This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
Clean technology, while a huge opportunity, will not go to scale in time to prevent a global economic and social crisis.
Considering all the comments on my talk, The Earth is Full, I would sum up by saying that everyone pretty much agrees we face some serious ecological and resource limits. The debate is will these naturally be dealt with in the normal course of technological and market processes, or will they result in a serious global economic crisis. My view is strongly that a crisis is inevitable and that it will be an economic crisis - but that will then trigger a war level of mobilisation that will drive massive technological change. So relying on technology to prevent the crisis is wrong.
Sean Sorrell
Sailesh Rao
But it wasn't climate change that did all the destruction of the past. And it isn't climate change that is causing a Florida sized area of tropical forests to disappear every two years today. It is mostly the eating habits of the top 20% of humanity.
As such, "massive technological change" is probably insufficient and "massive behavioral change" is called for, especially at the top. That behavioral change is when we routinely consider "abundance" for the tiger to be as equally important as "abundance" for our own selves.
Even Peter Diamandis will admit that the tiger is currently not experiencing a world of abundance. Such a world of abundance can only occur when the "Sling Shot" water purifier is entirely redundant as river water is already pure.
peter lindsay 30+
John Caulfield
To head off that crisis, if we could spend 1/10th of what was spent on say housing and bank bailouts, we might crack some of these "Energy Nuts".
Investing in Science has been a good investment. In fact, perhaps the best investments of Mankind have been to practise Science.
When the US say tried to get people to buy things like houses they could not afford, this was a serious Malinvestment. When they used public funds to Malinvest to compensate for past Malinvestments, this was a double hit.
Science is a good investments. Wasting resources is a bad investement, and is the subject of many of the worlds disagreements.
Guillermo Jorge
Guillermo Jorge
You can't underestimate the other man's greed.
dangerous earl
Elaine Buck
peter lindsay 30+
Guillermo Jorge
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Guillermo Jorge
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Christophe Cop 500+
I would try and be optimistic (urgent optimism as Jane McGonigal calls it http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html)
Nor can we sit back and wait for the technology to arrive.
If the problem is really this bad (and I have no reason to assume it isn't), then we do need to support all actions towards that goal, and act ourselves.
We do need some climate psychologists and lobby groups as well... to implement and scale the current solutions.
Even if it will be to slow, it seems the only reasonable thing to do...
Paul Gilding 50+
I think it is important to recognise that while the crisis is inevitable and will trigger the major response, you are right that we definitely need to act now and innovate as fast as we can. While in my view it is too late to avert the crisis, this is inherently unknowable, so acting strongly now is good either way. If it prevents the crisis, great, if not it helps us get through it faster and reduces the harm on the way through. So either way more action now is good!
btw, there are many people looking at the psychology of this and how to get through denial faster.
Jon Miner
You say (and I agree) that we face serious ecological and resource limit problems.
You say (and I agree) that these problems will encourage the development of technological and market process solutions.
Then you say that the solutions will fail and result in a global economic crises, which will then encourage militarism. Then you say that the militarism will produce more technological development. Then you say that this resulting technological development which was motivated by militarism results in the conclusion that the first efforts to solve the ecological and resource problems through the development of technology were a mistake.
Do you see the problem?
The technologies developed to reduce the problems facing the environment, and the development of markets are of a different kind than those developed for the military. If no effort is made to solve problems affecting the environment and resource limits then the crisis will only come sooner. Don't you agree? If the crisis is such that militarism is seen as one of the solutions, then militarism will occur. The technologies developed for the military will not be beneficial to the effort to solve the problems of the environment, including resource depletion, nor to the expansion of markets globally.
We have several separate conundrums: How can we save the environment, how can we reduce resource depletion, how can we raise the economic well being of more people, how can we reduce the 'knee-jerk' response that results in the growth of militarism, how can we improve the overall health of the inhabitants of this Earth, and how can we achieve a stable, healthy, prosperous population.
We are going to need new ways to do things. Every little discovery is another step toward these goals. Someone said 'there is a light at the end of the tunnel.' I say 'there is more than one tunnel. Some are very dark!'
