ABSTRACT
The use of energy for industrial production and consumption over the last 200 years has altered the natural environment to an extent unparalleled in human history. The thinning of stratospheric ozone, the increasing acidification of rain, snow and even large bodies of water, and the prospect of global climate change have all been linked to industrial development generally, and to industrial energy production and use specifically. The principal source of world environmental pollution is, and will continue to be, industrial development. Prevailing industrial ideology presumes that structural transformation of the environment is beyond the reach of social influence. The alliance of science and technology, the energy complex, and the industrial economy ushered in a social order of environmental mining and pollution as a functional part of human progress. In effect, pollution was "normalized." The impact of contemporary social relations on the natural environment reflects the worldwide dominance of a particular form of political economy.
