Technology will save us! No, it won’t!
Whenever the climate-policy debate addresses specific economic sectors, potential carbon-abatement technologies or energy strategy, the same fundamental question always arises: How much can we rely on “simple,” preferably “cheap,” technofixes? Can climate change be addressed by counting on people to switch to lower-carbon technologies or will it take more fundamental changes to how we live and organize ourselves as a society?
These are not just philosophical or academic questions. In today’s political culture, they have been among the issues that most divide right and left. One side trusts markets and new technologies to fix everything, while the other insists that public policy must play a leading role. Yes, this caricature is far too crude. But recognizing that it is how many politicians, polemicists and their followers frame the matter can help us analyze, and ultimately improve, how new clean-technology developments are received.