Techno-Fix

Why Technology Won't Save Us Or the Environment

Michael Huesemann, Joyce Huesemann

• Publisher: New Society Publishers
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780865717046
• eBook ISBN: 9781550924947
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy & Ethics in Science

Nanotechnology! Genetic engineering! Miracle drugs! We are promised that new technological developments will magically save us from the dire consequences of the three hundred-year fossil-fueled binge known as modern industrial civilization, without demanding any fundamental changes in our behavior. There is a pervasive belief that technological innovation will enable us to continue our current lifestyle indefinitely, and will prevent social, environmental, and economic collapse.

Techno-Fix shows that negative unintended consequences of science and technology are inherently unavoidable and predictable, techno-optimism is completely unjustified, and modern technology, in the presence of continued economic growth, does not promote sustainability, but rather, it hastens collapse. The authors demonstrate that most technological solutions to social and technology created problems are ineffective. They explore the reasons for the uncritical acceptance of new technologies, show who really controls the direction of technological change, and then advocate extensive reform.

This comprehensive exposé is a powerful argument for why we can and should put the genie back in the bottle. An insightful and powerful critique, it is required reading for anyone who is concerned about blind techno-optimism and believes that the time has come to make science and technology more socially and environmentally responsible.

Michael Huesemann, PhD, is a research scientist with a special interest in sustainability and critical science. He has specialized in environmental biotechnology for more than twenty-five years.

Joyce Huesemann, PhD, is an activist and academic who has taught at several universities and participates actively in a number of environmental, wildlife protection, and companion-animal organizations.

PART I

TECHNOLOGY AND ITS LIMITATIONS

CHAPTER 1

The Inherent Unavoidability
and Unpredictability of
Unintended Consequences

Interconnectedness

We live in a highly complex and dynamic world where, according to Barry Commoner’s insightful first law of ecology, “Everything is connected to everything else.”¹ Although we may perceive the natural environment as consisting of many different and isolated components and processes, these are all derivatives of the same cosmos, interrelated and linked together through mutual cause and effect. Science, of course, has been very successful in elucidating some of these causal relationships but, as will be discussed later, only a subset of the totality of such relationships. The fact that “all is connected to all”² has profound implications for the application of technology, particularly with respect to unintended consequences.

Interconnectedness in the natural world exists at many different levels, i.e., from the physical, chemical and biological to the sub-atomic. For example, the global cycling of many elements involves physical transport by wind and water over very large distances. Plants and animals depend on properly functioning global water, carbon and nitrogen cycles for their survival. Interconnectedness at the chemical level is even more profound, with thousands of organic and inorganic chemical reactions linking the various parts, which superficially appear unrelated.

Plants and animals are connected through the mutual exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The oxygen produced by plants via photosynthesis is needed by animals for respiration, resulting in the generation of carbon dioxide, which in turn is taken up again by plants and used for their growth. There are thousands of biochemical reactions carried out within living cells, most of which are coordinated through highly complex regulatory networks involving feedback loops and other control mechanisms. Even above the cellular level, there is tight coordination of the functions carried out by the different organs within an organism. Furthermore, there are highly complex interdependencies among different species within a given ecosystem, many of them being part of an intricate food web consisting of elaborate predator-prey relationships.

Naturalist John Muir observed more than a century ago: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”³ Because humans are an integral part of nature, whatever they do to nature will ultimately affect them, either positively or negatively. This simple fact has been expressed by many of the world’s native people. For example, a Maori proverb cautioned, “Destroy nature, destroy yourself.”⁴ Chief Seattle warned, “All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”⁵

The obvious truth regarding humans as part of nature escaped the philosophers of the Enlightenment who espoused a conceptual separation between humans and the environment, between observer and observed, thereby paving the way for a mechanistic reductionist science, which, in turn, yielded powerful knowledge on how to dominate, control and exploit the environment. However, according to Eugene Schwartz, commenting on the limitations of science and technology, “the concept of harnessing nature through conquest was in error because it failed to recognize that man was a part of nature and that what happened to nature would in turn rebound upon man.”⁶ Modern technology aggravates this conceptual error by creating an even greater illusion of separateness from the natural environment:

All this leads us to believe that we have made our own environment and no longer depend on the one provided by nature. In the eager search for the benefits of modern science and technology we have become enticed into a nearly fatal illusion: that through our machines we have at last escaped from dependence on the natural environment.⁷

It is perhaps ironic that the initial success of science, based as it was on the conceptual separation between man and nature, is finally, after more than 300 years, demonstrating in disciplines ranging from chemistry to ecology to quantum physics that there is, in fact, no such separation.

