Technology is Not the Answer – Part One

The Myth of Progress

We have made ourselves very, very comfortable. Beyond that, we have come to consider ever increasing levels of comfort not only as an indicator of our societal success, but as an accessory to the human condition. But when our comfort comes at the cost of others’, when our homes, our food and our fecundity costs other species theirs – is it right to flagrantly plough on, well aware of the price we are paying for convenience?

Some consider the supremacy of our species our success story. This is nothing but a cultural myth: a story we tell ourselves in the hopes that it somehow excuses the damage we have done.

Agriculture and industry have fed the expansion of formerly small-scale, stable, sustainable societies into industrial juggernauts brawling for the globe. We call this Progress. We pursue it for its own sake, perpetrating ecocide in the name of our never-ending crusade.

Even now, as we reluctantly begin to admit that our thirst for socio-technological progress is threatening our very existence, we look to increasingly complex and increasingly destructive technologies for an answer to these problems. The irony does not seem to register.

Many still blindly put their faith in technology. After all, those with the loudest voices are constantly selling it as our salvation. If we do not have solutions now, they say, we can ‘develop them’. If our industries are not geared towards those solutions, we can ‘grow them’ in the right direction. We can invest, we can advance, we can develop. There is still space, in this ever shrinking world, for us to expand, they say.

We can engineer a brighter future!

But this is the cult of Progress talking.

In the past, each time our society has come up against resource shortages or technological constraints, a conveniently timed deus ex machina – some clever innovation or the discovery of a new natural resource – has allowed Progress to march on unimpeded. Just as the western world struggled to slake its thirst for whale oil (having driven many whale species to the brink of extinction), we discovered fossil fuels. Huzzah, problem solved!

But any economist or investment banker will tell you that past performance is no indicator of future success. We are very naïve if we think we can continue to invent away our problems, or believe that some new natural resource, primed to fuel another age of innovation, is waiting just around the corner. Just because things have always worked out this way in the past, does not mean that it will work out now. The Earth has only so much to offer.

The truth is, thus far, we’ve used technology to rape the world. The more advanced our tools have become, the more damage we have done with them. And yet here we are, claiming that yet more technology will surely save us and also, somehow, save nature.

“Nature does not need us to save it. It just needs us to stop.”

Technology is what got us into this mess and more of it is not the answer.

Focussing on things like the reduction of atmospheric carbon is treating a symptom, not the sickness.

We still cling to the idea that infinite economic growth is not only possible, but desirable. But the unhappy truth is this: a world of finite resources cannot sustain infinite growth. It is a physical impossibility. Chasing an infinite ideal is pursuing an unattainable goal.

‘Green Growth’ – the mantra of the moment – is an oxymoron.

COP26 is a cop out, consisting of politicians in the pocket of large corporations desperately trying to find a way to turn a profit from the climate crisis by drumming up a market for technological fantasies – thereby wringing a few more lucrative years out of a doomed system that is literally consuming itself to death.

Companies whose interests lie in the manufacturing and sale of various gadgets would love us to believe that they can not only solve our problems, but lead us into a precision-engineered utopia, where everybody can continue to live in the manner to which they are accustomed– or better! Where we can continue consuming ever increasing quantities of resources (since this is what the economy depends on for growth!). Where, instead of curbing waste and reducing pollution, we can just find ever more imaginative ways to trash it, stash it, or, in a pinch, export it to the third world.

Even among self-proclaimed environmentalists, the myth of Progress persists. The idea that the way forwards is manufacturing multiple millions of solar panels and giant wind turbines to nourish humanity’s exponentially growing thirst for energy is frankly delusional. Buying more electric cars and other go-go-gadgets, making our countries ever more dependent on the rare earth metals contained in batteries (themselves a human rights nightmare as well as an environmental travesty) is a bad idea.

The solution to the ills of overconsumption is not more consumption.

Global electricity demand is growing faster than renewables, driving a strong increase in generation from fossil fuels…

When we have finally installed the 102 million solar panels required to power the UK alone (in 2012 – even more would be needed now), will we really draw the line, yelling, ‘by Jove, we’ve done it!’ and everyone can sit back, content in the knowledge that from this point on all our electricity will be guilt free?

Consider the hidden resource costs of producing such a vast number of solar panels, not to mention the batteries, wiring and other supporting infrastructure. Consider the costs of transporting and installing them. Consider the high cost in human rights and lives that overshadows the squeaky-green image of renewable energy tech.

