Future directions: Ecology or technology? 211- “President Jimmy Carter supported energy conservation, resource management, and
social values over material gain, but his policies posed a threat to corporate America and
he lost his bid for a second term in oice to Ronald Reagan... .”
President Carter’s policies were popular| unpopular with voters. - “On a larger scale, overshoot is the result of rapid, uncontrolled growth, and when no one
pays attention to or responds to the problem, coupled with the lack of accurate data and
the persistent belief that there is no tomorrow, the consequences of overshoot are collapse.”
People thought that they could go on doing the same things forever |
the world was going to end soon. - “Although global birth rates (the ratio of births compared to population) have been
decreasing slightly and women are bearing fewer children, when the global population
numbers 7.1 billion (as of this writing), fewer women giving birth still incrementally
produces a lot of people.”
The population continues to increase because more women are having children |
it takes fewer women giving birth to keep the population growing. - “... real change can come about only with a change in people’s hearts and minds.”
People have to do something about their beliefs | health. - A new ideology is in order: one that values human well-being above wealth, favors
long-term development over short-term growth, satisies social and spiritual needs before
material wants, and ensures that people do not take more from the earth than it can give.
People have to use the earth’s resources wisely| freely.
Reading strategies
15 · 8
EXERCISESummarizing Using your answers to Exercise 15-5, write a summary of the reading
text. Include only the most important details, and use the paraphrasing techniques
you learned in Chapters 6 to 12. Your summary should not exceed 500 words.