We are told by the new priests to put our faith not in a bearded sky god (sooo 1st and 2nd millennium!) but rather in …. technology.
- Social problems with Bad Behaviour by the lower orders? Solution: More surveillance (and graded punishments and rewards) – problem solved!
- Economic problems with low productivity? Solution: More Growth, thanks to the white heat of whichever technology is hot right now (mainframes, satellites, biotech, personal computers, bitcoin, AI etc).
- xxx problems with yyy? Solution: more technology
The beauty of this is that anyone who demurs – who dares suggest the problems won’t be so easily solved, or solved at all – can be shouted down/smeared and ignored as a .. Luddite, and probably an anti-vaxxer (1).
Fearing this attack on their credentials, most would-be critics of Capital-T Technology will either keep silent or – if particularly brave/determined/undersocialised – mutter something about the Jevons Paradox/rebound effect. (The Jevons Paradox, spotted by a 19th century economist, is that more ‘efficiency’ results in greater use of a resource, rather than less, because lower prices expands the market). Meanwhile the bigger question of unreasoning technophilia is just too much “against the grain” to be attempted, especially when you have only a couple of minutes to state your case (2).
Probably the best we can hope (3) for, can do, is to point out the obvious examples of when promises of salvation are not kept, and that even those things that are supposed to “reduce emissions” probably/definitely won’t (4).
And so – drumroll please – two examples from the very end of 2024.
- The “green” ferries that probably won’t be. (Watson, 2024)
2. The QR codes that won’t actually reduce emissions because what is saved in waste is lost in the cloud(s). (Booth, 2024).
References
Watson, C. 2024. ‘Green’ ferry emits more CO2 than old diesel ship. BBC, December 30
Footnotes
(1) In the same way that anyone who thinks the population bomb has gone off can be dismissed as a Malthusian and probably a white supremacist/eugenicist to boot).
(2) Herman and Chomsky Propaganda Model – ‘concision’
(3) That damned word. Srsly.
(4) That this is as much as “public intellectuals” dare do is a sign of our post-desperate times.
marchudson.net 
The reality is Environmental Degradation, one facet of which is ‘Climate change’, will increase, as no real effort is being made world wide to curb it.