摘要：With the state of the art technologies, human race as well as other species on earth is victimized by air and water pollution and threatened by hazardous nuclear wastes. Acid rain, global warming, ozone depletion have become part of daily household vocabulary. Environmental sustainability based on technology-to-date is pessimistic. Emerging molecular nanotechnology in all industrial fronts, such as nanoelectronics, nanobiotechnology, nanomaterial, nanoenergy etc., offer radical tools for human society for the first time to be on the upper hand in the struggle towards sustainable economic growth. Furthermore, it will have extra capacities for human civilization not only to remediate environmental liabilities accumulated since industrial revolution of 18th century, but also to produce unlimited material and energy with ultra green processes. This paper traces the causes of sustainability problems and diagnosis of the defects of current industrial manufacturing processes in the light of molecular nanotechnology. It also analyzes and extrapolates the prospect of additional capabilities that man may gain from the development of nanotechnology that has the potential to ascertain environmental sustainability, restore global environment while we still enjoy the abundance of material and energy.
