Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/193/en

For industry, it holds that the means of production does not renew itself. The place of its manufacture is separate from the place of its performance. The industrial production process consumes finite raw-material and energy resources; it generates waste, and the means of production themselves are subject to wear and decay. Refuse arises which, insofar as it cannot be returned at great cost to the energy and raw-material cycle, accumulates as a mortgage upon distant future times on earth (nuclear waste, for example), burdens water and air, and throws the heat balance out of true. Industry's production is bounded by limits of growth; its energy and raw-material balance is negative. The less nature participates in industrial manufacture — the more, therefore, human intelligence dominates the production process, as in the case of computer-chip fabrication — the more does it proceed by way of labor division and the more site-independent does production become. In theory, high-technology products could be manufactured at any arbitrary location on earth — on an artificial island in the sea, for example — and from there the worldwide demand for these products could be met.