The best way to introduce this book is to quote the first sentence of the blurb: “Techno-Fix challenges the pervasive belief that technological innovation will save us from the dire consequences of the 300-year fossil-fuelled binge known as modern industrial civilization“. Stinging, provocative, and radical, Techno-Fix puts its fingers on many a sore spot with its searing critique.

Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment, written by Michael Huesemann and Joyce Huesemann, published by New Society Publishers in September 2011 (paperback, 435 pages)

You might ask why, in 2021, I would bother reviewing a book published ten years ago. Both for the prosaic reason that I have had this book for some years without reading it, and because I am working on a little something that I cannot divulge yet. Plus, as it turns out, because this book is still relevant despite having been published in 2011.

The Huesemanns, Michael a biotechnologist with an interest in sustainability, Joyce an academic and activist, pull no punches in Techno-Fix. Our technology has brought us tremendous affluence and a world population growth spurt, but it also has unintended consequences that are both unavoidable and unpredictable. Some examples discussed here are climate change resulting from the generation of energy, the unknown effects of most synthetic chemicals, the pollution accompanying industrial activities, or the way the introduction of the car reshaped the world.

Even more outspoken is their statement that most technology is exploitative, abusing ecosystems, animals, and other humans. The industrial and globalised nature of much technology blunts us to this by creating distance in either space or time between exploiter and exploited. Do you know where your stuff comes from and who made it? Do you have a care for the planet your grandchildren will inherit? With the same fury that would later characterise Abundant Earth, the authors speak of the human domination of nature and the brainwashing by television and other mass media. The frequent references to TV might seem outdated given how online social media has ballooned in the last decade, but it has arguably not changed the beast much. And where free-market trade does not get us the needed resources, “high-tech military technology plays a key role in ensuring the continued exploitation and control of natural resources that are essential to maintaining the materialistic consumer lifestyle” (p. 68). Theirs is a bleak outlook on our modern society indeed.

“”high-tech military technology plays a key role in ensuring the continued exploitation and control of natural resources that are essential to maintaining the materialistic consumer lifestyle” (p. 68). Theirs is a bleak outlook on our modern society indeed.”

Surely, new technology can fix the problems old technology created? To the Huesemanns, counter-technologies such as geo-engineering schemes are like handing you another spade as you are digging your own grave—they come with their own unintended consequences. Furthermore, they write, efficiency gains (e.g. dematerialisation) have their limits and are often followed by increased consumption, a phenomenon known as the Jevons paradox. Ironically, despite increased affluence in the developed world, psychological research shows that happiness and well-being have not increased. Instead, we are stuck on a hedonic treadmill, furiously desiring ever more. The profit motive behind most technological developments results in solutions that benefit corporations and their shareholders, not the public at large.

Since these drawbacks are known, why does the belief in technological progress persist? The authors draw parallels between religious faith and techno-optimism, with the latter rising as the former waned. Furthermore, seemingly objective practices such as risk assessments and cost-benefit analyses are skewed towards continued technological development, downplaying or neglecting externalized costs. Finally, they take serious issue with the uncritical acceptance of new technologies due to the widespread belief that progress is inevitable and that technology is value-neutral, i.e. just a tool that can be used for good or evil.

Up to this point, much of what they write resonates with me, but I found their proposed solutions a mixed bag, strongly disagreeing with some of it. Since we cannot hex our way out of our problems with more technology, we need, I agree, a paradigm shift. They draw an interesting parallel with Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Just as scientific dogmas disappear not because minds are changed but because the old guard dies, future generations will change the way we live. Current generations will, by and large, be too set in their ways, too unwilling to give up their affluence. Plus, expect pushback from industries and corporations that stand to lose the most.

“To the Huesemanns, counter-technologies […] are like handing you another spade as you are digging your own grave—they come with their own unintended consequences.”

I think it should be stressed at this point that the Huesemanns are not technophobes advocating a return to the caves (although some of what they say is not far off). Technology has a role to play if it is employed more responsibly. To avoid stepping off the Seneca Cliff into wholesale collapse, they envision a transition to a steady-state economy that acknowledges planetary boundaries (some Planetary Accounting might help) and practises long-term sustainability.

The latter would require three things. First, 100% renewable energy generation. This, they admit, brings its own share of problems, one of which they remarkably do not even mention: the need for a vast infrastructure constructed from non-renewable materials. Speaking of which, second, we need to use renewable resources exclusively and phase out non-renewable resources, or fully recycle them where this is not possible. Other than the difficulties—if not impossibility—of finding replacements for most non-renewable resources (including basic ones such as all metals), they pass over the fact that materials cannot be endlessly recycled, requiring a constant input of virgin material. Third, waste can only be discharged at rates than can be assimilated by ecosystems, and those that cannot be biodegraded (read: most synthetic chemicals) should be discontinued. They acknowledge that, clearly, this would require a sea change in our attitudes: a society that embraces self-limitation rather than unfettered abundance. All of this is necessary, I agree, but it also seems almost unimaginable. If the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed one thing, it is how willingly people will relinquish liberties and accept restrictions imposed upon them.

