Fail Cornucopians. Fail.

In my opinion, the evolution of technology is a means to an end. We no longer wanted to sew by hand... bam!! Someone invents a sewing machine. We don't want to have to use animals to plow our land... bam!! A large piece of machinery can do it for us. The point of this is that the original intent of technology was to make things better not worse. I've seen numerous graph that show the usage of resources. As a society progresses that usage grows and grows and grows until one day it begins to fall. Those graphs aren't representing a new piece of technology that solves all of our problems. It's all about attitude.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I do not think that technology is going to be our saving grace. Sure- someone may invent some kind of car that doesn't use gas and doesn't pollute like the ones we're currently using do. But it will take time for everyone to start to use those cars and, really, the damage has already been done. Unless someone invents a machine that sucks up all of the pollution in the air, puts all of the fish back in the sea and all of the oil back in ground and then just magically disappears... we may be out of luck. I'm definitely not with the Cornucopians on this one.

I might think that because inventing technology is not something that is on my radar. I'm all about politics. So for me this issue comes down to the people. There needs to be massive policy and attitude changes if we're going to control our consumption and try to limit the damage we're doing to the environment. For me the I=PAT equation makes sense. It's easy, it's simple and it inherently tells us where to reduce our impact. Technology is definitely part of this. But I don't think that a new technology is going to solve all of our problems. I would argue that we didn't know what effects the technologies we're currently using would have on the environment when they were invented. So how can we trust that something new won't make environmental degradation worse? Sorry, Cornucopians...