11 CHAPTER THREE The Human Roots of the Ecological Crisis: In this chapter, Pope Francis examines our modern world at the crossroads, with its reliance on technology (the technocratic paradigm) in all global economic and political affairs, and the anthropocentrism that exists today, by which technical thought and development are placed above the global realities and sensible stewardship of creation has sadly become a dominion which sees humans acting against themselves. I Technology: Creativity and Power Our technical prowess has brought us to the crossroads Pope Francis begins by reminding us that we are the beneficiaries of two centuries of enormous waves of change: steam engines, railways, the telegraph, electricity, automobiles, aeroplanes, chemical industries, modern medicine, information technology, the digital revolution, robotics, biotechnologies and nanotechnologies (102). These advances are a reason for rejoicing in such God-given creativity (102) which brings immense benefits, both in terms of sustainable developments and the appreciation of beauty, and this must be acknowledged along with the power that comes to those with the knowledge, the economic resources and an impressive dominance over humanity (104) who create and use them. It is extremely risky (104) for such a small part of humanity to have access to this power, especially when we think of the increasingly deadly arsenal of weapons available for modern warfare (104). Goodness does not necessarily flow from such developments and the power they bestow, and the lack of a corresponding development in human responsibility, values and conscience (105) has meant that we do not grasp the gravity of the challenges now before us (105). II The Globalization of the Technocratic Paradigm The idea of unlimited growth is based on a lie An undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm (106) shows us that the problem goes deeper still: as men and women gain more complete control over science and the world around them, trying to extract as much as possible from them, they ignore and forget more and more the reality in front of them. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth (which) is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods,
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