The Climate Change - Social Change Relationship

Extract

Modern technology has its own momentum. Our very seeing and experiencing of the world changes as a consequence of the techno-scientific innovations that have been so instrumental in shaping our culture. There is a risk that, given the pride of place that we have allotted to techno-science, we will be further seduced by the hubris inherent in our cultural beliefs about how humankind relates to Nature.

Historically we have accepted a dominant role in the relationship with the environment, now our technology allows for a near absolute acting out of this role. Should we be won over by this seduction, then our exploration of the relationship between climate change and social change will be severely limited as will be our action to effect useful change.

The development of instrumentation for experiment, embedded in a social milieu of optimism about cultural progress, revealed to us micro-worlds and macro-worlds that our forebears could only dream about. It has also generated and subsequently named the unexpected and unwanted problem of a threatening climate change.

The rise of our technology-dominated culture has inevitably resulted in the quasi-religious belief that sees technology as socially salvific; for whatever problems we might have in society, there will be a new technological solution just around the corner that will save us from the threatening peril.

It is important to demythologise this near absolute belief so as to break the vicious cycle of technology being the dominant vehicle for producing progress (and some unforeseen associated problems), and that in order to have progress, there will always be an acceptable cost. So often one hears the stated hope: “There will be new technology that will address these problems” - the belief being that the path of progress will only temporarily be thwarted.