Maybe, in fact, the next chapter will be more benign with fewer unintended consequences than the shift from whale oil to fossil fuel.
Compared with Gove's recent snarl about public sector workers – "militants itching for a fight" – it was positively benign, with no angry facial contortion involved.
The figure of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, grows increasingly benign with each successive Gospel; the Jewish enemy is framed in ever more hostile rhetoric.
Their overall conclusion is that greater inequality in society strongly retards economic growth, while redistribution is "largely benign", with only very extreme redistribution programmes having some negative effect.
Forced abandonment of drilling rigs typically happens a couple of times a hurricane season, although the 2009 season was relatively benign, with little disruption.
Of these terms, chronic and acute have to do with the duration of a disease, malignant and benign with its potentiality for causing death.
We are lucky that our climate is relatively benign, with no great extremes, massive tornadoes or hurricanes, although with climate change accelerating, the likelihood of disastrous weather events, such as major flooding, is on the increase.
Even in the woods of Maine, which has nothing close to intense sunlight, a home could be largely energy-independent and environmentally benign with about 220 square feet of solar panels and enough land to grow firewood.
At higher values of the ratio, the autoignition can be benign with only small over-pressures.
The prognosis of spontaneous pneumomediastinum is invariably benign, with adverse outcomes attributable to the precipitating cause.
On ultrasound, most lesions appear benign with thin, well-circumscribed margins; the internal appearance may be homogeneous with low level echoes or heterogeneous, depending on its contents.
