Technology - Joanna

I have always been a firm believer in technology; I find it fascinating and exhilarating to hear about all of these new ideas and creations. It blows my mind sometimes when I hear about the kinds of things that have been thought of and created. Why wouldn’t I believe that technology will save our planet, it brought us the cars, foods and merchandise that have allowed me to live such a comfortable life without any effort. If it did this much for me, why wouldn’t it be able to do the same for our earth! However that is the paradox of technology, while it is so amazing and fulfilling it is equally detrimental. For every solution there is a new set of problems that comes with it that lead me to believe that maybe life would be better if we just went back to simple, peasant everyone has their own small gardens and farm times.

So I have come to believe that as much as technology is sublime and godlike it will not save us. However I also think that it has to because it is just not possible to turn back the clock and become the living off the land type people again. I would fear the effects of an angry population that was told they could not buy the new hummer or explorer. Technology will not save us, but it will be able to reduce our footprint, it is ultimately a change in consumer habits that will save us. Technology is not going to be able to be a quick fix for our spills and that is clearly evident today. The oil spills in the gulf still sit today, just rotting the oceans. Technology saving us would be clean energy, clean cars or some form of transportation and ultimately clean consumer actions.

Lessons from Ozone Depletion

The idea that technology will save us is comforting, but it is false. I'm speaking from a Neo-Malthusian perspective, and I truly believe that there are limits to population and resource use and that we will not be able to avoid them forever. If technology could save us, that would mean that it would have to allow us to grow past our limits indefinitely. That is simply not possible.

That is not to say that I think technology is bad. I think it can do great things to improve our lives, and it can be modified to reduce its environmental impact. But no matter what we do, technology will impact the planet through energy use, resource use, or pollution. There is unfortunately no way to stop this. Even "green" technology isn't free of its impact. This means that to be truly sustainable, we need to look beyond technological innovation.

I have previously used ozone depletion as an example in a posting because it is so explicitly a demonstration of the failure of technology. The CFCs and ozone depleting substances were being used because of technology, and no improvements in technology were changing it. The only thing that has been able to prevent their use is international agreements with binding force. The belief that technology will rescue us from our limits is too cornucopian in nature, and the only way to survive on this planet is to respect our environmental limits. As our experience with ozone depletion shows us, unregulated technological expansion can hurt the planet, and institutionalism seems to be one of the best remedies.

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. 

Ariel's Post

I agree that technology has the potential to help alleviate (although by no means be a “magic solution” to) our environmental crisis. I support efforts to find more eco-friendly solutions for everything from obsessive fossil fuel usage to less and more biodegradable product-packaging solutions. However, with our society’s addiction to consumption, I wonder whether or not technology will ultimately help our crisis or worsen it. We may be attempting to build wind farms, but aren’t we also attempting to own a cooler cell phone every year and a new iPod every few Christmases and a better digital camera every once in a while?

I guess my concern lies not in the fact that technology is increasing, but in the worry that we aren’t making the most of our intellectual capacity. I fear we are only using our technologically inclined minds to increase our consumption— exactly the kind of thing the I=PAT equation proposes we reduce. If you want to buy into the idea that technology will someday save us from the environmental crisis (and I’m not even personally saying that I buy into that), you have to wonder: What happens in the meantime? What happens when the technologically inclined society that might create a cleaner car is the very same technologically inclined society that produces a million pairs of $100 ripped jeans every five minutes and makes you falsely feel like your $1,000 laptop needs to be replaced every year?

I feel like this concern is mirrored in the issue of stratospheric ozone depletion. One of the main causes of ozone depletion was CFCs in consumer aerosol cans. If you buy into the idea: Yes, technology might save us, but it will also inevitably convince us of the “problems” we have and come up with “solutions” to make our lives “easier.” Because isn’t non-aerosol hairspray such a pain to apply? I mean really, having to push a button multiple times when you could just push it once?

We might not have known then what we were doing, but we know now. So, let’s fix it.

