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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?
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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.
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What
sort of technological change is
required?