Ed. note: This piece was originally published on Counterpunch on 3 September, 2024. Published here with permission of the author.
Many political and military battles have been sparked by fundamentalism, whether religious, national, or economic. Those fundamentalisms remain strong across the world, requiring vigilance from those who embrace political pluralism and celebrate human diversity.
But one other fundamentalism today, common on the left and right, is even more dangerous: technological fundamentalism. While those other forces can unleash conflicts that do great damage in specific times and places, technological fundamentalism undermines the capacity of the ecosphere to sustain large-scale human life in the not-too-distant future.
Today’s worship of high-energy/high-technology threatens our survival, which is ironic and potentially tragic.
First, definitions. By fundamentalism, I mean any intellectual, political, or theological position that asserts a certainty in the truth and/or righteousness of a belief system. Fundamentalism is an extreme form of hubris—overconfidence not only in one’s own beliefs but in the ability of humans to understand complex questions definitively.
Capitalists who believe that markets always know best (except when governments have to bail out companies that fail in the market) are economic fundamentalists. Patriots who believe the United States is always on the side of the angels (even when U.S. leaders violate domestic and international law) are national fundamentalists. Believers who assert that their interpretation of a text is obviously correct (no matter how opaque that text may be) are religious fundamentalists.
A particularly dangerous feature of these belief systems is that adherents often imagine that their problems, often caused at least in part by their fundamentalism, can be solved by a more intense application of fundamentalist tenets. Religions provide ethical guidelines that too often become rigid rules that people can’t adhere to; fundamentalists double down on the rigidity. Nation-states offer citizens a sense of identity but too easily grab onto illusions of superiority; when clashing claims of superiority emerge, fundamentalists rachet up the rhetoric. Capitalism creates wealth but leads lead to inequality and economic instability; fundamentalists argue for unleashing capitalism from any collective control.
What is technological fundamentalism and why is it even more dangerous?
Technological fundamentalists believe that the use of high-energy advanced technology is always a good thing and that the increasing use of evermore sophisticated high-energy advanced technology can solve our problems, including the problems caused by the unintended consequences of earlier technologies. These fundamentalists have no doubt that human knowledge is adequate to run the world. But to claim such abilities, we have to assume we can identify all the patterns in nature and learn to control all aspects of nature. That we so clearly cannot do those things does not disturb the technological fundamentalists’ faith.
Perhaps the ultimate example of this fundamentalism is geo-engineering, the belief that we can intervene in the climate system at the planetary level to deal with the global warming caused by our high-energy advanced technology. Given massive human failure at much lower levels of intervention, this approach—for example, what is called solar radiation management, which would inject sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect back sunlight—seems, quite literally, crazy.
Let me be clear: I am not arguing against all technology—humans have been making tools for a long time. Instead, I am rejecting the irrational optimism that allows people to imagine we can continue at existing high-energy levels through endless innovation, which typically is anchored in the belief that low-cost renewable energy will be abundant enough to replace fossil fuels. Innovation and renewable energy are important, and I’m all for expanding research and development. But we have to do full-cost accounting on renewables and recognize that there are destructive environmental and social consequences to constructing the infrastructure for that energy production, not to mention the continued drawdown of ecological capital in the pursuit of an illusory “green growth.”
Finally, the painful irony, and potential tragedy, in all this.
Technological fundamentalists celebrate human creativity and ingenuity, which are indeed expansive. Human beings are clever and, whatever the ecological crises we’ve created, all our gadgets are impressive. This faith in humans is often expressed in the assertion that we can do anything we set our minds to, motivated by the necessity-that-is-the-mother-
But there is one ecological solution ignored not only by the tech worshipers but by almost all political movements, including most of the environmental movement: a collective agreement to impose limits on ourselves.
The core ecological problem is human overshoot—too many people consuming too much in the aggregate, exhausting the capacity of the ecosphere to regenerate in time. Specific threats such as climate disruption are a derivative of overshoot, and the real solution to that is right in front of us: fewer and less. Fewer people consuming less energy and other materials. All we have to do is put a cap on aggregate consumption and impose rationing to promote fair distribution.
This approach is never proposed in political campaigns and only rarely discussed by mainline environmentalists. When I have proposed it in conversation to folks from the right or the left, the most common response is “that will never happen.” I ask why, and the answer, often accompanied by eye rolling, is “people don’t want to give up what they have.”
I don’t disagree with that observation, that humans have a hard time resisting “the temptations of dense energy,” as my colleague Wes Jackson and I have observed. But if we are such a creative and inventive species, should we not be able to not come up with innovative public policies that modify our own behavior? Why would we pretend we can control a world that is beyond our control rather than get together to control ourselves?
I have no easy three-step program to achieving fewer and less, and neither does anyone else. The task is formidable, precisely because dense energy not only results in a flood of consumer goods that no one really needs and luxury items that only a few can afford. The profit motive in capitalism is part, but only part, of the problem. That dense energy also does work that makes our lives easier and more comfortable, and giving it up is difficult. When I cut firewood, I use a chainsaw rather than a handsaw, not because of capitalist propaganda but because it is faster and easier on my aging muscles.
Our future is fewer and less, either because we embrace the challenge and apply all that creativity and ingenuity to planning, or because the forces of the larger living world impose limits on us. Technology has allowed us to temporarily transcend ecological limits, but that strategy cannot succeed indefinitely. As the saying goes, nature bats last.
Our first step should be abandoning the hubris of technological fundamentalism and embracing real humility. The fewer-and-less approach to overshoot doesn’t lead to simple or easy answers, but it offers a path to long-term survival. We lack strategies that we can implement tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t wrestle with the challenge today.
It is ironic that technological fundamentalists believe we can do anything we set our minds to, except limit the voraciousness of the human enterprise. It will be tragic if this fundamentalism continues to determine our course and the scariest dystopian scenarios become our future.
