Technological Progress Is Serving the Wealthy, Not the Climate or the Public

The sun sets as another day passes, and you take a deep breath, settle down in your bed with a cup of tea in your left hand and your phone in your right. You smile and recall the headlines you saw today, “How electric vehicles offered hope as climate challenges grew.” And then you think, ‘Yes, there is no need to worry about rising sea levels or out-of-season rains because the people are doing something about it.’

I would urge you to think again.

Are we as a world really moving in a direction where technology is bringing about hope when it comes to the climate?

Technology, from the start, has had controversial opinions. Some parents would like to argue that technology is destroying the brains of their children while still scrolling on their phones all day, some teachers would like to say that technology has made learning much more accessible than before, while some would say that, right or not, technology has become an avid part of our day-to-day lives. And it is true. I write this article on my laptop while my mother watches television beside me, and my younger sister yells at Alexa to start playing some music. All of this is technology. Technology has therefore become an entity that we cannot imagine our lives without. And these technological advancements have started to tackle problems that humans continue to face. A big example of this would be climate change.

Climate change is not a recent issue; in fact, it has been an issue for so long that every day, activists and scientists have been looking for ways to mitigate the worst effects of it for the past 20 or so years. Many of these “solutions” have been in the field of technology, which includes examples such as solar panels, electric vehicles (EVs), and carbon capture. In today’s world, millions and billions of people are constantly looking for ways to revamp the technological future to have a more sustainable future. So then, you may ask, where is the problem in all this?

The problem is that these advancements are only accessible to people who can afford them and who benefit from them. It is no surprise, looking at the world today, that we are all huge victims of capitalism, consumerism, and overconsumption, but what we often overlook is how it impacts the environment, too. Electric Vehicles, for instance, marketed as a “hope” for the future and a “solution” against climate change, are doing more harm than good. As of 2023, out of the 8 billion world population, only 14 million electric cars were sold, which makes up only 0.1%. In this 14 million, the countries owning the largest number of electric cars included the USA and China, two of the biggest economies in the world. Does that mean electric cars are made only for people with money? What about the other countries or the other people - is climate change not a problem for them? Other than the blatant disparity when it comes to economic access to these resources, another problem is the method of acquisition of raw materials required to build technologies such as these. Tesla, considered to be one of the leading sellers of EVs, mines the cobalt for their batteries in the Democratic Republic of Congo - where, needless to say, the conditions of the workers are menial at best and the impact on the environment constantly worsening.

It can be seen that the marginalised communities are paying the price for “green” resources when they are not even getting access to these themselves. Communities such as that of Congo still face the challenges of climate change, like rising sea levels, while also having to deal with violations of their rights as human beings. It is important to acknowledge that new gadgets may reduce carbon emissions per person in wealthy areas, but they cannot take us further and address climate change or global inequality.

Thus, for climate change to actually prolong and bring about a social change, certain actions still need to be taken. There needs to be an urgent focus on equitable distribution of resources, with them not being concentrated into the hands of just the rich but everyone; transformation needs to be systemic, governmental, and communal rather than profitable; and awareness of climate change, as well as solutions, needs to be global, with countries in immediate danger to be given priority. We, as people, need to understand that climate change affects all of us and stand in solidarity to counteract it.

References

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/electric-vehicles-cars-climate-change-challenges-2021

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2024/trends-in-electric-cars

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-congo-drc-mining-siddharth-kara

Image

https://www.richwashburn.com/post/the-eloi-morlocks-and-the-technological-divide-a-cautionary-tale-for-ai-skeptics

image credit: Rich Washburn