Here are a few points to think about:

Mining the rare earth metals used in tech generally happens two ways: industrial mines operating many large, fossil-fuel guzzling vehicles and other equipment with huge energy demands. Or (and this is the more common, applying to 70% of cobalt mines) through poverty-stricken people and children labouring and dying in so-called ‘artisanal’ mines: an informal sector of third world people using primitive tools and no safety equipment to dig shafts without any structural support. Death and injury are common, as is child labour, with many families unable to afford the $6 a month fee to send their children to school.

The rare-earth mines produce low-level radioactive waste which most artisanal mining operations lack the capability to safely dispose of.

Images above show children working in a Congolese cobalt mine. The mine produces cobalt for lithium-ion batteries used in Apple, Samsung and Microsoft products as well as Tesla cars. So far, none of these companies (and many others) have been able to issue a guarantee that the cobalt contained in their products is free from child labour. Children as young as 8 work unpaid in these mines. Tech giants circumvent association with human issues by sub-contracting companies that buy from the materials on their behalf.

The raw resources must then be transported from the third world countries where they are mined. Transport is by road and container ship – an exceedingly dirty industry in itself (but that’s a topic for another article).

The refinement of rare-earth metals is complex, using industrial equipment and processes – equipment which itself will require further manufacture if we are going to up the production of solar panels worldwide.

Manufacturing solar panels both neccesitates and produces many toxic chemicals, including various carcinogens and neurotoxins which gradually poison the people working with them.

China has a 70% share of worldwide photovoltaic production. It is powered by electricity largely created by combusting coal – and the process of silicon extraction is extremely energy intensive. Factories themselves do not use solar power because it can’t effectively meet their enormous energy requirements. Many – including some of the largest solar companies in China – use coerced labour (a form of slavery) to reduce costs. Others, such as Jinko Solar, have been documented dumping toxic waste into rivers.

The manufacture of the semiconductors used in solar panels (and other tech) requires vast amounts of water. A single, average sized semiconductor factory consumes 23 million litres per day. This amounts to almost 8 billion litres a year, for a single factory. The demand for semiconductors for solar panels requires many such facilities, operating year round, all using water at the same astonishing rate.

If we wanted to increase the production of solar panels to meet global electrical demand, we would need to magnify these processes a thousandfold. More mines and mining equipment, more impoverished miners, more trucks, more voyages by containership, more refinement plants, more solar panel and semiconductor factories and finally, more electricity, in order to power this upscaling of the entire industry. The amount of fossil fuels that would need to be burned before enough solar panels could be produced to meet the energy demands of this entire process (from mine to finished panel) is greater than the quanity of fossil fuels remaining on Earth.

Solar panels reduce the natural albedo (reflection of solar radiation) of the Earth’s surface. If employed on a very large scale (20% of the Sahara Desert, for example), this would cause changes to global weather patterns and could actually exacerbate to global warming by absorbing solar energy which would otherwise have been reflected. If used extensively in cities they also contribute to the Urban Heat Island effect, which can raise ambient temperatures beyond safe levels.

Solar arrays require huge amounts of land which must undergo extensive reworking – the clearing of trees, levelling, etc. This reduces habitat for many species and depresses biodiversity.

They are often much larger than fossil fuel power plants, needing areas of land up to 10 times greater than coal or gas to produce equivalent energy amounts More than 2000 renewable energy facilities are built, and more are under construction, in areas of environmental importance and threaten the habitats of plant and animal species across the globe.

Modern, ‘power tower’ style solar installations have been found to literally incinerate birds that fly over them, melting off their feathers in seconds as they fly through concentrated beams of sunlight, causing them to fall out of the sky and die on impact.

There, more than 100 species of birds are affected, including protected species like golden eagles and peregrine falcons.

Many similar facilities – including much larger ones with far greater bird incineration tolls – exist, with hundreds more planned and in construction across the globe as part of ‘green growth’ efforts. These installations cover from 150 to 320 hectares of land.

In addition to the extraordinary energy input required to produce them, the fact is that solar panels are made from non-renewable resources. There is a limit to the number we can ever produce from the rare-earth metals contained in this planet.

They have a finite life span (a maximum of 25-30 years) and are not easily recycled. Chemical degradation reduces their output and efficacy over time. After 10 years their performance declines to the point where manufacturers generally recommend replacing them. The cost of recycling them to recover the rare elements far exceeds the cost of just dumping them. The vast majority of panels operating today will end up in a landfill in 10 to 25 years time.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)’s official projections assert that “large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s” and could total 78 million tonnes by the year 2050.

This same thinking applies to almost all so-called ‘renewable tech’ – usually treated as a lazy panacea to all our problems – from wind turbines to hydroelectric dams. It does nothing to solve the underlying cause: our extravagant consumption habits and cultural fetish for Victorian ideas of of ‘growth’, ‘progress’ and ‘mastery over nature’.