There were a further three issues raised here that I mildly to strongly disagree with. First, they are justifiedly very critical of the corruption of medicine by the so-called medico-industrial complex, specifically pharmaceutical companies. Rather, we should focus on prevention and lifestyle changes (sure), accept the inevitability of death (agreed), and embrace holistic medicine (hmmm). Once they start talking of the power of placebo effects and the body’s innate ability to heal itself I become a bit uneasy. There is a kernel of truth in there but, in my opinion, you are at the top of the slide that reads “pseudoscience this way”. Second, they appear to contradict themselves by stressing the importance of efficiency in saving precious resources but also wanting things to go small-scale and local again, holding up organic agriculture as a shining example (something of which I am sceptical). You cannot have it both ways, we scale up production processes for more than just profitability. Third, they surprisingly really have it in for genetic engineering. Other than completely ignoring the pervasiveness of horizontal gene transfer (one could say nature invented genetic modification billions of years before we did), they are unwilling to acknowledge it will be one of the necessary tools to keep feeding the world, deal with the impact of climate change on crops, or that we can take the best of both approaches.

“the Huesemanns are not technophobes advocating a return to the caves (although some of what they say is not far off). Technology has a role to play if it is employed more responsibly.”

The Huesemanns acknowledge human overpopulation at several points: “More people generally translate into more problems” (p. 44) and unless “the size of the human population [is] stabilized and reduced, and the materialistic consumer lifestyle largely abandoned, there is little chance that our environmental problems will be solved” (p. 83). This is more than most authors do. Shame, then, that they do not dedicate a chapter to the thorny questions of whether we should control world population, what population size is optimal for the planet, and how many children to have (if any).

Instead, their last chapter felt to me like barking up the wrong tree. It calls for “critical science” (sensu Ravetz), which would stand in opposition to current scientific practice. Scientists need to take responsibility for their work, refuse dubious research financed by corporations, and abandon the excuse that they are not responsible for the end-uses. These are some really good points, but to put the onus almost completely on scientists struck me as, frankly, ridiculous. Some of their claims here really irked me. People choose this profession because of the relatively good income? Or the claim on page 329 that scientists and engineers do not really mind that problems are not solved as it guarantees their long-term employment? I normally hear a related version of that argument from climate-change deniers. I do not know what planet the authors live on, but my personal experience in academia showed me a world where you routinely work 60 to 80 hours a week on grant money or (if you are really lucky) a 40-hour contract while chasing short-term projects (known as PhD and postdoc positions) well into your forties before having a shot at a permanent position. When conditions are this exploitative it is no wonder many choose the job security and decent income offered by companies. If you want to keep scientists out of the clutches of well-paid corporate jobs and have them act as whistle-blowers you will have to properly reward and protect them, something only briefly acknowledged here.

In light of my criticism, would I recommend Techno-Fix? Yes, there is much I thoroughly agree with here. I applaud the authors for tabling controversial ideas and challenging readers with probing questions and assignments in an appendix. Furthermore, the book is thoroughly researched and annotated, very readable (including regular, useful summaries), and still relevant.

Techno-Fix

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Despite its purposefully provocative title, Limits is not a pro-growth book that panders to the illusion of endless economic growth. Starting with a thought-provoking re-reading of Malthus, ecological economist and political ecologist Giorgos Kallis examines how his ideas have influenced economics and have been misinterpreted by environmentalists, before ending with a call to collective self-limitation. Along the way, there is a healthy dollop of reflection and pre-emptive defence of his arguments. Though I have some points of criticism, Limits by and large concisely formulates ideas that I have found myself gravitating towards more and more lately.

Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care, written by Giorgos Kallis, published by Stanford University Press in August 2019 (paperback, 168 pages)

Despite having reviewed both the 1803 edition of Malthus’s essay and Mayhew’s biography, Kallis’s take on his work was an eye-opener for me. I can see at least three reasons why we continue to disagree over how best to interpret classical authors such as Malthus: concepts, aims, and language.

Malthus is best remembered for his argument that, if left unchecked, population growth would outstrip food supply. What he is not remembered for is his pro-growth attitude. He believed that food production could expand without limit. What hat he pulled that absurd assumption out of is another question, but the point that Kallis makes is that the concept of economic growth we think of today did not exist in Malthus’s time.

On the other side, neo-Malthusians have drawn on his work to argue for birth control, and to warn of resource exploitation and population overshoot. But birth control was something he never advocated, seeing it as one of the “species of misery or vice”. Malthus had different aims. Writes Kallis: “Remember, Malthus was not a demographer; he was a priest and a philosopher arguing for the impossibility of a classless society” (p. 23), and “Malthus was not an advocate of limits, but someone who invoked the specter of limit to justify inequality and call for growth” (p. 16).

