Michael Huesemann - Techno-Fix: Why Technology Wont Save Us or the Environment

Contents

We would especially like to thank Anne and Paul Ehrlich for their kind encouragement and for writing an excellent foreword for our book. We would also like to thank David Suzuki, Bill McKibben, Vandana Shiva, Richard Heinberg, Herman Daly, Jerry Mander, Norman Myers, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsaecker, William Rees, John Robbins, David Pimentel, Lindsey Grant and Ted Trainer for their excellent endorsements. We would like to thank our dear friend and colleague, John Benemann, for his encouragement and suggestions. There are so many who have contributed to this work, albeit indirectly, whom we would like to thank, but the list would be very long indeed. We also wish that we could thank friends and mentors who, long before this book was written, passed from this world but are always remembered: Erna Huesemann, Alberta Cantwell Morris, Anton Rogstad and Edwin F. Carpenter.

We would like to thank Heather Nicholas, Sue Custance, Ingrid Witvoet, Sara Reeves, and E.J. Hurst at New Society Publishers and Audrey Dorsch at Dorsch Editorial for their fine work in bringing this book to the public. We would especially like to thank Diane McIntosh for her excellent cover design.

Advance Praise for Techno-Fix

Science and technology have advanced impressively over the past century, but we have learned that often the benefits of new technology are accompanied by unexpected and deleterious consequences that we then attempt to solve using more technology with unpredictable effects. Thus, for example, we have altered the chemistry of the atmosphere with our use of fossil fuels and now hope that we can maintain our lifestyles, economies and consumption with the promise of geo-engineering like carbon capture and storage, stimulating ocean algal growth or spraying aerosols of sulfur dioxide in the sky. As this book shows, it is suicidal to put our hopes in such promises.

DAVID SUZUKI, Canadian environmental activist, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia, host of CBCs The Nature of Things, author of 43 books, recipient of 25 honorary doctorates as well as numerous awards, including the Order of Canada.

We need to be mature enough to understand that technology alone wont be our salvation. This book helps explain why we need to think more deeply than that.

BILL MCKIBBEN, journalist, environmental activist, Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, author of many influential books and articles, including The End of Nature and Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

In Techno-Fix, Michael and Joyce Huesemann show us how unsustainable and destructive technologies, shaped and driven by the profit motive, have emerged as a major cause of harm to the health of people and the Earth. We need to go beyond a blind techno-religion. We ourselves need to choose the tools that shape our lives. A vibrant and vital democracy needs peoples participation in technology choice. Techno-Fix shows how.

VANDANA SHIVA, New Delhi-based environmental and anti-globalization activist, philosopher, author of 20 books including Soil not Oil and Staying Alive, and recipient of numerous international awards.

This book is outstanding, the most thorough, clear, systematic refutation that Ive seen of the absurd idea that new technology will be our savior against advancing ecological breakdown. The authors show that technology is far more the problem than the solution, and no big new technoutopian tinkering will change that. Far more than a technological revolution, the authors argue, we need a conceptual revolution; one that recognizes that our fantasies of dominion over nature, and the remake of the Earths natural systems, and all the assumptions that brought us here will not get us out. This is a must-read for anyone seeking realistic pathways forward, rather than more of the same.

JERRY MANDER, founder of the International Forum on Globalization, program director at the Foundation for Deep Ecology, and author of influential books on the social, cultural and environmental effects of mega-technologies.

This is the new age of unreason. Environmental politics is now dominated by mysticism, myth and magical thinking. Even as the impacts of technology destroy the ecosphere, the faithful preach that technology alone can salvage civilization. Enter Michael Huesemann and Joyce Huesemann. With Techno-Fix: Why Technology Wont Save Us or the Environment, the Huesemanns have produced one of the most well-researched and possibly the best myth-busting book the environmental movement has ever seen. In a better world, it would be required reading for all elected officials and every student in every program at every university everywhere.

WILLIAM REES, Professor, University of British Columbia, originator of the concept of the ecological footprint and author of Our Ecological Footprint, fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and the Royal Society of Canada.

Techno-Fix is a powerful and well-researched challenge to the widespread belief that modern technology alone will give us a clean environment, health, peace and happiness. The authors convincingly show that a paradigm shift and a corresponding change in the direction of science and technology are needed to create a more humane, just and sustainable world.

JOHN ROBBINS, environmentalist, animal activist and author of numerous best-selling books, including Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution. Robbins has received the Rachel Carson Award and the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award.

Salvation by technological advance and unlimited growth is the blind dogma of our age. The Huesemanns provide a devastatingly cogent and well-referenced critique of this modern gnosticism, as well as some good alternative ideas. Highly recommended.

HERMAN DALY, former Senior Economist at the World Bank, Professor of Ecological Economics at the University of Maryland, and author of many influential books, including Steady-State Economics and Ecological Economics.

The nuclear disaster of Fukushima tragically confirms how right the authors are.

ERNST ULRICH VON WEIZSAECKER, German scientist, academician, parliamentarian and author of influential books, including Earth Politics and Factor Four, founder and former president of the Wuppertal Institute and member of the Club of Rome.

It has frequently been proclaimed, especially by certain economists, that our problemswhether economic, environmental, social or politicalcan be resolved by technological wizardry. Julian Simon, an extreme proponent of this view, urged us to ignore the warnings of environmentalists and to stride toward a shining new future created by technologies. For the most part, techno-optimists have been simply misinformed and stand in urgent need of some extensive homework on the issue. All the more welcome, then, is this first-rate book. If only it could have emerged sooner, it might have saved us much trouble and much money.

NORMAN MYERS, British professor and fellow at Oxford University; member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the World Academy of Art and Science and the Royal Society of Arts; advisor on environmental issues to the United Nations, the World Bank, as well as to scientific academies and various governments worldwide. In 1997 he was appointed by HRH Queen Elizabeth II to be a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George for services to the global environment.

Techno-Fix explains why science and technology will not save the economy and the environment. Drs. Michael and Joyce Huesemann have written an outstanding book that is most timely.

DAVID PIMENTEL, Professor emeritus, Cornell University, author with Marcia Pimentel of Food, Energy, and Society and numerous other works on ecological integrity, pesticides, biofuels, energy flows in food production, human population growth and the environment.