Two articles appearing the same day in The New York Times reminded readers how technology, so generous to our way of life, can turn on us.

One, entitled “Something’s Poisoning America’s Land. Farmers Fear ‘Forever’ Chemicals,” discussed how fertilizer made from city sewage sludge is loaded with toxic contaminants. The fertilizer is used on vast areas of American farmland. The chemicals, now turning up in produce, are suspected of sickening or killing livestock, and possibly the farmers themselves. Because of their longevity, the contaminants are known as “forever chemicals.” Individual farms and entire agricultural industries are threatened.

The second article, “Climate Change Can Cause Bridges to ‘Fall Apart Like Tinkertoys,’ Experts Say,” discusses how temperatures higher than infrastructure is designed for can cause collapse.

The first article is yet another example of how technology attacks us physically, in this case by poisoning our food. The second illustrates how it attacks us financially, adding ever more costs to maintaining our society.

The assault is relentless and growing. The spewing of greenhouse gasses heats up our atmosphere and our oceans causing ever greater floods and fires, rising sea levels, the death of coral reefs and much more. Plastics permeate everywhere and everything and we have little knowledge about what they may be up to.

An article in Smithsonian Magazine, reports that millions of new chemicals are synthesized every year and science is falling woefully behind in testing them. According to Emily Bernhardt, biogeochemist at Duke University, “The amount and diversity of pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other industrial chemicals that humans are releasing into the environment are increasing at rates that match or exceed recent increases in CO2 emissions. … But … we’re not spending anywhere near the amount of attention or money that we should be to assess their impacts.”

Our most important commodity, water, is in increasingly short supply. Almost two thirds of the world’s population experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. Irrigation is seriously draining aquifers and rivers already under stress from global warming.

We Earthlings are fouling our nest. Quite aside from blowing ourselves up with nuclear weapons or simply exhausting the planet’s resources, one wonders if one day, perhaps in the not too distant future, we will be simply overwhelmed, physically or financially or both, by our own technology. Some chemical or combination of chemicals, or even artificial intelligence that’s smarter than we are, may start to kill us off. Or dealing with the ever increasing costs of environmental disaster may bankrupt us.

The answer to avoiding that sorry end is bringing nature to the fore, to the top of every list. Governments must prioritize environmental considerations in every policy and program.

Our civilization depends entirely on the environment—100 percent. And yes, that includes the economy. It isn’t a matter of balancing one against the other. If we are to sustain our civilization in the manner to which we have been accustomed, if we are to leave a sustainable civilization for our heirs, the environment must come first.

Do we have the intelligence and wisdom to do that? Do our leaders? Some do, but perhaps too many don’t. We can easily draw up a long list of those who clearly do not, starting in my home province of Alberta.

Maybe our luck will hold, maybe we will somehow muddle our way through indefinitely. No species lasts forever, in any case. Perhaps the best we can hope for is a good run.