Spectral lines: `Soft' technology and the `backup gap'

Even today, antitechnology enthusiasts drive their air-poluting vehicles to convocations where they decry the very acts they themselves perform. They burn the midnight oil while suggesting that citizens grind their own coffee beans by hand - by legal edict if they will not comply voluntarily. Exaggerated? Of course. Yet a breed of environmentalist exists that is readily visualized through such a caricature.