While the writer of this passage — a technology developer at Inventerprise (http://www.inventerprise.com) — has no problem with doing things better, the notion that human-wrought destruction of the earth is a technological issue makes as much sense as saying that child abuse is a technological issue.
Specifically, if we create new and better technologies for energy production, storage and distribution, for example, that advance will simply free us up to use more energy, build more things, consume more of our other resources, and destroy more of our fellow species.
We will simply destroy the earth and its other inhabitants even more fuel-efficiently than we do now.
To apply the analogy, a child-abuser can abuse children with a new high-tech knife just as fully as she can with the old, low-tech knife.
What Technology Has Never Done and Will Never Do
The real environmental problem — which improved technology will do precisely nothing alleviate — is more accurately described as a philosophical or moral one. In particular, as long as human beings believe that we can consume with impunity and that the earth and its other inhabitants exist to serve us, no amount of technological “padding” can blunt the destructive effects of this point-of-view.
In fact, the better the technology, the more wholesale the destruction.
Pointing Fingers: Economic Fallacies
At least one major component of the point-of-view that will, left unchecked, ultimately render this planet uninhabitable by humans is the component installed by modern economics. Specifically, the nearly universal modern economic notion that consumption is a good thing — coupled with the originally Keynesian view that “thrift” is largely a bad thing — is truly a beast that has no bounds. This notion — praise the consumer, praise the spending, praise the waste — will either destroy us or be destroyed by us.
Meanwhile, technology — while useful for some purposes—will do nothing but feed this beast. That’s why the real battle for environmental preservation is being fought today, not by engineers and inventors, but by philosophers and theorists. In the process, this latter group must draw heavily upon the insights, not of physicists and chemists, but of psychologists, sociologists, and spiritual and religious thinkers.
Unlikely Heroes (if There Are to Be Any Heroes)
It should be an interesting era. Today’s environmental contest may be the first time in history when — if the war gets won — the list of war heroes will not include any fearless fighters but will instead be almost entirely comprised of “sensitive” types. The paradoxical poet-warrior-hero. . . .
But that twist is fitting: If we don’t win this war, there won’t be any more wars to fight.
S.E. Harrison is the author of “Plutonomics: A Unified Theory of Wealth.” (http://wordpress.com/plutonomics).
