In his 2008 book Common Wealth, economist Jeffrey Sachs argues that environmental pressures on the planet from human activity boil down to the following equation:
I = P * A * T
I is Environmental Impact, P is Population, A is Average Wealth, and T is Negative Effect of Current Technology.
This equation represents the three principal factors that negatively affect the environment: population growth, economic growth, and growth of dirty technologies (polluting factories or cars, for example). Sachs argues that, in a world where poorer countries are rapidly accumulating wealth (a fact that should be celebrated), we must control population growth and learn to adopt environmentally sustainable technologies in order to limit our environmental impact. With rapid demographic change expected to stabilize the world population within one hundred years, a technological revolution, Sachs claims, is the key to saving our planet.
I strongly agree with Sachs that technology is vital for our future survival. Here in Brazil, old trucks roam the highways belching out long tailwinds of dirty exhaust, creating a haze of smog around cities. The scene is reminiscent of Los Angeles of old, until regulations introducing air pollution controls began to make cars, trucks and factories significantly cleaner. In dealing with water and air pollution, environmentally-friendly technology has already demonstrated its use. And with energy supplies dwindling and the threat of global warming looming on the horizon, mankind is beginning to put more and more effort into developing carbon sequestration techniques, solar power, electric cars, and all sorts of other technologies that we will need to save us from impending catastrophe. Sustainable technologies are pivotal for us to continue growing and developing as a society while limiting our future impact on the planet.
However, I believe it is misguided for us to look to technology as our savior. Simply put, even the most sustainable technologies depend on continued exploitation of natural resources that lead to the dangerous extractive capitalist approach I discussed in my last post. Take energy storage, for example. Humanity has a lot riding on the potential of renewable energy: using natural, unlimited supplies of wind, sunlight, and underground heat to store energy into electric form and then transmitting it to battery-powered appliances like computers, telephones, and in the future, cars. But what are these batteries made of? Lithium, an underground mineral currently known to exist in several large deposits across the world, primarily in Bolivia and Afghanistan. Our idea, then, to save us from dwindling energy supplies is to begin to extract this new mineral in ever-increasing quantities. This brings us back to the original danger of extractive capitalism, plundering our natural resources in ever-increasing quantities until we completely despoil our natural environment and use up the resource. And that’s without even mentioning the steel, iron, aluminum, rubber, and other materials necessary to produce many of these energy-transmitting products. Even though solar energy may be infinitely more appealing than dirty coal, it is still not a technology that we can truly call 100% sustainable.
Adopting sustainable technologies will not save us from our dependence on extraction. The problem is much larger than the one Sachs describes, and one that we ignore at our own peril.
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