Techno-Fix Futures Will Only Accelerate Climate Chaos – Don’t Believe the Hype

The scientific evidence tells us that it is simply not possible to continue increasing consumption and greenhouse gas emissions on the current trajectory without exhausting Earth’s resources and crossing planetary boundaries – limits to Earth’s biological, chemical and physical systems that represent a safe operating space for humanity. Beyond these boundaries, we run the risk of causing abrupt and irreversible environmental changes that threaten the stability of Earth’s systems and human civilization.

Fairy Tale Futures
For starters, all technology-focused future visions require wildly unrealistic increases in energy generation. This is a problem because since we have used up most of the easy to access sources, the quality of our energy resources is declining. Compared to a few decades ago, we need to input much more energy for every unit of energy we produce. While the energy cost of renewables is falling, vast increases in consumption only make the transition to renewables harder, and will put a huge additional burden on our already vulnerable energy systems.

To navigate the high resource demands of their imagined futures, ecomodernist and left accelerationist visions rely on fairy tale technologies that do not exist. For example, the future vision of Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) peddles promises of asteroid mining to address resource shortages on Earth.

But we do not know if low-carbon space travel is possible. Ecological crises are happening now. We need to take action now. Searching for low-carbon space travel takes attention and resources away from social changes that we know can work.

FALC’s vision has been accepted uncritically in prominent media outlets such as The New York Times and The Guardian, despite being thoroughly debunked by environmental scholars.

This distracts from the hard but necessary work of changing the energy system now. Given the risks presented by climate breakdown above 1.5℃of global heating – possibly just a decade or two away – we cannot afford to back future visions that do not prioritize immediate and large-scale cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Same Mistakes
More fundamentally, the ideas underlying technofix futures arguably aren’t far from the type of thinking that created the climate and ecological crises in the first place. They imagine luxury as heavily based in material consumption – as author of FALC’s manifesto Aaron Bastani says: “Cartier for everyone, MontBlanc for the masses and Chloe for all.”

As a result, they tend to overlook and devalue aspects of our world that are less obviously associated with luxury: the natural environment, clean air, animal life, time spent with family and friends, local communities. These things may not provide material luxury, but they do make life worth living – and do not necessarily have to use up our scarce energy and material resources.

Where FALC attempts to provide for all using the notion of luxury, feminist and ecologically-oriented economists and design theorists look to alternative strategies to generate prosperity. We propose a redesign of future ways of living based on different values: the ethics of care, regenerating nature, and distributing its benefits fairly.

Cooperatives, time-banks and community-owned renewable energy systems are already putting these values into practice. These organizational models create regenerative and distributive systems supporting prosperity for all, and addressing climate breakdown at the same time.

Of course, these alternative futures will require us to fundamentally transform our culture as well as our economy. Clearly technofix futures are more attractive options for many of those who are not on the frontlines of climate chaos – and who might be able to continue living high-consumption lifestyles for a decade or two more.

But nothing other than dramatic societal transformation will be sufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change for the vast majority of the world’s population – and eventually, everyone. It may sound daunting, but rejecting the ecologically harmful assumptions on which our culture is currently built offers us a unique chance to build a healthier and fairer world.

Joanna Boehnert is Lecturer in Design, Loughborough University. Simon Mair is Research Fellow in Ecological Economics, University of Surrey. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.