There’s No App For That

There’s No App For That: why technology is ineffective without emotional awakening – by Pat Kane and Indra Adnan.

A wise blog post by environmental thinker Richard Heinberg of the Post-Carbon Institute, with the excellently blunt title, “Why Climate Change Isn’t Our Biggest Environmental Problem, and Why Technology Won’t Save Us” (link).

Heinberg’s point – similar to those from the Dark Mountain Project – is that we have to accept that damaging climate change is coming – and particularly we shouldn’t fool ourselves that a technofix is right around the corner. To push this case, Heinberg has written a manifesto, “There’s No App For That”, which the video above promotes.

Richard sets out below what might be a better response (link):

“Why didn’t the environmental movement fully succeed? Some theorists now calling themselves “bright greens” or “eco-modernists” have abandoned the moral fight altogether. Their justification for doing so is that people want a vision of the future that’s cheery and that doesn’t require sacrifice. Now, they say, only a technological fix offers any hope. The essential point of this essay (and my manifesto) is simply that, even if the moral argument fails, a techno-fix won’t work either. A gargantuan investment in technology (whether next-generation nuclear power or solar radiation geo-engineering) is being billed as our last hope. But in reality it’s no hope at all.

The reason for the failure thus far of the environmental movement wasn’t that it appealed to humanity’s moral sentiments—that was in fact the movement’s great strength. The effort fell short because it wasn’t able to alter industrial society’s central organizing principle, which is also its fatal flaw: its dogged pursuit of growth at all cost. Now we’re at the point where we must finally either succeed in overcoming growthism or face the failure not just of the environmental movement, but of civilization itself.

The good news is that systemic change is fractal in nature: it implies, indeed it requires, action at every level of society. We can start with our own individual choices and behavior; we can work within our communities. We needn’t wait for a cathartic global or national sea change. And even if our efforts cannot “save” consumerist industrial civilization, they could still succeed in planting the seeds of a regenerative human culture worthy of survival.

There’s more good news: once we humans choose to restrain our numbers and our rates of consumption, technology can assist our efforts. Machines can help us monitor our progress, and there are relatively simple technologies that can help deliver needed services with less energy usage and environmental damage. Some ways of deploying technology could even help us clean up the atmosphere and restore ecosystems.

But machines won’t make the key choices that will set us on a sustainable path. Systemic change driven by moral awakening: it’s not just our last hope; it’s the only real hope we’ve ever had.”

More here.

This article is by Pat Kane and Indra Adnan and first published at The Alternative.

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