View article

The 300-year period of the Industrial Revolution, during which humankind established dominance within nature, was defined by many distinctive features including a cascade of powerful, transformational technologies and a strong link between happiness and consumption that encouraged the rapid reformatting of natural resources into private property and other commodities. 1 Industrial technologies made possible food production, sanitation and trade at unprecedented levels, and introduced life-extending antibiotics and vaccines. The human population entered a steep growth period as infant mortality declined and life expectancy increased. Armed with motivation and capability, industrial man rarely turned away from an opportunity to transform nature into material.

Early in this process, Thomas Malthus (1798) wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population in which he argued ‘that the power of population is …