Human Improvement upon Nature

One assumption that underlies a substantial number of technological applications is the belief that nature can be improved upon or perfected for the benefit of mankind. Indeed, the whole idea of progress, which was introduced during the Enlightenment, is based on the faith that both human societies and nature can be perpetually improved through the power of reason. Unfortunately, the belief that humans can improve upon nature is outdated and has been shown to be false by science itself, specifically by the discovery of biological evolution. Originally conceived by Charles Darwin but since confirmed by different, often unrelated, scientific disciplines ranging from paleontology and geology to ecology and molecular biology, the evolution of species involves two processes, random mutation and natural selection.⁸ The genetic blueprint of life constantly changes in a random fashion as a result of both mutation and recombination. Individuals having a genetically-based phenotype best suited for survival in a given environment will also most likely procreate successfully, thereby out-competing, in terms of number and fitness of progeny, less fit individuals. As a result, the selective pressure which is constantly exerted by nature ensures that over the long run most populations will be at least adequately adapted to their immediate physical and biological environments, including their interaction with other species. In short, the process of evolution guarantees that, within a given environment, species function and interact in a changing but largely optimized fashion. This concept of balanced, optimized adaptation was described by distinguished biologist Barry Commoner in his “third law of ecology:”⁹

In my experience, this principle [“nature knows best”] is likely to encounter considerable resistance, for it appears to contradict a deeply held idea about the unique competence of human beings. One of the most pervasive features of modern technology is the notion that it is intended to “improve on nature” — to provide food, clothing, shelter, and means of communication and expression which are superior to those available to man in nature. Stated baldly, the third law of ecology holds that any major manmade change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system.¹⁰

For example, the environmental pollution caused by thousands of synthetic organic chemicals that do not naturally occur anywhere in nature is likely to have severe negative effects on plants, animals and ecosystems. These artificial compounds, unlike those found in nature, have not been subjected to natural selection over billions of years of evolution to ensure their adaptive fit and coordination. For example, only compounds that can be biodegraded by microorganisms should be released into the environment, ensuring the continued recycling of elements. By contrast, many synthetic chlorinated organic compounds, such as the insecticide DDT, are highly resistant to biodegradation, thereby persisting in the environment and bio-accumulating in the fatty tissues of many animals, including humans. Barry Commoner continues by explaining how evolution, like research and development (R&D), has attempted to optimize the overall performance and coordination of living organisms:

In effect there are some two to three billion years of “R&D” behind every living thing. In that time, a staggering number of new individual living things have been produced, affording in each case the opportunity to try out the suitability of some random genetic change. If the change damages the viability of the organism, it is likely to kill it before the change can be passed on to future generations. In this way, living things accumulate a complex organization of compatible parts; those possible arrangements that are not compatible with the whole are screened out over the long course of evolution. Thus, the structure of a present living thing or the organization of a current natural ecosystem is likely to be “best” in the sense that it has been so heavily screened for disadvantageous components that any new one is very likely to be worse than the present one.¹¹

In summary, natural selection operating on genetic variability continuously optimizes the balanced functioning of all species with respect to each other within given ecosystems. Therefore, when humans, using science and technology, attempt to optimize nature for their own purposes, they immediately disturb the natural balance. As a result of human intervention, natural processes will function in less than optimal ways, which will have negative repercussions for humans who are also a part of the natural world. In the words of conservation biologist David Ehrenfeld,

There is the limit, an especially frustrating one, that is described by the maximization theory of von Neumann and Morgenstern, which says in effect that in a complex world we cannot work everything out for the best simultaneously. This limit is why evolution has proven more reliable than our substitutes for it. Evolution is slow and wasteful, but it has resulted in an infinity of working, flexible compromises, whose success is constantly tested by life itself. Evolution is in large measure cumulative, and has been running three billion years longer than our current efforts. Our most glittering improvements over Nature are often a fool’s solution to a problem that has been isolated from context, a transient, local maximization that is bound to be followed by mostly undesirable counter-adjustments throughout the system.¹²

Unavoidable Negative Effects of Technology

Because the negative consequences of science and technology often occur in unanticipated forms and in distant locations, and sometimes after significant time intervals, they are often not perceived as related to their causes. Nevertheless, technology will necessarily produce both positive and negative effects.¹³ This character of technology creates a serious intellectual challenge for technological optimists, who exclusively focus on the positive aspects of technology while ignoring the, often enormous, negatives.

As Barry Commoner states in his fourth law of ecology “There is no such thing as a free lunch:”

In ecology, as in economics, the law is intended to warn that every gain is won at some cost. In a way, this ecological law embodies the previous three laws. Because the global eco-system is a connected whole, in which nothing can be gained or lost, and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced. Payment of this price cannot be avoided. It can only be delayed. The present environmental crisis is a warning that we have delayed nearly too long.¹⁴

All technological manipulations amount, at best, to zero sum games in which the costs balance the derived benefits. It is a mistake to believe that any benefits of technology can be obtained without cost. As Jacques Ellul wrote 35 years ago in The Technological Society,

The technical phenomenon cannot be broken down in such a way as to retain the good and reject the bad.... It is an illusion, a perfectly understandable one, to hope to be able to suppress the “bad” side of technique and preserve the “good.” This belief means that the essence of the technical phenomenon has not been grasped.¹⁵

Irreversible Consequences

The extent of negative effects of modern technology is directly related to the scale of exploitation of nature, which depends not only on the magnitude of human activities but also on the speed at which they are carried out. If both the magnitude and speed of human actions are greater than the adaptive capacity of nature, certain natural processes may cease to function entirely, resulting in irreversible consequences. For example, global climate change has the potential to precipitate the irreversible global collapse of planetary ecosystems and human civilization, destroying much that has been created through millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of cultural development.

