Mitigations of Human Impacts through Technology
Technological societies adept at mathematics, engineering, chemistry, physics, botany, agronomy, and molecular biology have recently developed tools that have the potential to mitigate the impacts on sustainability caused by our population growth and activities. Many of these technological innovatio...
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Published in | Ecological Sustainability pp. 135 - 290 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Book Chapter |
Language | English |
Published |
United Kingdom
CRC Press
2013
Taylor & Francis Group |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Technological societies adept at mathematics, engineering, chemistry, physics, botany, agronomy, and molecular biology have recently developed tools
that have the potential to mitigate the impacts on sustainability caused by
our population growth and activities. Many of these technological innovations also have had untoward “side effects,” requiring that the innovators
rethink their approaches to avoid the more dire effects of the law of unintended
consequences. The promise of technological mitigation of problems based on
population growth has led some economists (e.g., Julian Simon 1998) to assert
that population growth is not important; technology will save us from our
excesses. The fallacy of this assertion was revealed by US anthropologist and
historian Joseph A. Tainter in his 1988 book, The Collapse of Complex Societies.
Tainter considered the collapses of the Western Roman Empire, the Mayan
civilization, and the US Chaco Canyon culture. We consider societal collapse
as the ultimate manifestation of unsustainability. Tainter outlined four principles about why complex societies collapse. These are the following:1. “Human societies are problem-solving organizations;
2. Sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance;
3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and
4. Investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving responseoften reaches a point of declining marginal returns.” |
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ISBN: | 1466565128 9781466565128 |
DOI: | 10.1201/b14905-8 |