Technological change
Technological change refers to the ongoing development and transformation of tools, systems, and processes that significantly alter human interactions with the environment. This change has accelerated dramatically since the industrial revolution, allowing humans to reshape landscapes and create urban centers that house millions, impacting the Earth in unprecedented ways. While new technologies can contribute to environmental degradation, they also present opportunities for addressing global climate challenges through innovation.
Measuring technological change is complex, as it involves various actors and outcomes, with numerous inventions failing to achieve widespread success. The interaction between technology and society is multifaceted; for instance, cars have revolutionized transportation but also introduced pollution and resource consumption. Additionally, contemporary technology often creates a disconnect between individuals and their natural surroundings, making it difficult for consumers to recognize the environmental impacts of their daily choices.
However, emerging technologies are increasingly being harnessed to combat climate change, as demonstrated by initiatives in places like California, which have made strides in reducing carbon emissions through renewable energy sources. Despite the promise of technological solutions, challenges persist, and the relationship between new technologies and environmental sustainability continues to evolve. Ultimately, the central question remains whether a sustainable coexistence between human technological advancement and Earth's ecosystems can be achieved.
Technological change
The growth and continued evolution of technological systems and artifacts pose significant challenges and opportunities relating to global climate change. New technologies may damage the environment, but technologies may also be created to protect or restore that environment. In either case, technology is the driving force behind anthropogenic climate change.
Background
Human beings have an inherent capacity to create and re-create their environments. Human technological prowess far outstrips that of any other species. The ability of human beings to reshape landscapes, for example, can be easily observed from orbit. With the advent of industrialization and mass production and distribution, the pace and intensity of technological change accelerated.
Humans have created more devices and achieved more wholesale reshaping of the Earth during the past few hundred years than the previous several millennia. Perhaps the most outstanding exemplar of this reshaping has been the widespread creation and growth of cities, many of which contain populations of over ten million persons. Over one-half of the world’s population lives in these densely packed urban environments, and collectively their inhabitants or those who service their needs from afar generate the bulk of the pollutants that affect the soils, water, other species, and air of the Earth.
Measuring Technological Change
The extent of technological change is difficult to characterize precisely. One could catalog the patents granted in a certain time frame, but that information is just a small part of the overall picture. Many patents, which globally number in the millions, are never commercialized. Many patents that do result in actual products, goods, or services do not achieve large-scale success or dissemination. A significant number of patents, however, achieve extraordinary levels of influence, affecting human beings and the entire planet in profound ways. For example, the automobile and the many patents associated with it over time have arguably transformed both the human-made and the natural world.
Technological change itself can be thought of as a set of interrelated processes whereby a particular new artifact, system, or innovation is introduced on a scale sufficient to alter in some measurable manner the various environments in which that artifact, system, or innovation functions. All technological change involves a complex interaction among a host of actors, including inventors, government officials, sponsors, producers or manufacturers, distributors, users, and beneficiaries.
Each technology or technological system embodies within itself a set of implicit or explicit values, constraints, limitations, and problems that either are readily discernible or become discernible over time. For example, automobiles are designed to transport human beings and cargo from one location to another, but they also embody a set of values involving comfort, speed, agility, safety, efficiency, aesthetics, and so forth. They are designed and built within a set of constraints that minimally includes statutes and regulations that govern the sector, cost, marketability, and life cycle of each product, as well as the condition of the larger environment within which it will be embedded. For example, a nation that has few roads in good condition may require a significantly different type of automobile from one in which there are many paved highways.
Technological Change and Global Climate
Modern technological systems have forever altered the relationship between users of technology and the natural world. Many technological devices exhibit a “black box” character for their users, who cannot discern or understand the fundamental principles upon which the devices operate or the ways in which they interact with larger technological systems to achieve their intended results. Because they do not understand the technologies they use, few people reflect on the consequences associated with personal technological choices. Human beings are thus separated from the natural world in ways that they were not in earlier centuries, when individuals could easily trace a set of relationships between, say, the food on their table or the artifacts in their local environments and the sources from which those foodstuffs and artifacts were derived. This disconnection from the natural world and the technology underlying everyday objects makes it difficult for consumers to think of their daily choices as affecting the environment.
