Although I called for a new type of technology, I did not discuss why and how technological change happened. This is, in many ways, the key ongoing question.
As I mentioned, there are several ways to think of technology. The one is the "Leninist" view in which technology is a neutral, objective force of production that can be turned to either progressive or oppressive ends depending upon the form of the society in which it is used. To put this in other words, technology is a matter of quantitative efficiency - a "better" technology is one that can produce more output at a lower cost.
In this view, it is possible to mitigate (or even end) climate change by continuing to use the same basic technologies while modifying our social forms. For example, we could swap incandescent light-bulbs for CFLs, and minivans for Priuses, essentially preserving our technology by slightly changing our society's attitudes towards conservation.
Associated with this first view is the paradigm of technological progress. If technology is conceived of first and foremost as a matter of efficiency, it makes sense that technological changes will lead (naturally or inevitably) to better use of our dwindling resources. This, for example, animates research into carbon-capture-and-storage techniques, which seek to preserve coal-fired power plants by storing the CO2 they generate in underground reservoirs. (Never mind that we do not know whether stored CO2 will remain "captive".)
In short, the "Leninist" view of technological change allows us to expect that current trends in industrial technology will deliver a solution to our climate change and other ecological problems.
Unfortunately, recent evidence shows that the trend has been towards greater energy-intensity for more advanced technologies, not less:
Techno-optimists believe that we can innovate our way out of the fundamental resource constraints that threaten to strangle the Industrial Revolution. And why not? The record of technological progress over the past couple of centuries -- or past couple of decades -- is astounding. Add a few hundred million hustling Chinese and Indian engineers and scientists to the global mix, and I have no doubt that my children will be just as boggled by what their children take for granted as I am by their own smart-phone/wi-fi/YouTube existence. Solar-powered smart-grid-connected electric cars riding on the California highway, here we come.
But technological progress ain't cheap. In fact, according to the MIT scientists who authored "Thermodynamic Analysis of Resources Used in Manufacturing Processes," published in the January issue of Environmental Science & Technology, (found via Energy Bulletin), the further up the chain of advanced manufacturing technology you go, the more energy you use, as measured by "electrical work per unit of material processed." (US News & World Report has a nice summary of the research here.)
So what we might think of as the classic standbys of old-school manufacturing -- machining, injection molding, metal melting for casting -- actually are less costly in terms of electricity consumption than new school sensations like semiconductor manufacturing and nanomaterial processing. Indeed, write the authors, "It is apparent that electricity use per unit of material processed has increased enormously over the past several decades."
This trend has particularly strong implications for the advanced materials that we expect to dig us out of the carbon hole. Producing computers, which promise cheaper communication and a new virtual economy, turns out to have a massive carbon bill. Solar cells, which promise to end carbon-based energy production, are massively energy-intensive to fabricate. As a result, we could theoretically find ourselves within an energy "bottleneck", in which it is impossible to produce enough energy-efficient technologies to mitigate climate change without drastically worsening it.
So we turn to the second view of technology: The "Benjaminian" perspective, in which technology constitutes our relationship to nature and with each other. If we adopt this view, it becomes clear that technology differs not just in its efficiency but in the type of relationship that it embodies. Technology can be a relationship of mastery or exploitation - or perhaps one of partnership and cooperation.
In this view, technological change is path-dependent. If we start with technology that seeks to exploit or master nature (and humanity) and incrementally improve its efficiency, we will not end up with industries that are qualitatively different. And qualitative difference - i.e. reforging the spear that wounded us - is what is needed. It makes no sense to solve a crisis caused by over-exploitation of our habitat by exploiting it in a slightly different way.
How can we accomplish this "reforging", then? If technology is a relationship between man and nature, and such relationships are by definition social, we see that we must reforge society as well. This leads us into a variety of complex questions. Chiefly: Do changes in technology precipitate changes in society, or vice versa? (My answer would be: Both. Sometimes new technology leads to new models of social organization - for example, the Internet - and sometimes changes to society bring forth new technologies - which is the Marxist account of technological change brought about by proletarianization and factory labor.)
In short, we cannot expect technological change to bring about the environmental results that we need without (a) an unexpected jump onto a different "path" of technology or (b) radical social/political changes that demand fundamentally different relationships with nature and with each other. We can't expect the change we need to simply emerge fully-formed from GM's R&D labs.
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