Main Topic: Techno-Capitalists Think Innovation Can Save the Planet. But That Same Thinking Is Destroying Our Climate
Dear Diary. Technological innovation for the last two hundred years has made life much better for most of us. Starting with the first locomotives in the early 19th century to the first automobiles greatly improving transportation and the development of many appliances during the 20th century, life got much better. But in the long run at the cost of a more polluted environment and particularly carbon pollution put into the atmosphere.
Now suddenly during the mid 2020s the big shiny object that is being innovated is Artificial Intelligence. There are many issues here, but the one affecting climate is the fact that AI requires a lot of electricity to run, soaking up what can be produced by new renewable energy projects. Some countries are even delaying ending old coal plants for the sake of running AI. Yet, many experts think that AI can help solve our environmental problems.
Here are more details from the Guardian:
Techno-capitalists think innovation can save the planet. But that same thinking is what got us here #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-18T19:28:15.760Z
Techno-capitalists think innovation can save the planet. But that same thinking is what got us here | Technology | The Guardian
Technology
Techno-capitalists think innovation can save the planet. But that same thinking is what got us hereAn upside-down mindset is emerging around the world. We have to rethink our relationship with the environment and the technology that has caused it harm An upside-down mindset is emerging around the world. We have to rethink our relationship with the environment and the technology that has caused it harm
Richard King
Sat 18 Oct 2025
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World describes a society inthrall to the values of science and technology. It is set in the futuristic World State, whose citizens are scientifically engineered to fit into a hierarchy. Eugenics, psychotropic pharmaceuticals and classical conditioning are employed to maximise stability and happiness. Huxley’s novel does not describe a conventionally authoritarian system, but one in which the desire for freedom and dignity has simply been eliminated. The World State is a radical technocracy.
It’s a satire on the consequences of importing scientific thinking into the realm of social policy. The Controllers of the World State preside over a society that has rationality and efficiency as its guiding principles, and when those principles conflict with human nature, it is human nature that is required to give way. Rather than building a society that engenders happy human beings, the Controllers seek to design human beings that can function in the society into which they are “hatched”.
The idea that we would invert our relationship with the world in this way strikes us as sinister, as antithetical to what it means to be human.
And yet something resembling this upside-down mindset is now emerging across the globe, particularly in the debate around climate change.
From Europe to China, the technology that threatened to destroy the planet is held to be the one that will save it.
Having built a system that is destructive of the environment that surrounds and sustains us, we are now proposing to change … the environment! In his dystopia Huxley imagined a society that only worked when the humans within it were made into something not quite human. Today, many scientists and engineers imagine a planet that has been similarly transformed: nature itself must yield to the system. We need a technological fix.
Driving us towards this technological fix is the damage inflicted by existing technology.
The powerful datacentres needed to provide artificial intelligence demand huge amounts of energy – a demand that will increase as the white-hot rivalry between the US and China becomes hotter still. And so it is hardly surprising to find the Silicon Valley faithful at the head of a campaign to revive and reinvent the nuclear power industry, or to find that this technology – the first in human history to reconstitute nature’s basic elements – has a kind of totemic power among those who would rely on technology to address the environmental crisis. The last two years have seen a huge recommitment to nuclear energy, with more than 120 energy and tech companies, 25 countries and 14 major financial institutions announcing their support for its expansion and development.
From liberal Europe to communist China, the technology that threatened to destroy the planet is held to be the one that will save it.
But ecomodernism is far more heterodox, and far more radical, than this “nuclear renaissance”.
Take geoengineering, for example: the proposal to manage planetary temperatures, either by reducing greenhouse gases by sucking them out of the atmosphere and burying them deep beneath the oceans, or by reflecting sunlight back towards space. One popular proposal involves pumping sulphates into the upper atmosphere to imitate the sun-dimming effects of a large volcanic eruption, reducing the amount of solar radiation getting trapped by the greenhouse gases, but not the gases themselves. (You know the situation is serious when your proof of concept is Krakatoa.) Again, the avatars of big tech have placed themselves at the head of these schemes. And again, they are moving ahead with such technologies whether we are happy about it or not, performing sulphate experiments in the skies above California (too late for the Palisades, alas) or fertilising the oceans with iron dust in order to kickstart algae blooms that draw down carbon from the atmosphere.
