One of the characteristics that distinguishes human beings from other animals is that they can create and use tools, and they can also use special words to explain nature. In other words, human beings have more scientific and technological capabilities than other animals. With this ability, human beings can create something that does not exist in nature-human civilization.

Science and technology are constantly developing, so is human civilization. Ten thousand years ago, under the pressure of population and resources, human beings transformed from fishing and hunting civilization to traditional farming civilization. Traditional farming civilization has gone through two stages. The first stage was the Bronze Age, and the Shang Dynasty and the Western Zhou Dynasty in China belonged to the Bronze Age. The second stage is the Black Iron Age, which belongs to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. With the popularization of iron smelting and casting technology, traditional ideology and social system began to collapse because they could not meet the requirements of new productive forces. Until the Qin Dynasty unified China in 22 1 BC, a Chinese civilization of "iron farm tools+small-scale peasant economy+imperial bureaucracy+Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism" was formed. Although there have been various natural disasters and wars in farming civilization in the past 10,000 years, human beings are generally stable and safe because the mainstream of science and technology at that time complied with the laws of nature. Traditional farming civilization has limited ability to use natural resources and has a strong dependence on nature. They are afraid of nature. Four thousand years ago, in the Xia Dynasty in China, it was forbidden to cut down trees in spring, fish in summer, kill young animals and take birds' eggs. Three thousand years ago, according to the climate season, the Zhou Dynasty strictly stipulated the time for hunting, catching birds, fishing, cutting down trees and burning wasteland. Two thousand years ago, in the Qin Dynasty, it was forbidden to collect newly sprouted plants in spring, to catch young wild animals and to poison fish and turtles. Throughout the history of China, there are clear laws and regulations on environmental protection. Farmers in China have known the truth of "taking from the ground and using it for the ground". The orange stalks produced by the land and the excrement after consuming food are returned to the land as farmyard manure, which keeps the recycling of land energy. The cultivated land in China has not been degraded for thousands of years. Farmers cutting firewood in the mountains is also controlled within a limited range, so that the fuel around the village can be used permanently. China's population expansion has also brought periodic wars, and periodic wars have compressed the population back to the boundaries of natural resources. Any scientific and technological system in the world should be limited to a certain range of resources to support a specific population and civilization. The science and technology of China's traditional farming civilization has never gone beyond the scope of human, animal and iron farm tools. People consciously arrange their production and life according to the total amount of cultivated land, forest and grass and water resources. Due to the formation of a unique, self-regulating and sustainable survival wisdom, the Chinese nation and Chinese civilization have continued to this day.

The scientific and technological revolution represented by Newtonian mechanics, spinning machine and steam engine in modern western countries made mankind break away from agricultural civilization and quickly rush to traditional industrial civilization. Compared with traditional farming civilization, traditional industrial civilization has developed more mineral resources through brand-new scientific and technological means, intensively utilized more land and forests, brought about the expansion of human wealth and population, and formed a society with the fundamental orientation of expanding material consumption. The total energy consumed in the past 100 years alone far exceeds the sum of thousands of years of human consumption. The extensive development of traditional industrial civilization, large-scale production, large-scale consumption and the infinite spread of production and lifestyle have finally forced out the global ecological crisis. At last, mankind deeply felt the limitation of the earth's resources and environment. The so-called modernization process is the process of transforming natural resources into usable wealth, and the so-called modern society is a society with high per capita resource consumption and large sewage discharge. Due to the increase of population, the cross-flow of material desires and the development of industry and commerce, the per capita consumption of resources has soared. Take water as an example. The water consumption per person per day was 12 liters in BC, about 20-40 liters in the Middle Ages, and increased to 60 liters in the18th century. At present, the water consumption per person per day in developed countries is 500-600 liters. According to statistics, for every $ kloc-0/00 income, industrialized countries need about 300 kilograms of natural resources, and the per capita needs 45,000-85,000 kilograms of natural resources every year. If China wants to reach the per capita consumption level of industrialized countries, for example, 65.438+0.3 billion people in China have replaced their bicycles with cars, it will not consume 5.46 million barrels of oil every day in 2003, but 8.65438+0.00 million barrels every day, far exceeding the current total oil consumption in the world. Are there so many resources on the earth for us to consume? Do we have the ability to harmlessly treat a large number of pollutants generated from it?

In recent years, the rapid growth of China's economy is due to the comprehensive inheritance of the western traditional industrial development model and the excessive consumption of local energy in China. During the period of 1990-200 1, China's oil consumption increased by 100% (from1180,000 tons to 235 million tons), and natural gas increased by 92% (from1/kloc-). Steel increased 143% (from 67 million tons to1630,000 tons), copper increased 189% (from 729,000 tons to 210/000 tons), and aluminum increased by 380% (from 729,000 tons) While people are excited about the rapid economic growth in China, they often forget the resource consumption, garbage piles, environmental pollution and ecological destruction behind these achievements. All success in the world comes at a price.