Sustaining the Good Life.

This article focuses on the development of sustainable technology. With only a few setbacks, technology steadily advanced from its rock-and-stick phase until, by the late 20th century, industrialized societies burning fossil fuels had achieved unprecedented prosperity and comfort. By the middle of the century, headlines told of lethal smog, exacerbated by vehicle exhaust, in London, Los Angeles, and other cities. Technology in general and engineers in particular were seen as a large part of the problem. Samuel Florman of the construction firm of Kreisler, Borg, Florman in Scarsdale, New York, talks about that in his book, "The Existential Pleasures of Engineering." The last century brought unleaded gasoline, the catalytic converter, and new technologies for cleaning the smokestack emissions and effluents of industrial plants.