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What else can we look forward to, in this technologically managed future? As biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence converge into a technoscience of remarkable power, the answer to that question boggles the mind; but even now there are signs that the future could witness an unparalleled revolution in the relationship between human beings and the non-human world.
And all this is before we’ve broached the issue of mining the moon, or even asteroids, for water and precious minerals.
In all kinds of ways, then, we are on the precipice of a transformation – one that will reverse our relationship with the world in a way analogous to Huxley’s great satire. In the absence of any serious discussion about social and political transformation, we are doubling down on technological innovation. We are entering a Brave New Wild.
The problem with the technofix mindset is that the very thinking that brought us to this juncture is now assumed to offer a path to safety. The environmental problems we face are deeply related to technology, and yet it is to technology that we turn for solutions. The cause is re-engineered as a cure.
Many scientists reject this position as simplistic. They argue (not without some justice) that it is the irresponsible use of technology that is dangerous, and that the best way forward is to instil a new ethos of responsibility in our future endeavours. Technologies, they say, are “only tools” and have no moral content as such. I can use a hammer to drive in a nail or bludgeon my nextdoor neighbour to death. It is my actions that matter, not the hammer itself.
This is the instrumental view of technology, and it is dominant in scientific circles and even in mainstream environmentalism. But it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of humanity’s relationship to technology. That relationship is inevitable: there is no Homo sapiens without technology.
Having evolved from tool-using hominids, humans depend upon technology in a way that no other species does. To take an instrumental view of that relationship, however, is simplistic and ultimately dangerous, as it underplays the shaping effect that powerful technologies have on human sensibilities. If all you have is that hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
 The technofix is just as much a psychosocial phenomenon as a scientific and engineering challenge. We need to ask what kind of relationship we want with the planet we call home, as well as with the technologies through which we now propose to change it.
This is not an argument against technological innovation. Any response to climate change and the environmental crisis more generally will have to make use of new technologies, such as solar panels and wind turbines, and more efficient batteries for energy storage. But in order to make the best use of these innovations, we will need to insist on the crucial difference between approaching such technological interventions as part of a broader project of change and merely thinking technologically – and technocratically – about the problem of climate change.
We need to push back against the instrumentalist, techno-capitalist worldview and do so in a language that places humanity – what it is, what it needs – at the centre of our thinking.
- This is an edited extract from Brave New Wild by Richard King, out now (Monash University Publishing, A$32.99)
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
EXCEPTIONAL HEAT IN AUSTRALIA -45C
(Hot but no vegemite,no national record)
OCTOBER RECORDS
yesterday
43.9 Warburton & Tarcoola
30.6 17 70
40.9 Ernabella
today
44.2 Ballera
44.1 Moomba
43.1 Thargomindah
42.6 Tibooburra & Smithville
42.3 White Cliffs
40.1 Cobar
39 Penrith
38 Moruya — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T16:33:56.261Z
Exceptional summer weather will continue in the Iberian Peninsula AND increase.
Scorching air from North Africa will push temperatures >35C in Spain.
Dozens of records,including some monthly ones,will be broken and history will be rewritten.
See AEMET forecasts for Murcia: — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T14:11:27.922Z
Another exceptionally warm night in the AZORES ISLANDS
Minimums up to 22.5C , with 6 stations between Azores and Madeira with Mins >22C and 16 >21C !
Tomorrow it can be even warmer with monthly records approached (they were broken in 2024 !) — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T08:06:20.998Z
Today Sogwipo SOUTH KOREA had a minumum of 19.9C, the first no tropical night since June 23rd, after 118 consecutive tropical nights!
Sea temperature south of Korean Peninsula are up to 29C:6C+ above normal
Ryukyu Islands,JAPAN won't be touched by the current cold spell
Maps:KMA & Tropical Tidbit — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T10:55:46.930Z
While a cold front reached Honshu,the suffocating humid heat 24/7 goes on in Okinawa
Tonight an insane Minimum of 28.1C at Kitadaito (well above summer average)
Summer weather will even worsen and extend for weeks and will break all November records! — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T07:22:05.520Z
Exceptional hot nights continue allover Southeast Asia:
On 15th Minimum 29.2C Huyen Tran,VIETNAM
Hottest October night in history
Every tropical country is the records set during the 2023/2024 Nino.
