Who
else but the concerned ruling oligarchy?

In the history of civilization this principle has been followed
systematically. The forests have been cleared away, the land has been
overgrazed, cultivated and exposed to the erosive attacks of sunlight,
air, water and frost. Wood from the forests has been hauled to the
cities and burned, has been used to construct palaces and temples,
houses and ships, with no recognition of the principles of priority or
renewal. If wood was available where must it go? The oligarchy decided
the issue in terms of ostentation and expediency. Rarely during recorded
human history have there been oligarchs who said: "Irreplaceable
resources like minerals must be used with extreme economy. Replaceable
resources like forests or top-soil must be used and at the same time
replaced and if possible augmented."

Decision making in the civilizations reported by history has been
chiefly in the hands of specially privileged minorities. The purpose of
these minorities has revolved around the provision of comforts and
luxuries for the decision makers and their dependents and the increase
of their wealth and power. Rarely has any ruling oligarchy said: "The
continuance of our privileges and our barest existence is the result of
labor power applied to natures gifts. We must safeguard nature and
improve the health and vitality of those who do the world's work. If,
due to unforeseen circumstances, over which we have failed to exercise
adequate control, there is some shortage, let the idler and the wastrel
suffer. Under all circumstances the producers must have all those goods
and services needed to preserve their productive efficiency."

Through the entire course of written history the shrewdest, the
strongest, the best fed and most comfortably housed have gained wealth
and power, kept them and added to them. This has been the central
sociological principle followed by the wealth-owning, power-wielding
oligarchs of one civilization after another. Nature has been polluted,
despoiled, pillaged. Society has been exploited and plundered. Most
civilizations, during most of their history, have been led and ruled by
the rich and powerful, who have used their wealth and power to advance
their own interests, with scant respect for the hewers of wood, the
drawers of water and the tillers of the soil. Those at the imperial
center have milked the periphery. Cooperation has been occasional and
confined largely to pre-c