Add Malthus’s flowery and verbose prose that is often ambiguous, and you can see why we still argue over his words. For example, a popular critique of Malthus today is that he did not foresee technical and scientific developments that led to e.g. the Green Revolution. But, Kenneth Binnmore’s contribution to the Yale reprint of the essay also points out that upon careful reading you find that he made allowance for future technological developments.

“Malthus is best remembered for his argument that, if left unchecked, population growth would outstrip food supply. What he is not remembered for is his pro-growth attitude.”

Both economists and environmentalists get Malthus wrong, claims Kallis here. In his opinion, Malthus was wrong because he could not or did not want to entertain the idea that we could voluntarily limit our numbers and still be happy. Or, to put it more explicitly, that recreational sex is an option.

There is another principle that has gone almost unremarked in discussions of his work, writes Kallis. By observing that population had the potential to grow much faster than food supply, Malthus introduced the concept of scarcity. And without realising it, many environmentalists have embodied this concept. For them, limits are external, our environment is precious and scarce. Calls for limits to growth seem driven more by a desire to stave off collapse than a desire to change how we behave. Bar radical fringes, mainstream environmentalism is still framed in terms of growth; think of self-contradictory concepts such as “green growth” or “sustainable development”. Environmentalists seem to think that if only we do this right, we can keep this show on the road. Rarely do they have the timefulness and deep time reckoning to extrapolate their forecasts beyond the immediate future and ask “sure, but for how long?”

Kallis puts his finger on a sore spot when writing that: “Our world is limited because our wants are unlimited” (p. 35). As he clarifies, the aim of this book is not to continue the debate over the when and how of growth and collapse, but to question the debate’s framing. Yes, Kallis acknowledges, there are hard limits out there, but many are a matter of choice (take for instance the widely adopted aim to limit the rise in global warming to 1.5°C). This might seem mere semantics, but, as highlighted in Abundant Earth, language powerfully shapes our perception. By talking of nature as being limited we conveniently side-step discussing how we should change our behaviour: nature is the problem, not us. He then proceeds to give five very good reasons why this narrative is dangerous and counterproductive. The remainder of Limits is a call for practising and reclaiming a culture of self-limitation, taking the Ancient Greeks as an example of a culture that did so, as well as some pre-emptive responses to criticism of his argument.

“By talking of nature as being limited we conveniently side-step discussing how we should change our behaviour: nature is the problem, not us.”

Especially the second half of Limits articulates ideas I have found myself gravitating towards more and more. My problem with much environmentalist discourse is the clamour to “do something” without ever going a step further and taking responsibility for our problems by asking “what are we willing to sacrifice?” Or, seeing I just said that language shapes our perception, maybe we should think of them as adjustments. In that sense, I disagree with Kallis’s criticism of the ecological footprint and planetary boundary concepts. He writes that they perpetuate the idea of external limits being the problem. That may be. But I think they are helpful to quantify the necessary behavioural adjustments and make explicit what a culture of self-limitation would actually look like. Planetary Accounting, which I review next, explores this idea much further. My hope is that quantification will bring about more meaningful action. My fear is that we will not like what we hear and rebel. But, as Kallis pleads in defence of self-limitation: “the truth or ethical value of an argument does not rest on whether it is politically correct or viable” (p. 101).

Although I was impressed overall with the thought-provoking arguments put forward in Limits, I am going to call Kallis out on a few things. How radically do we have to reimagine our way of living to make this self-limitation possible and what would the consequences be? Probably there was not the space to explore this here and I should turn to his other books about degrowth. But the bigger miss, especially in a book that discusses Malthus, is to not bring up overpopulation. If we are talking about practising self-limitation, the questions of whether we should control world population, what population size is optimal for the planet, and how many children to have (if any) are the big ones.

Whether you are interested in Malthus, growth and its limits, or issues of sustainability, I recommend Limits as a pleasantly concise and thought-provoking book that is sure to stimulate discussion.

Limits

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“Can Democracy Work? A Short History of a Radical Idea, from Ancient Athens to Our World“, written by James Miller, published in Europe by Oneworld Publications in October 2018 (hardback, 320 pages)

Although it might appear that the Inquisitive Biologist lives in a bubble of biology books, I do like to read wider, so readers can expect the occasional book review on unrelated topics. Lately, there have been a number of books on politics that have piqued my interest, Can Democracy Work? being one of them.

