Is technology and environmentalism compatible? Is technology neutral?

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Earth is overpopulated. ONE strategy is to significantly reduce the population. Another is to spread it out more - move excess off Earth. I didn't say either was any better or more plausible, just that they are two different solutions.

The last part saves it. Because otherwise I would have had to point at that it is so extremely unlikely that space travel would in any way solve Earths overpopulation. Was Europe half empty after America was "found"? Not really - the discovery of new lands to conquer did not lead to a significant long-term decrease in the Settlers original locality

Originally Posted by Human No More

[on cellphones and cars beeing unsustainable]A life without meaning, without enjoyment and happiness is completely pointless. That doesn't justify destruction for its own sake, but what is reasonable.

"Reasonable destruction" - SRSLY?
Anyways - the identification of these gadgets and "meaning" is striking, as is the perceived necessity of having them for happiness.
Do you really think, people are now (with cellphones) actually happier and have more meaningful lifes than when my generation was young and we had "only" regular phones? How does it relate to each other to call a friend 5 times a day on the cellphone to visiting that friend IRL?

Yet they allow us to actually have contact with others, to experience places we could otherwise never reach, to experience the whole world and not some tiny part of it.

So these things are tools - to achieve something else that then actually brings the meaning and happiness. The happiness is from having contact with others and from being in new places. It think that is an important distinction as to reach these things,there are other means.

I think anyone who completely opposes technology should try surviving without it, without a large group of people to rely on (remember, anything you can't find naturally is technology, including clothes, tents, any weapons for hunting that are more than just sticks and rocks)

That is nonsense. It relates to the way of life proposed as a fullblown capitalist industrial exploitive civilization relates to your worldview!
The point is neiter to be alone nor to abandon all tools. Under such conditions, humans will suffer and die. It is as far from the way humans thrive best as the current society. Humans need a group of people, a tribe or band to survive. And they also need tools. The distinction is, that tools can be made by each person or within a small group (<Dunbars Number), while technology needs a large scale complex mass society with exploitation of resources and wage labor to exist.
There are indeed a couple of things that emerge and I am surprised that you did not mention them yourself as they sort of support the idea that civilization could actually go somewhere, so I will sort of shoot at myself by mentioning them, but I want them to be in the discussion.
One of them is the open source movement (which allows people to cooperate freely and without wage labor on their own account). The more interesting one is the fab/rep movement, which founds on the idea to have microscale production units that can be built and used by small groups of people and that can produce a variety of things. They do of course have flaws (like still demaning importation of resources, mainly metals and plastics), but the do allow small groups or even single persons to fabricate items, including the means of production themselves. By the above definition, these would then be tools and not technologies, as they are in complete control of such a "tribe" or a single person, which makes them identical to a stone axe or a bow.

Originally Posted by Tsyal

Even beyond simply the environmental message, is the underlining message of humanity needing to find true balance with nature, beyond what the current "green" mindset is.

There is even a term for this, I found out recently. It is called "deep ecology" (nice to have a box to crawl into )

Originally Posted by Tsyal

Because in actuality, there is no "environment," where all the rest of the non-human plant and animal life is domed off in a seperate biosphere from us. There is no "human world" and "natural world," there is just "the world." Period. No matter how much we believe otherwise, humanity, and all it's baggage, is a part of the world, the same world that nature shares. The biggest downfall of the current environmentalist movement is this separatist attitude

There is a book on that subject called "Ecology without Nature", that argues that this duality is in fact nonsense and I thzink one has to agree on that. The danger that lies within that argument is of course that it can lead to a new dualism of how to act upon it that is harder to define in terms of what is "best". That dualism is on one side occupied by the mindset you describe - to find a balance, to feel equal to the animals and the trees and the rivers - to strive for harmony. The other side is that it gives an excuse to do almost anything with the argument that if humans and their acts are part of the world/Nature, anything they do is by definition natural, even polluting rivers and blowing up mountains. This plays into the hands then of those who even accept technology as life and therefore say that a road full of colorful diverse cars is of similar inherent value than a river full of colorful and diverse fish.
If we accept the dissolution of the duality between unique human technology and the rest of the natural world, we will need to find new ways of defining what we regard as desireable and what not. I think then it becomes vital to listen to intuition and emotion again, which is something the world has forgotten to do in terms of technology. Because we will have to make a distinction between an act that pollutes a river, one that consumes the river and one that does not do so. We all know in our hearts what is "right" and "wrong" in these acts, but it is a lot harder to define it in terms of the materialistic world view that is prevalent. It leads directly to the economic view of the world with a "price tag" attached to every thing. Only then can we in terms of economics calculate if the damage that is done compensates for the benefits gained. And in doing this, the doors are open to an increasingly complex (who defines value, who calculates all the impacts and benefits) and insane system of utilitarianism.

I am not argueing to stick to the dualism (actually I agree in that it makes things worse), but I see a danger in it as well as a chance and the need to clearly think about how to deal with the pressing questions beyond dropping that duality.

Originally Posted by Tsyal

Though I am a bit more technologically liberal than aurora, I'm with her on this topic, at least in regards to how she views nature.

Haha - I think that is a bit of a misconception. I know, I come off utterly anti-technology here, but that stems from a couple of points like my distinction between technology and tools and in terms of a discussion on true sustainability. I do not say, that there has to be a big bang and everyone living only with rocks and sticks - I think a better solution to the problem of technology would definitely involve a reduction in many areas while keeping others for a while. I think, and probably agree widely with HNM here, that by reducing impact drastically (!), keeping the technologies (or rather techniques and tools) that really are truely beneficial to human experience and that are having a low impact on other humans and nonhumans humanity could go a long way. Eventually, even these would not be sustainable, but there would be a long period of innovation that could create truely sustainable ways. By giving the world a chance to coexist with humans, a basis for a long term, thoughtful development would be laid. It can still be debated if that would "lead anywhere" given the "constraint" of sustainability, but it would at least be some sort of balance. Sadly, I consider the likelyhood of this happening voluntarily and in the timeframe required so extremely unlikely that I feel depressed.

Scientists have said for the last 20 years that biodiversity/the oceans/the climate could be saved if people would act now and decisively by switching to this or that new and more sane technology within a few years, by reducing emissions within a decade and so on. They were largely ignored and now as their timeframe runs out, we see that they have been right, that this would have been the chance to act. Nowadays, people claim the same again. They say that if we reduce CO2 emissions to the levels prior to 1990 within a decade, we could still have a global warming of "only 2°C". Have you seen Kopenhagen and the predictions for the conference coming up? Nothing again. Weak promises at best or downright opposition even.

The steps that would have to be taken are drastic and have to be realized quickly, but there is not even a hint that this is happening - just as 20 years ago. This is why I have no hope that this will work.