In order to decide how to effectively use technology for a sustainable society, we need to be clear about what we are seeking. This might seem obvious, but much of how we speak about sustainability revolves around technology in ways that seem to suggest we are most concerned with sustaining the status quo.
Most of us recognise that sustainability is a journey rather than a destination. This infers that we are involved in an ongoing process of becoming more sensitively engaged with each other and the rest of nature in order to evolve better ways of living together. In this sense, sustainability may be seen as the opportunity that has always been there, illuminated by (but not directly about) the various crises confronting us.
Climate Change and Sustainable Quality of Life
Take climate change, for example, widely and fairly recognised as the pre-eminent environmental challenge. Dealing with this challenge is most commonly discussed in technical terms of increased efficiencies and the development of "renewable" energy sources. The aim is described as de-coupling our energy use from the greenhouse gas emissions primarily associated with our current use of fossil fuel based energy sources.
However, even assuming success in these terms, what of other challenges related to our energy intensive societies, such as peak oil, obesity and malnutrition, poverty and broader ecosystem collapse? Even if we succeed in maintaining our current energy intensity by "clean(er)" means, how far will we have come in sustainability and quality of life terms?
Renewable Energy
Renewable Energy technology may well be increasingly useful to us. However, windmills do not determine our values and how we choose to live together, including how much energy we use, to what end, and whether the gains are worth the costs – not merely financial, and particularly as we become more aware of them. It is interesting to note that the highest UNDP Human Development Index (HDI) rates have been found to occur with a minimum annual energy use of 110 giga-joules (GJ) per capita. This was roughly Italy's rate at the time, the lowest amongst industrialised nations and around a third of the US. There were no additional HDI gains past that point, with diminishing returns past the threshold of 40-70GJ per capita (see Vaclav Smil's 2003 Energy at the Crossroads).
In other words, we in the economically richer countries appear to have applied energy-intensive technology past the point of actually benefiting us in terms of life quality. Most importantly, we seem to have barely noticed. Our core problem is a cognitive 'blindness' to the gap between our desired ends of quality living together with the earth, and the ways in which we actually go about it (including the application of technology). The result is an array of challenging symptoms far from limited to climate change.
Social Context of Technology
When we talk about technology as the cornerstone of the sustainability journey, we fail to adequately consider its social context. We essentially treat the earth as a human-configured machine such as a car that is able to be worked upon by a spanner that directs the mechanic! When the car runs poorly, the challenge is seen as developing a more evolved spanner rather than a more evolved person or "mechanic" (ie. able to change). Thinking this way at once dis-empowers the mechanic using the spanner and de-values nature. The action is really one and the same, stemming from the failure to perceive nature (including people) as more complex and (thankfully) mysterious than machines.
Technology or anything else applied in the name of sustainability, beyond the single 'crisis' of even climate change, may be better thought about as a means of 'opening our eyes' to the gap between our desired ends of a quality of life together on the earth and the ways in which we go about it. Our task is to facilitate heightened awareness and sensitivity to the natural world in general, including the many 'crisis' signals we receive that illuminate our drift from sustainable living, in order to better guide us towards addressing them at their source, as one.
Further reading:
Vaclav Smil's 2003 Energy at the Crossroads
Written by Anthony James