Paul Gilding 50+
And I don't think the earlier efforts were a mistake as such, they just didn't work - or at least haven't yet. I'm not sure anything else would have been a better idea though, as we have this incredible resistance to change.
peter lindsay 30+
Lowkey Green
The solution is for everyone to grow it,Under government control this plant would nto reach its full potential.
The desired long term effect of growing the cannabis plant would be the intention that our children may grow more plants than children in previous generations. The key is to not forbid it to our kids, the key is not to mass market it to our kids, prohibition only succeeds in one thing; it makes people want it more than they actually need it. The key is to educate them about the plant about how to grow it many years before they realize they can smoke it. Who knows , just being taught to have to grow and care for something as especially unique as the cannabis flower from an early age may teach the next generation the discipline to use it in moderation because it won’t be such a taboo, it should be around just as common as any other flower. Legalising it will teach the kids the big thing is to smoke it, just growing the plants will show the big thing is everything it can be used for.
kenny bunnell
Max Goldstein
I think that mobilizing and coordinating the global community is both necessary and impossible. Yes, we live in an age of unprecedented connectivity, but it is one thing to speak and another to be listened to. What right do we have to tell the developing world that they can't live like we do because it's unsustainable? In theory, a global communist state that everyone bought into would do the trick. In practice, people won't buy into it, and if they did, that government wouldn't be capable of operating with fairness and efficiency.
Even a global carbon trading market has failed to get off the ground. Big government is not the answer. We can't make dramatic overhauls to our social and political system in the foreseeable future, because the people favored by those systems will resist.
Instead, change will require a grassroots, bottom-up approach. We need ideas that are small enough to be feasible and big enough to be impactful. It's not about strength but strength-to-weight ratio. Such ideas can emerge from both corporate and civic institutions.
I've written a longer response to the Gilding/Diamandis debate on my blog, http://wp.me/p1vixq-aM . I discuss several innovative, lightweight ideas that post. I apologize if linking to a personal site is considered poor TEDiquette.
peter lindsay 30+
Verble Gherulous 20+
Jim Osborne
Given all nations like free money to improve their own economy and infrastructure, I can see no better or quick way to tackle carbon pollution than by increasing the world credit supply by a given amount... and given all nations agree to back the World Bank then all nations shall equally profit.
Harald Jezek 50+
I'm optimistic because I believe that eventually we will find ways to overcome our problems. The only question is at what price.
On the other hand I'm pessimistic, because, since many of the environmental problems we are facing are not necessarily obvious to everybody many people don't give it the necessary importance.
For example, people living on some islands in the S-Pacific are already getting their feet wet because of rising sea levels and it's only a question of time until they will have to abandon their islands. Obviously, most people not facing this kind of problem directly might not much think about sea level rise because during their vacation to the beach they probably don't see any difference at all.
The same with ocean temperature rise. Who would perceive that as a problem when going for a swim ? Most people don't see corals bleaching and entire coral reefs becoming wastelands.
Climate change causes a chain reaction leading to many environmental changes, some subtle others not so much, but the danger is, once everybody really realizes the impact it will be far too late to undo them.
Climate change is happening. There can't be any doubt about that.
What we don't know for sure are the long term implications. but I think it's better to play it safe than being sorry later.
Lee Miller 10+
John Freestone 10+
Brian Cerda
lynn eschbach 30+
Your analysis reminds me of the celebrity druggie who had a go of it, admittedly had some good times, then tells everyone from a throne of luxury, "Now don't you do that!!".
Laraine Calway
chad manderscheid 10+
Tim Leisio
This, however, does not exclude all of the other options to prevent crisis. Clean technology is only one part of a combination of factors that will likely be needed to be used in tandem. It would be rather comical to use one tool for a wicked problem. We wouldn't use a hammer to cook, clean, or keep us warm at night. It's for constructing shelters. In this way, we have to start thinking about how to amplify the use of clean technology with other solutions... like social change to empower local communities to become more self-sufficient and less wasteful.
