Our Environmental Crutch: Technology

The general perceived notion that technology, to many, can serve as the saviour to our current environmental crisis is, in my opinion, wholly unfounded. As evidence mounts of our negative impact on the environment, and the problems these impacts are causing, many find relief in the fact that we have a continually expanding and developing technological base to which we can turn to to absorb this detriment our human activity is imposing upon the environment. To see our technological capacity, despite its impressiveness and applicability in our global economy, as a solution to ecological degradation, is in turn relying on the "path of least resistance". I believe many people choose to believe that technology will solve our issues because they are simply too lazy or defiant to see the actual solutions to environmental destruction, which involve changing our current behaviour and lifestyle choices. Technology, in this light, is the easiest answer to inducing any environmental improvement/change. In this regard, the general public/citizenry choose to support the application of technology to our environmental crisis as the primary answer to stopping or slowing our impact on the planet.

To this end, it is important to analyze the effect technology has had on our planet thus far. While the increasingly innovative technological industry has created more efficient means of production, which is a form of energy-saving and thus a positive in terms of environmental impact, the outcome of this increased efficiency can have negative effects as well. Although an increase in production efficiency can be seen to decrease our environmental harm, by requiring less energy input resulting in greater output, in both goods and services, the means necessary to achieve such increases often entail some further detrimental output. An example of such supplemental impact of increased efficiency as a result of technology use is an increase in the materials required to create these technological bases, some of which contain toxic chemicals that when disposed of, actually harm the environment. Although this is only one possible negative effect of technological utility, seemingly outweighed by the positive effects of increased efficiency and decreased energy levels, it plays to the fact that our adaption of technology for environmental benefit is not without consequences. Furthermore, the possible benefits of technology more often than not do not counterbalance our impact on the planet as a result of our behavioural and consumption trends.

There have been countless demonstrations serving to the fact that we cannot use technology as our "environmental crutch", as the answer to our otherwise negative impact on the planet. In my opinion, the only way which we as global citizens can effectively slow our impact on the planet/the environment is through a revision of our current lifestyles, by refining our overconsumption in all capacities. Technology cannot outweigh our exponentially growing population, or our excessive consumption patterns. It simply is not capable of advancing in a manner fast enough to counteract our consumption and population growth, the other two elements of McKibben's "I=PAT" equation. This inherent fact is demonstrated in Anand's piece regarding stratospheric ozone pollution, in which he details the detrimental effects that resulted from our reliance on CFCs and other Ozone Depleting Substances (ODSs). Initially, CFCs were regarded as a revolutionary way of creating products such as hairspray, refrigerator coolant, and other aerosol products. North America dominated the CFC market, leading to a worldwide demand for CFC-produced substances, because they were cheaper than other substance-creation methods in this regard. Environmental analysis and research on ozone layers in the atmosphere, and its intended depletion over regions such as Antarctica, where ozone layers and less abundant than the layers above more equatorial climates, created queries as to the causes of such ozone removal. CFCs, upon further inspection, were the culprit in this environmental degradation, and alternatives to the once technological/market favorite were discovered and later implemented instead. This also proves the negative impact our seemingly efficient and more economic technological creations can have on the environment without our knowledge, all the while creating a seemingly eco-friendly and economically efficient solution in the short term.

Technology is only effective as a means for short term environmental detrimental prevention. In order to reduce our impact in the long-term, we must look at our human behavioural trends and modify them to reduce our eco-footprint.

It is time to be proactive!

I do not think that technology will be the only thing to save us, but I do think that it can have important benefits. I still chuckle each time in class when you talk about throwing giant mirrors into space and reflecting some of the harmful UV rays back towards the universe. This kind of technology to me sounds absurd, and of course, it is. Yet I also see a good and positive space for technology that would really be able to make a contribution to this planet. This could include car engines, making them run more and more efficiently. Also, the metro system has much room to improve, and could be made to run off much less electricity. However, I am even skeptical of thinking that we can have positive technological change. Researchers and scientists have been looking for the cure to cancer for decades now, with no avail.

It often seems to me that we are kidding ourselves to wait for an end-all solution; something that will stop the environmental damages to this planet with one simple invention. I do not think that environmental researchers are being given enough funding to pursue this kind of research, especially in the face of medical research paid for by large pharmaceutical companies. Who is paying for environmental research, Green Peace? So, with all this in mind, I think it is important to focus on the technologies we currently have to make little steps, and do as much else as we can in different arenas to end environmental degradation. Simply waiting for a technological cure will not be enough. We are going to need institutional changes, consumer changes and economic changes. So, for the purposes of this discussion I do not think that technology will save us, it has not yet! For the environment, that means that technological optimists should focus their energies in with the bio-environmentalists or social greens. Their call to technology is doing no good for this planet. In many cases, it has the opposite effect. The reading for Tuesday’s class demonstrates this with the rise of CFC use around the planet. Our superior technology finally backfired, after a large hole was noticed in the ozone in the 1970’s. Scientists had thought they found the premier aerosol, refrigerant substance in chlorofluorocarbons and other halons. We began pumping them into everything from refrigerators to hairspray. Then this technology was distributed around the world. So while the Northern countries had primary fault for the depleting ozone, developing countries were also starting to emit CFC’s into the atmosphere.

In this case, research was missing between the invention stage and the implementation stage. No one tested the harmful effects of CFC’s on the environment in a proper way, and thus their effects could have been life altering. I think this reading has shown us that technology needs to be tested thoroughly before being implemented. It also shows us the negative effects of technology in many cases. When it comes to the environment we cannot afford to procrastinate, and wait for technology to save us. What is going to save us are wide institutional changes, consumer and consumption changes and economic changes. While I do feel that technology can have a small, positive role in this process, I think that waiting for technology overall is irrational. As a planet we need to focus on what we can do now, not what may never even occur in the future. It is time to be proactive!

The Inefficiency of Technology

Before discussing the "saving powers" of technology, let it be acknowledged that technology was what fouled us up in the first place. According to the IPAT equation, technology is "our capacity to use the planet," which is a technical an abbreviated way of referring to the human innovation which allows for more Joules per capita to be expended than mere muscle can account for. Our selfish (and mostly unnecessary) domination and overuse of the planet's primary productivity--as Manning is fond of calling it--is a result of mankind's use of technology to selectively and inefficiently monopolize the Earth's productivity potential.

To be blunt, technology will not save us. At least, not in a way that could preserve the romanticists view of our world and have our population of six billion and growing "return" to the level of impact on the planet of ages past--a level which preserves biodiversity and is sustainable. When cornucopians say that technology will "save us," they mean that some technological solution will prevent mankind from wiping ourselves out by ruining the planet until it becomes irreversably unhabitable.

When people speak of improvements in technology they are likely thinking of improvements in the efficiency of our--and not just capacity to--make use of the planet's productivity. While technology may be making improvements in terms of efficiency in our use of the planet to provide for us, the overall use of the planet is as inefficient as ever.

Or experience with stratospheric ozone depletion teaches us that while technology can help fix our mistakes, it was probably the source of our woes in the first place. That is to say: sure, we were able to replace the CFCs in our air conditioners and aerosol sprays with HCFCs, but it was several decades and a large hole in the ozone later before that swap took place. In addition, it should be understood that the "technological solution" of using HCFCs is not really a solution at all--at best, we're merely polluting less than we were. "Sustainable pollution:" it's not good, but it won't kill us.