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Technology As Our Planet's Last Best Hope Analysis

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Technology in the 21st century has enhanced our lives by providing easy access to information, quick ways to communicate, and has allowed people to connect with others all over the world. In this case, technology is viewed in a positive light. However, when it comes to technology and it’s ability to solve environmental problems, is it reliable? Before technological solutions are implemented in the environment, they must be thoroughly tested and reliable. These technological solutions should have positive short-term and long-term effects. If the benefits are only good in the short-term, but not in the long-term, and the environmental problem reoccurs or reincarnates into another problem, we end up in the same place we started at. This would …show more content…

He presents two key groups within his article and their relationships with the environment. Pearce introduces the “mainstream environmentalists” and the “modernists.” He explains their differences by stating, “While many mainstream environmentalists want to make peace with nature through the sustainable use of natural resources, the modernists want to cut the links between mankind and nature” (Pearce). Pearce theorizes that the debate about how useful technology is for our environmental problems and how it “exacerbates them is not new.” An example of a technology that has proven successful, but has also been detrimental to the environment is the automobile. With the invention of the automobile came a more convenient and efficient way to travel from one destination to another, but unfortunately, the gases and oils these vehicles have expelled over time have created a build up of air pollution. While this example of technology has an impact on nature/the environment as an end result, modernists have come up with technologies that manipulate nature/the environment, both as a starting point and ending point. Modernists are in support of “rewilding”, “the restoration of large tracts of habitat and the reintroduction of the species that once lived there” (Pearce). These supporters say that rewilding can only be done with technology,

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