invoking an omnipotent arbiter is set. If we fail, we'll take time out and our children will take a fresh swing at it. |
