Director's Commentary

Director’s Commentary

Video #4: Infinite Nature - The Techno-Skeptic

Gretchen Allen, Megan Weaver, Richard Swenck

Assigned Topic:

Our assignment was to review Mathusian concerns about running out of resources. We were to explain that resources are finite by using past and present examples. We have just one Earth and therefore only one experiment. The risk of following the techno-optimist is too great and we need to be more conservative in our daily lives. The policies and laws we make and follow today will have great implications on our lives and future generations. More information about this topic can be found in Chapter 5 of Infinite Nature by R. Bruce Hull.

Rationale:

We started off by addressing the views of the techno-skeptic. We only have this one earth to share with 6.8 billion other people and the trillions of other organisms on the planet. Our resources are finite. Day by day we are getting closer to the bottom of the barrel and it is getting harder to dig ourselves out. Should we conserve the resources we have left or start depending on a future where technology might replace our ecological services and most likely cause new environmental problems? Techno-skeptics look toward the past as a model for the future. As opposed to techno-optimists who believe in the human mind as the ultimate resource, techno-skeptics focus on preserving our limited resources and protecting our ecosystem services.

We used past examples to demonstrate that our resources are limited and technology cannot always save us. Three to five billion passenger pigeons died within 45 years in the early 1900’s due to over-hunting and exploitation. We were not able to replenish the species by breeding them in captivity because they depend on their large flocks to survive. We represented this in the video with the bowl of skittles. We greedily took them away until they were all gone. Technology failed us during the dust bowl when new agricultural technologies and poor land use combined to render millions of acres useless. The overworked land couldn’t handle the drought the way that the former prairie grasses could have.

Present examples and Malthusian concerns keep us on our toes. Every day about 200,000 people are born on this Earth. Malthusian concerns follow that that as a result of imbalance on this planet, it will inevitably result in starvation, strife, and death. We have less than a century if current trends go unchecked. Technology could double our resources but resources per person would decrease. We must learn to maximize what we have and recycle what we must use because our resources cannot be recreated. Technology often creates more problems than it solves. The lessons learned from these failures helped create new and better technologies, but with just one earth, there is no room for error.

Our future examples address problems happening now that will have detrimental implications on the environment. Nutrient runoff from agricultural practices in the Mississippi River watershed has created a deadzone the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf supplies 72% of U.S. harvested shrimp, 66% of harvested oysters, and 16% of commercial fish. Consequently, if the hypoxic zone continues or worsens, fishermen and coastal state economies will be greatly impacted. Sooner rather than later, we need to act. Should we restrict fertilizers on the agricultural lands, lessening our food supply or rely on some future technology to fix this? The agricultural technology used to create more food resources created the dead zone. If technology can fix the deadzone, we need to think about the implications that technology will create.

In our policy section of the video, we addressed some of the fundamental ideas of Sustainability in the eyes of Techno-Skeptics. To contrast those ideas we used images of industrialization that show the wasteful nature of society. The strip mining equipment and unused factory were meant to show the ugly sides of technological advancement in the modern world. All of the images were meant to show the scale of modern infrastructure and its impacts on the living Earth. We created an image of a computer taking over the globe to demonstrate the ability of technology to take hold of earth with its far-reaching impacts. This image was meant to show a fantastical outcome if we do not question technology and adhere to the Precautionary Principle. Industrial construction equipment was meant to show how progress ultimately aims to physically change the earth for humanity. Plastic cups polluting freshwater show the constant waste developed by a technologically dependent throwaway society.

To sum everything up, we ended the video with the bike scene to make the audience think about the decision they need to make. Can we depend on technology to save us, or should we get off the bike and pick up the pieces?

Compare and Contrast:

Bike

Techno-skeptism and techno-optimism really sunk in for me when Dr. Hull made big bike riding analogy in class. He asked the class what we would do if we were riding a bike that started to wobble. Would we slam on the brakes and play it safe or peddle faster and hope the bike rides itself out. Our group used this analogy hoping to summarize our video and make our topic clear for others as well. We also took it a little further. The bike rider is surrounded by two worlds symbolized by the cars that fly by her and the horses to her right. This just enhances the same message given by Dr. Hull.

