CIO — It is certainly true that technology is transforming our natural environment. But this fact should only be lamented if one is willing to renounce the very base of civilization itself.
Technological advances are the concrete manifestations of our continuous struggle to escape our natural environment, which started more than 20,000 years ago with the containment of fire and the first stone tools. For our ancestors, the natural environment was synonymous with a relentless fight for survival and reproduction. But technological advances spurred by our species’ intellectual capacity made it possible to shift some of our limited resources to other activities. Put simply, technology has allowed us to live better and longer lives. The past 50 years have brought about an unprecedented increase in the welfare of humankind, propelled by technology.
There is no point in denying that technology has changed our natural environment and will continue to do so. Yet few people, I believe, would be willing to sacrifice the huge benefits that this ancient cumulative process has created.
The more interesting question is how technology can be applied not to bring us back to some utopian natural state but to help us balance humankind and the nature that we wish to preserve.
With ecologists focusing on the terrible consequences of technological development (arguably being responsible for million of deaths) on one side and with technology opportunists on the other, the debate can easily become polarized. It has proved to be easy to find ample evidence of either the very harmful consequences of technological advances or their huge beneficial effects. That is why it is extremely important to focus on the environmental fundamentals.
So what do fundamental measures of environmental quality tell us about the consequences of technological progress? The biggest lesson is that technological progress and human ingenuity seem to explain the apparent paradox of continued progress in human welfare in a world of finite resources. The demand for and the availability of the earth’s resources adjust over time, according to developments in technology. That is why the world has yet to run out of a vital resource. In fact, the availability of many vital resources actually increases with technological progress and economic efficiency.
For example, with improving technology we are capable of locating and exploiting ever-lower-quality iron ore at ever-cheaper costs, thereby leaving us with more and more years of future consumption at higher and higher levels. Likewise, the world’s known oil reserves have increased significantly in modern times, despite a considerable rise in energy consumption, as we have become better at extracting and exploiting oil. The incredible advance in agricultural productivity means that there is much less need to convert pristine areas into cropland. It has been estimated that if all farmers around the world reach the average yield of today’s U.S. corn growers, only half of current cropland will be needed to feed 10 billion people at today’s level of calories in America.
