Cultural ecology presents two sides of the coin of global economic development. This has taken place historically by the 'unlocking of nature', at first by self-sufficient groups in bands, and tribes.  Now it involves networks of interdependent nations involved in industrial mass production and the movement of resources and goods rapidly over vast distances measured in hours or days.  This process has taken place not by biological evolution, but by inventions, which, from age to age, drive the human economic system. First it involved the application of ideas about the living world that produced the hunter and the forager, and led to fire and water being harnessed as physical aids to comfort and lighten labour.  

Looking to history, economic development has taken place by behaviours that arose early in the simplest human cultures from basic and specific faculties. From the first beginnings, human production was the outcome of inventions to exploit natural resources implemented through the organisation of groups of people for production.  This has, in the long run, inevitably stimulated demand for more and more goods and services. By 1750 water had become the engineer's element that set off the British industrial revolution.  The water wheel was the first multipurpose machine for the new manufacturies. Increased exploitation of natural resources through production and increased demand for products had an increasing environmental impact.  The harnessing of steam and electrical power followed in succession.

So great is the current environmental impact of materials and energy usage that it is evident that conservation of natural resources, which has always been part of native cultures, has to be built into generally acceptable international strategies for economic development and long- term survival of industrial cultures. The first minimal impact of cultural ecology was about hunting and gathering.  The future maximal impact of cultural ecology is about the sustainability of industrialism. 

Global industrialism supports a scientific civilisation in which knowledge and its integrity supplies a set of educational principles according to which we shape our conduct. Citizens in most industrial countries are educated to share a belief in progress, faith in the steady increase of material affluence, which unfortunately is equated with progress, and belief in the necessity and goodness of economic growth. Other central features of the industrial educational system seemingly include high values placed on work, the nuclear family, and career- oriented formal education; a strong faith in the efficacy of science and technology (as opposed to religion) to solve problems; and a view of Nature as something to be subdued by mankind. This led to the development of educational systems in which subjects were built according to the knowledge required to educate, examine and certify the specialists who were to carry forward this exploitative culture.