John Freestone 10+
One very important point you made was that it's a web of problems facing us. Each is easy for people to imagine they've found solutions to, while not noticing that it makes another problem worse. In my view, we problem-solve like this rather than facing fundamental facts of our biology. We are evolved animals. People talk about us as though we were rational, agreeable folk. They propose a solution: everyone will be on board. But there are very diverse warring factions, from the religious to the secular, the ultra-technologist to the neo-luddite.
We developed our modern civilisation through competition, not just co-operation, and I believe that is the simple hard-wired imperitive that will bring our current civilisation down. It will not be sufficiently profitable for those who might to do the right thing at any step along the way - that is how it has been for all of our history - in fact, since we left the forests that sustained us without our effort beyond reaching out to grasp fruit, the abundant past we innovated our way out of.
Right now, food, medicine and all sorts of technologies are being patented by the rich, so that we will be even more dependent on them for everything than we already are. Our democracies have been whisked away by plutocrats and they hold us to ransom. The Occupy Movement was perhaps just a rumble before an earthquake, as the 99% wakes up to reality and begins to demand/create wealth redistribution. Technology might have little to do with how it pans out.
Matt talks about humans learning to share ideas and work together as if it were just a good, but technology helps us compete with (kill) everything else on the planet while specialisation lets us relinquish responsibility to the cloud.
Paul Gilding 50+
Thanks for your thoughts and yes, people make the constant mistake of confusing what's possible with what will happen, allowing as you say for vested interest, resistance and so on. There's no doubt we have great potential but we must accept the crisis that will drive us there.
John Freestone 10+
You say "we must accept the crisis that will drive us there" - but where?
Paul Gilding 50+
Yes, we all have those days when it all seems impossible to imagine! "Where" can only now be a war like mobilisation in response, and that's why the crisis will have to be accepted first.
John Freestone 10+
If it were just a matter of mass change of attitude - if we stopped praising things like "working hard" and "innovating" and all the rest, which are part of that inexorable march towards domination/destruction of the biosphere and instead admired low-impact living - that would be a long shot, but perhaps imaginable after some deep catastrophe. However, I sense that the problem may be even deeper - a fundamental reality of evolution: those who work hard and innovate collect more resources and have evolutionary advantage over those who walk lightly on the earth. The pressure that replaced the eco-friendly nomad, first with the small farmer, then with Homo extravagans isn't a political fashion, but biological fact. I say this not to depress people, but because it may be vital to understand and accept, as much as the current crisis, in order to come up with wise responses.
Of course, I may be wrong to equate innovation and hard work with further destruction. It's a hunch I have with little solid evidence, but it seems to me that the green industries have turned out less green than expected, not just due to specific hidden environmental costs, but because they represent a raised threshold for human activity generally, which we can be expected to grow into. Do we need a new understanding of green? Currently, we'd be proud to clear areas of virgin "wasteland" to build an "eco-friendly city".
John Freestone 10+
Paul Gilding 50+
Robert Benjamin
Reece Turner
I should say that I have read Paul Gilding's book and I haven't read Peter's however from his presentation it seems to me he's not looking at the broader picture and the mega-trends - he's focused on the more inspiring case studies and examples. We do need to draw hope from somewhere and to be frank Gilding's belief that we will rise up out of the ashes (and parrallels to WWII) is less convincing than his thesis that the Great Disruption is imminent. But hope based on denial of the scale of the problem at hand is, as Gilding says dangerous.
Apple Lynch
keep a balance before fast technologies invent our way out of our
coming crisis, imaginary or fundamental reality. We need to get the energy
as much as possible to face the immediate or foreseeable challenge.
The question is how to get gov to protect nature and keep the balance in
the game of profit verses environment in the developed and developing countries.
Gov of course is a big player in this game. Some say the very idea to govern
comes from parents govern children. As common sense and common practice
as it is today however it's difficult to reform/update your parents if you
are a child or childish. Maturity is the key when you don't have a good
neighbor handy or footstep to follow. Maturity and neighbor meant the intellectuals and their associates. You need both updated parents and matured dudes all in one society that would work best for you. Btw the debate is fun and the host is cute:)