SOCI 1P80 Lecture Notes - Individualism, Price Fixing, Materialism
Document Summary
They regard the natural world as a bountiful preserve available to serve human needs. In this view, nature is something to be used; it is free and inexhaustible. Americans have disproportionately consumed the resources of the world. For example, although they constitute 4. 6 percent of the world"s population, people in the u. s. use 25 percent of the world"s oil output each year. Rather than accepting the environment as given, they have sought to change and conquer it (e. g. , damning rivers, cutting down timber, digging tunnels, plowing up prairie land, conquering space). Americans view nature as something to be subdued and used. From this logic proceeds a faith in technology; a proper application for scientific knowledge can meet any challenge. If the air and water are polluted, then science will save us. We will find a substitute for the internal combustion engine, find new sources of energy, and develop new methods for extracting minerals.