Faith in technology


diverts us from successfully addressing ecological challenges


The low-carbon dream


Many of us claim to be concerned about the environment but to really be sustainable we need to shift our thinking from a blind faith in technology to a deeper understanding of the links between our lifestyles and the environment argues Professor Tim Jackson


S


ustainability doesn’t come naturally to the human species, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins once remarked. His implication was that somehow it’s our


collective patterns of behaviour that are leading us astray, our natural aspirations for the good life that divert us inevitably from success in addressing ecological challenges. It’s certainly tempting to agree with this idea, as


we ponder the failure of decades of environmental policy to make headway on climate change, deforestation, species loss, fish stocks, resource depletion. In the years since 1990 (the Kyoto baseline year), global carbon dioxide emissions actually increased by over 40 per cent, to take just one example. And this happened despite another characteristic of the human species: our undoubted technological ingenuity. Faith in technology is probably our single most


obvious ‘backstop’ belief. If all else fails, we are a clever species, right? We have extraordinary powers


14 SOCIETY NOW SUMMER 2011


of creativity and innovation. So when it comes to saving our vision of social progress in the face of declining environmental qualities, it’s our own technological capability that we reach for. But the implications of Dawkins’ remark suggest that technology alone just isn’t enough. And this is a conclusion we should already have drawn if we’d paid enough attention to the historical evidence. To be sure, the average energy intensity of global economic activity decreased by a third across the world in the last three decades – as we might expect in an economy that prizes efficiency. But these predictable efficiency improvements just didn’t deliver reductions in energy use – or carbon emissions. As we’ve seen, the opposite happened. The truth is, without paying attention to the dynamics of society, to the logic and story of people’s lives, it’s impossible to differentiate realistic hopes for sustainability from a simplistic


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32