Environmental Context

Technological Choice


Technology & Environment
Importance
Traditional View
Technological Change

Appropriate Technology
Clean, Green Technology
Social Shaping of Technology
Case Study: Clean Production
References
Site Map

Back to Main Menu

Technological Choice

Technology and the Environment

Why is Technology so Important?

Bullet pointTechnology as a factor in resource usage

diagramWhat sort of technological change is required?
Will technological change be enough?
What other changes might be required?

Bullet pointTechnology as a cause of environmental problems

links

Technology as a factor in resource usage

Environmental degradation can be described as a product of population, resource use per person (affluence) and environmental damage per unit of resource used (technology).

In the negotiations leading up to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, the USA wanted to remove all references to consumption (resource use per person) from the Agenda 21 document&emdash;the proposed plan of action for the 21st century. The Bush administration would not brook suggestions that lifestyles would need to change in affluent nations. 'The American lifestyle is not negotiable,' George Bush said (Mathews 1992).

Low-income nations retaliated by removing references to the urgent need to slow population growth. They wanted to shift responsibility for environmental problems onto industrialised nations. Women's groups from the USA and low-income nations supported these moves, arguing that population control 'jeopardises women's health, is disguised genocide, or places blame on women' rather than on the economic systems that exploit and misuse nature and people (Mathews 1992).

The inability to reach a consensus on either of these two issues&emdash;population and consumption&emdash;and the political need for the concept of sustainable development to accommodate economic growth (see chapter 1), means that the achievement of sustainable development will depend on our ability to reduce the environmental impact of resource use through technological change. Many interest groups accept this political reality. They see continual growth in a finite world as possible through the powers of technology, which will always be there to help us find new sources or provide alternatives if a particular resource appears to be running out. Otherwise, technology will help us use and reuse what we have left in the most efficient manner.

Economic instruments, legislative measures and consumer pressures are aimed at achieving technological changes such as recycling, waste minimisation, substitution of materials, changed production processes, pollution control and more efficient usage of resources. The Commission for the Future (1990, p. 27) says 'the challenge of sustainable development is to find new products, processes, and technologies which are environmentally friendly while they deliver the things we want'.

This view is generally held across the spectrum of political views. Bill Hare and Francis Grey of the Australian Conservation Foundation say an ecologically sustainable society 'will require large amounts of new technology, technological innovation, modern management practices' as well as changes to lifestyle (1991, p. 35). The Business Council of Australia says that environmental damage can be reversed with modern technology, and that new technologies can rectify the problems caused by older technologies. (1991, pp. 13&endash;14)

The Pearce Report (1989, p. 31) also suggests that resource usage can be dealt with through recycling and minimising wastage, and that the use of the environment for disposing of wastes can be minimised in a similar way:

"Recycling, product redesign, conservation and low-waste technology can interrupt the flow of wastes to these resources, and that is perhaps the major feature of a sustainable development path of economic progress."

Some questions remain to be addressed, however. What sort of changes are necessary to precipitate dramatic technological changes? Will technology alone be enough to solve the environmental problems facing us?

Back to top...

 
Technology as a cause of environmental problems

In 1972, the biologist Barry Commoner argued in his book The Closing Circle that the escalating growth of environmental problems in the USA was due to flawed technology, rather than population growth or affluence. He pointed out that pollution was increasing at a much faster rate than population or economic growth. The difference, he argued, could be accounted for by the emergence of new technologies after World War 11. He noted that in the twenty-five years following the war, the production of non-returnable soft-drink bottles had increased by 53 000 per cent, synthetic fibres by 5980 per cent, and mercury used for chlorine production by 3930 per cent. During that same period, the production of food, textiles, clothes and metals had only increased at similar rates to population growth (42 per cent); and cotton fibre, wool and soap manufacture had decreased.

For these reasons, he argued that it was not economic growth itself that created environmental problems but how it was achieved. The new production technologies had a far greater environmental impact than the ones they replaced. As an example, Commoner looked at farm technologies. He pointed out that the traditional fertilising system of farms, where animals provided the manure for fertilising the land, had been interfered with by the use of feedlots, where animals were confined in small areas whilst being fattened up for market rather than leaving them grazing on pastures. The resulting heavy concentration of manure placed undue strain on a small area of land which could not naturally deal with so much waste. The waste therefore tended to pollute underground and nearby waterways. Animals in feedlots were fed on grain, and the land used to grow the grain was depleted of nutrients&emdash;so that farmers had to resort to artificial fertilisers, especially nitrogen, that created their own pollution problems because some of the chemicals used ended up in waterways.

The use of pesticides also enabled farmers to get higher yields from smaller land areas, but at an environmental cost. Pesticides such as DDT also polluted waterways, and killed or harmed other insects and animals (and sometimes humans) that were not originally targeted. While artificial fertilisers depleted the soil of naturally occurring nitrogen-fixing bacteria, pesticides killed off the pests' natural predators, and the pests themselves built up resistance to the pesticides. This ensured continuing dependence on the new chemicals and the need for ever-increasing amounts to be used.

Another example Commoner gave was the replacement of soaps by detergents. He estimated that the production of the active agent of detergents required three times as much energy as soap. The burning of fuel and high- temperature reactions needed during manufacture of detergents added to air pollution. Not only did the manufacture of detergent subject the environment to greater stress than soap, but its disposal created a whole new set of problems. The original detergents did not biodegrade in the environment, and they created mountains of foam in waterways. The new generation of detergents produced to solve this problem did not produce foam but were more toxic to the fish in the waterways. Also, the phosphate in the detergents stimulated algal growth which could choke rivers or stress them with an overload of organic material. Detergents replaced soaps on the markets, argued Commoner, not because they were better at cleaning but because of the advertising efforts of detergent manufacturers.

A third example used by Commoner was that of textile production. Synthetic fibres, which are often derived from non-renewable resources such as oil or natural gas, have replaced natural fibres such as cotton and wool in many applications. They require extremely high temperatures to manufacture, which adds to air pollution and energy usage. Furthermore, unlike the natural fibres they replaced, they do not break down in the environment. The manufacture of synthetic fibres, plastics and detergents has required big increases in the production of organic chemicals. Since mercury was used to manufacture organic chemicals, this meant the load of mercury in the environment increased.

The new technologies also used more electric power and other forms of energy than those they replaced. At the time Commoner was writing, aluminium and chemical production alone accounted for 28 per cent of US industrial electricity use. This, in itself, meant more use of energy resources and more pollution.

Back to top...