Jacques Cousteau co-invented the Aqualung, a technological breakthrough. He later came to regret it:
Today I see what profiteering SCUBA divers do with the Aqualung - using it to enable themselves to shatter coral reefs and sell the fragments as souvenirs; to scour underwater grottos of every last fish, snatching all creatures out of the hiding places in which they had escaped fishermen’s nets. Now that I understand, I am not sure that the good the apparatus can do outweighs the bad. Could I turn back time, I do not know whether I would participate in the invention of the Aqualung again. (Quoted from The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus, by Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein, New York: Bloomsbury USA. 2007. p. 204.)
Economics has a sly disproportionate arithmetic. Each new invention is an overall plus on an individual cost-benefit basis. But a thousand new inventions are, on a group cost-benefit basis, a regrettable minus.
A century of inventions, all cost-benefit desirable, has brought us global warming.
For a brief biography of Jacques Cousteau, click here. For a brief biography of Susan Schiefelbein, click here. For an explanation of cost-benefit analysis, click here.
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