In the meanwhile the NOAA has just declared another "bogus" Nina,like last one. — Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T06:31:21.954Z
Inside Climate News #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-20T11:06:15.940Z
The Guardian #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-19T10:10:56.891Z
The Pioneer #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-19T10:15:58.070Z
Many of the Inflation Reduction Act's climate measures are expiring soon.
But while they were in place, they put us on track to save about 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide pollution over the next decade!
"Every ton of avoided carbon pollution makes a difference," says @dananuccitelli.bsky.social. — Citizens' Climate Lobby (@cclusa.org) 2025-08-22T21:39:00.080Z
Agence France Presse AFP #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-20T11:05:14.994Z
2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42 #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-19T08:29:40.910Z
#Biofuels: "But...if you’re going to grow fuel instead of food, then someone somewhere else is going to have to grow more food. That’s probably not going to be on a parking lot."
yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/10/how-... — Silicon Valley North - Citizens Climate Lobby (@cclsvn.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T14:18:56.651Z
Coalition showdown on net zero looms amid speculation more MPs could quit over policy #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-20T08:14:52.766Z
How plays like Weather Girl and Kyoto are finally bringing the climate crisis alive for audiences #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-20T11:45:09.801Z
Independent Catholic News ICN #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-19T09:59:54.362Z
The main event for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, as far as life-threatening impacts go, could well be unfolding in the Caribbean this week, as @bhensonweather.bsky.social and I explain: yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/10/trop... — Dr. Jeff Masters (@drjeffmasters.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T16:41:32.133Z
The main event for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, as far as life-threatening impacts go, could well be unfolding in the Caribbean this week, as @bhensonweather.bsky.social and I explain: yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/10/trop... — Dr. Jeff Masters (@drjeffmasters.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T16:41:32.133Z
Shipping emissions levy shelved as countries bow to US pressure #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-17T16:57:55.564Z
#Emissions + #Shipping:
"A landmark deal to cut global shipping emissions has been abandoned after Saudi Arabia and the US succeeded in ending the talks."
www.bbc.com/news/article... — Silicon Valley North - Citizens Climate Lobby (@cclsvn.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T14:16:44.952Z
From @nickcunningham.bsky.social an update on the state of the US LNG industry and a quote from an LNG exec.
“I think we are kind of losing sight of the plot here. The industry is actually growing too fast." — Justin Mikulka (@justinmikulka.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T13:29:37.791Z
Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s Relationship With Trump Turns ‘Messy’ #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-20T12:05:10.950Z
“Clean energy tax credits have played a critical role in lowering energy costs & reducing climate pollution,” said CCL ED Ricky Bradley.
“Our nationwide network of grassroots volunteers will share Rewiring America's resources in their communities, encouraging homeowners to maximize those benefits.” — Citizens' Climate Lobby (@cclusa.org) 2025-08-27T17:00:24.573Z
The Guardian #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-19T10:05:55.716Z
‘A punch in the face’: Germany’s dash for gas raises questions over climate targets #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-20T15:35:22.166Z
Main Topic: Why Microgrids Are the Backbone of the Next Energy Revolution
On The Extreme Temperature Diary SUN 10/19/2025
At: guyonclimate.com
+#climate and record temp reports via @extremetemps.bsky.social/ @michaelemann.bsky.social @katharinehayhoe.com @drpauldorfman.bsky.social — Guy Walton..."The Climate Guy" (@climateguyw.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T19:59:11.924Z
America’s biggest offshore wind farm will be online in 6 months #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-18T13:14:01.968Z
A Data Center Is Dead, Long Live a Solar Farm #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-17T20:33:09.004Z
How a Giant Solar Farm Flopped in Rural Texas #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-17T20:28:07.385Z
World’s landscapes may soon be ‘devoid of wild animals’, says nature photographer #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-18T13:13:00.377Z
#Cities: "The grant, part of a $1.5 billion program under the Inflation Reduction Act, is meant to support urban tree-planting efforts, especially in disadvantaged communities." Pittsburg, (CA) works to bring in more shade.
www.mercurynews.com/2025/10/19/p... — Silicon Valley North - Citizens Climate Lobby (@cclsvn.bsky.social) 2025-10-20T14:10:18.576Z
Racing against time, Illinois clears a major hurdle in containing an invasive fish #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-20T08:59:54.253Z
Ecosocialist Bookshelf, October 2025 #Climate — Climate Tracker (@climate.skyfleet.blue) 2025-10-17T22:13:11.573Z
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