ABSTRACT
The Industrial Revolution ushered in almost two centuries of increasing abundance of goods and services for human use. This growth, based on increasingly sophisticated exploitation of resources, has never been uniform nor linear across time and space. Although at times it has threatened to stop, so far the trend continues, despite the intellectual community's sporadic cries of alarm. Dennis Pirages's statement, that ‘Growth in population and consumption of resources, once considered desirable signs of industrial and economic progress, are now considered to be major global problems in light of limited resources’ (Pirages 1989:291), is still more an expression of concern than one based on empirical observation.