Miller starts off highlighting a number of interesting contradictions and questions. How can communist regimes, contemporary experiments such as Occupy Wall Street, or representative democracies have anything in common? How can countries that are as different as North Korea and the United States call themselves democratic? Is democracy a Western product, intertwined with Christianity and the historical spoils of our imperialism – a product that by definition cannot be exported to the wider world other than by force? What, really, is democracy? Here is one thing that it is not, says Miller: the result of a gradual process, slowly perfected since the ancient Greeks.

“What, really, is democracy? Here is one thing that it is not, says Miller: the result of a gradual evolution”

To show the manifold guises that democracy has taken, Miller has selected five different episodes in history and divided his book into five long essays. He examines ancient Athens, revolutionary Paris in 1792, the freshly minted United States in the decades following their Declaration of Independence in 1776, various struggles for political and social equality in nineteenth-century Europe (the British Chartist movement that started in 1839, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the Russian general strike of 1905), and global developments since 1917 in the wake of both America’s involvement in World War I and the Russian Revolution that year.

Now, not having a background in political or social sciences, it is hard for me to judge whether Miller’s historical selection is balanced, or whether he has left out important episodes. I imagine this is where more knowledgeable reviewers could point out flaws in the book. One complaint he addresses at the outset is that his history is Eurocentric. He acknowledges there may have been proto-democracies before ancient Greece, as well as independent appearances of self-government in other parts of the world. But he defends his choice by quoting classical historian M.I. Finley, who in Democracy Ancient and Modern wrote of such examples that: “their impact on history, on later societies was null.” Of course, expecting a complete and utter history of democracy in less than 250 pages would be foolish, and each of these individual episodes has been the subject of many dedicated books. I have, for example, Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy and Miéville’s October: The Story of the Russian Revolution jostling for space on my shelves here for future further reading.

“there existed a near-hypocritical tension in the US between the lofty wording of the Declaration of Independence and the practice of slavery”

Having said that, does Miller’s short history succeed in showing the diverse guises of democracy? Yes, absolutely! Though the verbosity and grammatical complexity of the frequent historical quotations will need some deciphering, Miller’s narrative is compulsively readable.

For example, I was fascinated to learn of the intense involvement of Athenian citizens in their democratic procedures, or that of the Parisians as they were experimenting with direct democracy in the first years of the French Revolution. Similarly, I never really considered that the story of female suffrage (i.e. the right to vote in elections) was only the latest in a line of such battles, with that for male suffrage preceding it. Additional requirements such as land-ownership or citizenship barring all male citizens from voting go back to ancient Athens. Not to mention the near-hypocritical tension that existed in the US between the lofty wording of the Declaration of Independence and the practice of slavery (its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, was himself a plantation slaveholder). Seasoned readers might roll their eyes (“you didn’t know??”), but if you come fresh to this topic then Miller provides.

“The book’s title is a red herring […] If you were hoping for a clear argument as to why Miller thinks democracy does or does not work […] you will be disappointed.”

The book’s title is a red herring though. It might be a catchy question, but Miller does not even take it up in his introduction, nor does he return to it in his coda. The book’s prelude is titled “What is democracy?”, which would have been an apter title. If you were hoping for a clear argument as to why Miller thinks democracy does or does not work, and what the alternatives might be, you will be disappointed – instead see my reviews of Against Democracy and In Defence of Democracy.

Instead, Miller’s off-hand ruminations reveal his feelings which can, I think, be best summarised as “I want to believe”. Other than the obvious quips of democracy descending into mob rule and the understandable disenchantment with recent elections, Miller touches on interesting inherent limitations. He mentions the problem of scale in modern nations with hundreds of millions of citizens, as well as the scale of the global problems we now seek to address, which asks for transnational politics, not local assemblies. And how do you unite the radically different and often opposing views, convictions and religions in modern societies? And what of people’s right not to want to participate in politics?

“Miller concludes that the challenges to democracy “are manifold, and perhaps intractable””

It is hard to disagree with Miller’s conclusion that the challenges to democracy “are manifold, and perhaps intractable”, but I would have loved him to flesh out this quandary further. Instead, I am left with the picture of an author who is still seeking for answers, or has perhaps even resigned himself to accepting a process that was so beautifully described by German-born Italian sociologist Robert Michels (1876-1936) and is quoted here from the posthumous English translation, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy:

“The democratic currents of history resemble successive waves […] When democracies have gained a certain stage of development, they undergo a gradual transformation, adopting the aristocratic spirit […] against which at the outset they struggled so fiercely. Now new accusers arise to denounce the traitors […] It is probable this cruel game will continue without end.“

This quibble notwithstanding, in order to frame current concerns and discussions about democracy’s shortcomings, having an awareness of its history is both vital and enlightening. And Miller admirably succeeds in providing the short history that the book’s subtitle promises. Can Democracy Work? comes recommended for readers interested in politics, and even novices to the subject such as myself should come away with a better understanding of the tumultuous history of democratic governance.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Can Democracy Work? paperback, hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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