Dead Zone

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of New Jersey. In class, Dr. Hull mentioned it as being an external cost. We made this point in our video, but we want to know what the external costs to fixing the dead zone will be if it can even be fixed. This is a prime example of how technology has failed us. The technology to feed the world created a giant dead zone in the ocean which is responsible for fish kills. The Gulf of Mexico provides much of our nation’s seafood. Isn’t it ironic that technology to fix a food problem also creates a food problem?

Malthusian Concerns

In Infinite Nature Hull argues that Malthusian predictions have not proved true. “Several studies have shown that the amount of labor and investment capital needed to grow crops, mine materials, and transport those resources to consumers have actually decreased.”

In contrast of Hull’s ideas, we tried to show that Malthusian concerns are still viable when looking at the modern world. Just because technology has made resources easier and cheaper to find does not mean that they are equally distributed among our massive ever-growing population. No, starvation and resource scarcity is not a universal problem, but we are seeing more cases of strife for resources when they become unequally allocated. Technology has not proven that it can overcome humanities desires for sex or economic success. In our video, we argue that Malthusian concerns will remain an issue as long as one sixth of our population lives cramped together in poverty while a lucky few chow down on the majority of resources.

Policy

In Infinite Nature Hull states “Techno-skeptics don’t trust technological solutions and instead want to sustain the ecological systems that have historically provided clean water, climate stability, and soil production. Techno-skeptics don’t want to force future generations to be reliant on energy-intensive solutions for their survival, especially because such systems can be oppressive, rigid, and brittle.”

In our video we say that techno-skeptics see many technological solutions as pharmaceutical relief for severe problems, rather than fixes for them. Our video reflects Hull’s ideas further when we say that skeptics are seeking trusted solutions for their survival rather than technological manipulation of natural systems. We attempted to show how neither technology nor our living world can be sustained at our current rate of progress by showing pictures of decayed industry and debilitated ecosystems.

Passenger Pigeon

In Infinite Nature Dr. Hull used the passenger pigeon to make the point that technology cannot always save the environment. The passenger pigeon was an icon used to open people’s minds and make them aware that more species could go extinct if we do not change our way of life. We presented this in our video as another major example of how technology failed us. We could not recreate the enormous populations that once existed with all the technology in the world. What else are we not going to be able to fix? The ozone layer? We used this to show we need to focus more on what Earth already provides us with instead of working on making life easier and polluted.

References:

Costanza, R. 2000. Visions of alternative (unpredictable) futures and their use in policy analysis.Conservation Ecology (1): 5. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss1/art54

Costanza provides insight into the varying viewpoints of techno-skeptics and optimists. In doing so, he creates alternative ideas for futures free of technological burdens and for futures weighed down by man’s ingenuity. The fundamental beliefs of each worldview are outlined in this article as well.

The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html

This site gave us information on what happened during the Dust Bowl and what it was caused by. The site also provided pictures to that gave us a better idea of what times were like in the 1930’s. People that experienced the Dust Bowl have commented about their personal experiences and that information is posted on the website.

Goodin, Robert E. Green Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. 62-73. Print.

This book provides a thorough explanation of the pillars of sustainable development. Goodin describes the idea of spaceship earth, which is fundamental to sustainable development. According to Goodin, sustainable development aims to maintain all of the life support systems on spaceship earth to provide a continual stock of resources for future generations.

The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone

http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/

This site provided great detail to what the dead zone was and what it was being caused by. This information led to a major part of our video and allowed us to get an important point across.

Malthus, Thomas R. "An Essay on the Principle of Population." Environmental Ethics and Policy Book (2003): 397-401. Print.

The famous essay by Reverend Thomas Malthus explaining the pressure placed on earth by an ever-expanding human population. Malthus states that the power of population is greater than the power of the earth to sustain all of its inhabitants. This article is one of the key argument’s for Techno-Skeptics.

The Passenger Pigeon, Smithsonian Encyclopedia, Smithsonian (Online)

This article provided a strong summary of the passenger pigeon story. It was especially helpful because it had dates and population estimates. It even touched on the lessons of conservation that can be learned by these birds.