Discussion Question 4

I love technology. Mostly, it makes our lives easier and more convenient-- I don't have to walk everywhere I go because I can drive; I don't have to write a letter and send it through the mail to contact someone who lives more than a few blocks away because I can call or email them; nor do I have to brave the summer heat and the winter cold because I have air-conditioning and heating. And it's not just these big, life-changing technologies that I'm a fan of.  I love my laptop, which I use to entertain myself constantly, and I often feel as though I couldn't live without my phone because without it I feel so disconnected from the outside world. I am, in the best sense of the word, addicted to technology and its conveniences, as are so many others who live a similar lifestyle. 


But I feel so guilty about my addiction. What I have been lucky to realize (because so many don't) is that technology isn't just a positive force in our lives: every new technology that is created to solve an old problem brings with it new problems. Cars are really convenient, but they use obscene amounts of non-renewable fossil fuels and they emit obscene amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The general infrastructure of energy and power that supports my lifestyle is pumping toxins into the environment, but it sure is nice to have a well-lit dorm room and a working refrigerator. So to the people who espouse that technology is going to save us from the environmental disaster we have created, I say think about it. It's technology that got us here in the first place. It's technology that has allowed us to inflict so much damage on the environment on such a large scale. Without mechanization and industrialization, there's no way we could ever have achieved such large ecological footprints as we have today. "Green" technologies sometimes have the right idea, but even there we face the same dilemma as before--that is, new green technologies solving old environmental issues but creating new ones. For example, many environmentalists support the development of biofuels and bio-diesels made from agricultural products like corn and soybeans to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. But this increases demand for those products so much so that farmers are clear-cutting large swaths of forest in, for example, the Brazilian Amazon, to plant soybean crops and earn a profit. Here, in trying to reduce carbon emissions through a new green technology, we are risking causing the loss of enough trees to reduce the planet's ability to suck up the carbon we're already emitting. 


So no, technology won't save us from this environmental nightmare, and it risks making things worse than they already are.