Rampant consumerism is a second feature of the contemporary technological world, in which the average person accumulates multitudes of devices and technological systems over the course of his or her lifetime. The sheer amount of consumer products found within the home of an average American family would elicit envy from a wealthy ancient Roman nobleman. Average American families have traveled and personally experienced more of the sights and sounds of the world than ancient counterparts who were kings, queens, or emperors. All of these accumulated devices and the larger technological systems within which they are embedded directly or indirectly contribute to pollution and global climate change. The sheer weight of these devices is thus more important to climate change than any particular technology. Because virtually all industrial technologies are energy intensive and because so many aspects of life in a highly technological society contribute to environmental degradation, consumers may feel that calls to act environmentally responsible represent direct attacks upon their way of life.
Technological Solutions to Global Climate Issues
Just as humans have created technologies to meet their needs and serve their desires across millennia, there is emerging evidence that this same capability is increasingly being employed by the private and public sectors to address problems related to global climate change. The state of California, which is home to more than 10 percent of the US population, is just one encouraging example among many around the globe. During the early twenty-first century, it has decreased its ratio of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to each dollar of gross domestic product (GDP), reaching a level that is 20 percent less than that of Germany. California generates about 20 percent of its electrical power from renewable fuels and has the world’s largest solar-power plant and most powerful geothermal facility. The energy efficiency center at the University of California at Davis is pioneering new ways to take the best ideas from research and rapidly commercialize them.
Actions undertaken by President Barack Obama and the US Congress to provide billions of dollars in economic stimulus monies for green technologies represented another encouraging sign that change is possible. However, technological change is an unpredictable process, and there is no clear relationship between monetary investments and productive outcomes. Most experts believe that it will take decades to provide adequate technological solutions to the challenges presented by global climate change. The history of technology cautions that such solutions will themselves embody tradeoffs and spawn unanticipated consequences that will require further solutions.
Widely available computer and communication technologies have become mainstays of modern existence. These have, without a doubt, contributed to a higher quality of life for many consumers. Nonetheless, a misperception can be that these technologies are being made available by “clean industries.” The opposite is more the case. In terms of damage to the Earth’s environment, the production of digital technologies is among the leading commercial contributors to this crisis. Economic models of production utilized by industry leaders favor the manufacture and marketing of new devices rather than the refurbishing and repurposing of those already created. As these technologies proliferate, so does the problem of damaging waste.
In addition, new technologies are fueled by electricity. This is true regarding both their manufacture and operation. Demand for electricity for this economic sector is growing. The US Department of Energy projected in 2024 that the demand for energy would increase 15 to 20 percent over the next ten years. Much of this increase was in response to technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), new domestic manufacturing, and electrification in new sectors. However, as new technologies proliferate, so would their impact on climate change. In 2024, about 60 percent of electricity was generated by fossil fuels
Context
Accelerated technological change has both created many of the dilemmas of the modern world and presented opportunities for some of these challenges to be addressed. The debates over whether technology is inherently good or bad, and the related debates over the proper relationship of human beings to nature, are as old as philosophy itself. Climate change is perhaps the single greatest contemporary instance of those debates, and the practical responses to such abstract questions may well determine the course of both technological and societal change during the coming century. Whether a sustainable balance between the technological activities of human beings and Earth’s ecosystems can be achieved remains a fundamental question of the human condition.
Key Concepts
- product life cycle: the complete history of a product, from the process of its creation to its ultimate disposal or reconstitution
- tradeoffs: the balanced benefits and harms attributable to a given action or entity
- unanticipated consequences: effects not foreseen
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