This is ridiculous, because it's proven that any effects on the environment will certainly effect us directly or indecently. "Humans became oppressive and even destructive of other life forms. Alienation from the natural world increased, and new ideals of human well-being neglected the needs of other living species" (9). Humans are a part of nature, no matter how advanced we think we are.
This separation from nature coupled with the never-ending quest for human "progress," has led to the crippling of nature itself. In this industrial age we are consuming more resources than the earth can replenish. This is a huge problem, because once these resources are gone, they aren't coming back. "The human being now finds that the harm done to the natural world is returning to threaten the human species itself" (9).
And what exactly is it that requires all these resources? Humans waste resources in such huge quantities over simple comforts. These comforts will eventually come back to be the end of us if we keep up in the patterns. "At the present time the human community has such an exaggerated, even pathological, fixation on its own comfort and convenience that it is willing to exhaust any and all of the earth's resources to satisfy its own cravings" (9). It is this mass hysteria of consumption that ravages the earth of it's resources. This is yet another example of how humans have a distance from nature; no species living inside nature would willingly use up all of its options for resources with the knowledge of doing so.
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Thomas Berry also makes a plea to change the definition of the word progress. The word progress brings thoughts of technological breakthroughs, advances in medicine, etc. These are basic commodities that make life for humans a little easier. The problem with this is that all of these advances are destroying the health of the world. So there is a hypocrisy in the definition of the word.