The Technofix

This is an idea that came up in What a Way to Go. It boils down to, we don’t have to worry about the damage we’re doing, all the toxic, non-biodegradable waste we’re spewing, because new technologies are emerging quickly, and soon we’ll be able to clean everything up.

Bullshit. It’s a relocation of the problem.

People have argued that electric cars aren’t really a solution, because they’re just drawing their fuel from a centralized coal-fired power plant rather than burning their own fossil fuels internally. Which is a valid point, and let’s follow that back further. So we substitute the coal-fired plant for something else. Nuclear plants are a stopgap, nothing more. They’re cleaner than coal, but that’s not really saying much, is it? No matter how much they’re cleaned up, they still create waste heat and toxics. Solar and wind are clean, but what about manufacturing the equipment to generate wind or solar power? How much damage do those processes cause? (I honestly don’t know the answer to that, but it can’t possibly be zero.) If there’s any long-term hope to be gained, it’ll be from that kind of renewable/sustainable, fewer-moving-parts kind of techniques, but it still doesn’t eliminate the problem, it just relocates it.

Another similar example is papercrete. The only problem is that the adhesive used to hold it all together is portland cement, the production of which, according to the article (scroll down to The green question), accounts for 6-8% of all the anthropogenic greenhouses gases these days. It doesn’t solve the problem, it just changes the face of it.

The problem is that on one hand our existing technology is racing as fast as it can to run us into the ground. On the other hand, the technology that we’re developing now is trying to mitigate, eliminate, clean up, etc. all of our past mistakes, but without actually fixing things. This is only a viable solution if we’re gaining ground, if we’re able to postpone the crash until we can pull out of the dive. I don’t buy it.

The gripping hand is that there is no “technofix”, that further technology will not solve our problems. The answer is less technology, less waste - not more of it, just in a different way.

Which leads to the real problem. People are so addicted to their technology that they literally can’t imagine not having it. When I tell people that it’s been over half my life since I quit watching TV, they’re often amazed, and say that they couldn’t do that. I’ve caught similar thoughts floating through my own head regarding my cell phone and the internet, but at the same time, I recognize that that’s all just a function of the lifestyle I’m living these days. If I were to relocate myself, not just geographically, but my position in the world, to where I’d like to be, I could easily do away with it all and not miss it.

It was a similar transition that got me to quit watching TV (shortly after I turned 13) – it wasn’t a conscious decision, I just started spending all my time on the computer. I found something else to occupy my time and brainpower. Granted, that transition was to more technology, rather than less, but that’s beside the point. It’s not a question of giving something up, it’s a question of pursuing what you really want.

Which leads me into another topic completely, so I’ll end this post now, and pick that up sometime later.