The technology we need most badly is the technology of community, the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done.
I think communities of faith are extremely important in this question. I think that all faith communities share a common and unusual distinction in our time of being the only institutions left that can posit some goal other than accumulation for human existence. I think that's enormously important because it is that drive for consumption more than anything else that fuels the environmental devastation around us.
In the scientific community, the debate is over, for all intents and purposes, about whether or not the planet is heating and who is causing it. In fact, it's more or less been over since 1995.
Community is as endangered by surplus as it is by deficit. If there is too much money floating around it enables people to have no need of each other.
All things considered, the internet seems fairly environmentally benign to me. The last stats I saw showed you could do 1,000 Google searches for the gas it took to drive six-tenths of a mile. But the internet can't substitute for real connection and community.
I imagine a certain amount of consumer impulse will be replaced by community connection. You can already see it starting with things like the local food movement.
