Will technology save us? Why, or why not? What does that even MEAN, in environmental terms?

Firstly, after a long weekend of working on environmental policy for Power Shift, I feel compelled to get my Devil's advocacy out of the way. Beyond a mere basic or intuitive sense of the environment, we need our technology to understand it better. Supercomputers are able to model everything from the climate to food webs. Collecting data and analyzing it with advanced technology can give us a better sense of the natural truth. Advanced technology allows us to launch satellites and study the Earth's systems from orbit. I realize that the use of technology for science is not the typical application of the T in I=PAT, but it is the part of T that must be preserved in any reformulation of society to be intelligently sustainable.

I'm afraid I have to give the trite answer that technology alone cannot save us. Such an immense dependence on technology alone to solve a problem would be unprecedented. I believe "save us" in environmental terms means conserving the ecological systems that make human life on Earth possible and fulfilling. Part of that are biodiversity and ecosystem services.

For Power Shift 2009, I spoke with the offices of each member of the Iowa congressional delegation. Dominant in the talks were the technological solutions to "save us" like renewable energy, transportation decoupled from fossil fuels, and greater efficiency. Maybe the question of "will it save us" is dependent upon humanity's "will" to make the hard technological choices, some of which have astronomical upfront monetary costs. One of the responses I kept using to monetary objections was that "Anything worthwhile is never free!"