"Aren't We Clever?" Response

The U.S. certainly is at risk of losing a "green race" with China by failing to capitalize on the new market for green technology. We will indeed lose out on opportunities to stimulate the economy by creating green jobs if we do not start acting now. But even winning the race to create green jobs and technology would not be a sufficient solution for the many environmental problems we face today.


That is to say that I don't agree with the notion that the technological innovation is the best way to address climate change. Friedman's thinking is distinctly cornucopian: advances in technology will let us "do more with less," and such improvements in efficiency can mitigate climate change. I, on the other hand, prescribe to a more Neo-Malthusian school of thought (as has most likely become apparent through my blog posts and essay). I do not believe that technology can mitigate climate change on its own, and I do not view environmental issues through an economic or market lens. Instead, I see the answer in the I=PAT equation: we must reduce population, affluence, and our dependence on technological infrastructure severely before we will see any significant reduction of climate change. Certainly, improving the efficiency of our resource use is good for the environment (Biddle's above-ground mining is an excellent idea) and government regulation of producers (as in the example given of enacting producer-responsibility laws in which manufacturers are responsible for collecting and recycling their products) is a necessary step for reducing climate change. These are all good things. But they are simply not enough given the vast amounts of damage that have already been done. If we are to reverse climate change, we will have to do much, much more than improve our technology in some kind of green race with China. We will have to minimize consumption through greatly decreasing population, affluence, and our reliance on technology to counteract the climate change that has already occurred.

Green Race - Joanna

The first words that come to my mind when reading this article are regulation and government intervention. American Society has taken pride in its “freedoms” to let the markets control themselves and to not have government telling them what to do. I feel like this green race would be doing just that. Making a country greener requires government to implement laws that do not allow companies to work the way they want and people to live the way they want. For example I do not think the one child rule that is in effect in China would work in the United States. If someone told people that they were only allowed to have 1 child people would riot. However in China people feel like it is their duty to uphold laws like that. It is simply a difference in opinions towards the government.

I definitely think it makes sense to consider there to be a race between China and the US because they race in everything. Ever since China’s economy has boomed I think the US have felt threatened and are constantly competing. I also agree that technology is a big part of the future of “green” living and this goes back into the point I made above about telling people what to do. I do not think that one-day everyone in the world or even US will wake up and think I am going to be as energy efficient as I possibly can from now on. I will recycle, use less water, use less energy and so on. Therefore yes I place most of my faith in technology because I think the only way US people will become green is if they can maintain their easy lifestyles as well, being green takes work and focus. It is also the manufacturing industry that creates a lot of the pollution so refocusing our energies on making their industries better for the environment is a very important factor in a green world.

However I think that we need to refocus everything. It is not just technology that will save us but the entire cycle, reducing, reusing and recycling. Just merely being conscious of your actions what they do and all together invested in keeping the world alive.

Are Green Jobs the Answer?

Green jobs are, of course, important for sustainability. Better technology that can reduce human impact will always be an improvement over the status quo technology. In this respect, Friedman is correct that America is lagging behind other countries, such as China, in our progress. But that is not the whole story.

The assumption that green jobs will be the key to preventing climate change, which seems to be Friedman's main focus in his article, is not accurate. That does not mean that they are unimportant or that it is ok that America is stalling the effort to move towards green jobs. But we should not put all our faith in technology. Technology cannot solve an environmental problem in its entirety. It can merely delay the issue and postpone the limits of the planet. This is something that we need so we have more time to find the solution, but we should not confuse it for the solution itself.

As an example, in the 1970s, ozone depletion became recognized as a serious issue. There were no 'clean' CFCs that solved the problem. The only solution available was an international agreement. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (which entered into force on January 1, 1989) bound nations to make substantial changes in policy to ban CFCs and other ozone depleting substances. These substances are now under more control, and the levels of many of these substances are decreasing. Ozone levels are expected to stabilize by mid-century. This internationally binding agreement is what is ultimately required to achieve sustainability. While green jobs and competition between nations may help set us on the right track, we will need more to make a significant difference.

Source: ozone.unep.org