As Robert Sinsheimer points out, the resilience of complex systems, such as those of nature and even social institutions, is becoming increasingly undermined by the speed of technological change:

Most states of nature are quasi-equilibria, the outcome of competing forces. Small deviations from equilibrium, the result of natural processes or human intervention, are most often countered by an opposing force and the equilibrium is restored, at some rate dependent upon the kinetics of the processes, the size of the relevant natural pools of components, and other factors. Although we may therefore speak of the resilience of nature, this restorative capacity is finite and is limited in rate.... Because human beings (and most creatures) are adapted by evolution to the near equilibrium states, the resilience provided by the restorative forces of nature has appeared to us to be not only benevolent, but unalterable.... The fragility of the equilibria underlying social institutions is even more apparent than of the equilibria of nature.... Our faith in the resilience of both natural and man-made phenomena is increasingly strained by the acceleration of technical change and the magnitude of the powers deployed.¹⁶

The resilience of both environment and human societies is limited. The extinction of thousands of species as well as many indigenous human cultures is an example of the irreversible changes brought about by the current pace of technological development and the enormous magnitude of technological exploitation.

Global climate change could well cause irreversible changes to life on Earth. The planet is a self-regulating open system whose complex order and proper functioning are maintained by the constant inflow of solar energy. According to John Peet, open systems such as Planet Earth are particularly vulnerable to perturbations:

Open systems (dissipative structures) tend to maintain a metastable state, often called dynamic instability. This reflects the fact that they are far from a state of equilibrium with their environment and depend on inflows, especially of energy, to maintain their state.... In self-regulation, the system preserves its stability by adapting and adjusting.... A system that is far from equilibrium can reach a point at which it can either dissolve into disorder or evolve to a new, more complex level of organization.¹⁷

Either of these two adaptive strategies by Earth in response to global climate change, disorderly collapse or the emergence of a new complex system will result in innumerable irreversible changes that could severely threaten the survival of humans and many other species.

Biological evolution is a very slow process. It has taken more than 3 billion years for life to evolve from single-cell organisms to the myriad complex, multi-cellular plant and animal species found today. Somewhat poetically we may say that the human race spent 100 million years as a mammal, 45 million years as a primate and over 15 million years as an ape.¹⁸ Human cultures also evolve, and traditional cultures evolve very slowly. For example, the Desert Culture of the Tohono O’odham (Papago Indians) of the American Southwest is believed to have remained substantially unchanged for many thousands of years.¹⁹

In contrast to these slow rates of biological and cultural evolution, the rate of current technological change is orders of magnitude greater, thereby posing a potentially insurmountable challenge to environmental and cultural adaptation. According to Chauncey Starr, the speed of technology diffusion is so fast that social or environmental impacts often cannot be assessed and addressed in time to avoid serious negative consequences:

The bulk of evidence indicates that the time from conception to first application (or demonstration) has been roughly unchanged by modern management, and depends chiefly on the complexity of the development. However, what has been reduced substantially in the past century is the time from first use to widespread integration into our social system. The techniques for societal diffusion of a new technology and its subsequent exploitation are now highly developed. Our ability to organize resources of money, men, and materials to focus on new technological programs has reduced the diffusion-exploitation time by roughly an order of magnitude in the past century. Thus, we now face a general situation in which widespread use of a new technological development may occur before its social impact can be properly assessed, and before any empirical adjustment of the benefit-versus-cost relation is obviously indicated.²⁰

Governmental controls, such as environmental regulations and laws designed to protect both the public and the environment from the negative effects of innovative technologies, often lag behind the hasty introduction of technology. At some point, science and technology may be employed to weaken negative feedback cycles. However, the weakening of feedback and the removal of other natural checks and balances may temporarily protect us from the negative effects of new technologies but most likely will result in the delayed appearance of even more serious consequences later. For example, an animal population is generally kept in balance by the limited availability of food and the presence of predators. Humans have used powerful technologies to escape these natural constraints, first by using weapons to eliminate large predators, then by inventing agriculture to increase food supplies and finally ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: TECHNOLOGY AND ITS LIMITATIONS
• PART II: THE UNCRITICAL ACCEPTANCE OF TECHNOLOGY
• PART III: THE NEXT SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION
• FOR FURTHER THOUGHT
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• END NOTES
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS