ABSTRACT
People lived by gathering fruits and nuts; learned to hunt, fish, and use fire; invented the spear and atlatl and then the bow and arrow. They developed the art of making pottery, learned to domesticate animals and cultivate plants, began using adobe and stone in building houses, and learned to smelt iron and use it in tools. The outcome of self-conquest would represent an essential step toward social-environmental sustainability. This is the frontier beyond self-centeredness and greed-induced conflict, which destroys human dignity, degrades the productive capacity of our global ecosystem, and forecloses options for all life for all time. True progress toward an ecologically sustainable environment and an ethically just society will be initially expensive in both money and effort, but in the end, it will not only be mandated by shifting public values but also be progressively less expensive over time.
