How do we curb climate change and ecological implosion? According to the G8 nations preventative methods are not the key. Instead of analysing where and why we have messed up Earth's ecology and figuring out better ways to cut back it was decided this past week that the further application of technology will save us all.

Is this a progressive idea? or a fully fledged illusion? Have humans ever used technology to truly progress? Questions abound...

Read on...

Where is technology taking us?

"The State of the Future 2005 report is produced by the United Nations University's Millennium Project - a global think tank of foresight experts, academics and policy makers. It analyses current global trends and examines in detail some of the current and future challenges facing the world.

Setting the scene, the report states: 'Future synergies among nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science can dramatically improve the human condition by increasing the availability of food, energy and water and by connecting people and information anywhere. The effect will be to increase collective intelligence and create value and efficiency
while lowering costs.'

However, it warns that 'a previous and troubling finding from the Millennium Project still remains unsolved: although it is increasingly clear that humanity has the resources to address its global challenges, unfortunately it is not increasingly clear how much wisdom, goodwill and intelligence will be focussed on these challenges.'" - link

Will we ever learn from civilisation's past mistakes?

"Diamond identifies five major causes of societal collapse: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, loss of trade partners, and stupidity. Any one or two plus stupidity will do. Diamond devotes most of the book to environmental damage - humanity's persistent drive to exceed biological carrying capacity....

..."deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per capita impact of people." We still do every one of those today, along with some more: "human-caused climate change, buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy shortages, and full human utilization of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity." Each alone is bad enough; in combination they are lethal." - link

So through science surely it is moral progress we strive for? Is this a new idea?

"The ambiguity in the meaning of moral progress is at the heart of a 1923 debate between biochemist J. B. S. Haldane and logician Bertrand Russell, two of the greatest and most argumentative public intellectuals of twentieth-century Britain...

...Both authors explore the problem of relating moral and technological progress with sufficient depth that we would benefit by reexamining this debate with a view to our own time. But the manner in which they frame the problem stands in the way of articulating a clear moral goal that might serve as progress's purpose and judge. With serious ethical discussion thus sidelined, technological change itself becomes the fundamental imperative, despite the reasonable doubts both Haldane and Russell have concerning its ultimate consequences. And while Haldane is more loath to acknowledge it than Russell, the net result of their debate is a tragic view of mankind's future, marked by an irreconcilable and destructive mismatch between our aspiration to understand nature and the power we gain from that knowledge." - link

It's often easier to live the illusion than face the truth; don't take human progress for granted.

Categories: Civilisation, Progress, History, Future, Technology, Science, Books, Links, Earth, Humanity, G8, Philosophy