The Politics of Technology in the Anthropocene

Human societies are confronted with environmental dangers created by their own doings — climate change or the loss of biodiversity, among others, result from centuries of industrialisation and globalisation. Whereas Ulrich Beck (1992) once suggested that modern societies have become «risk societies», it has been recently proposed that we now live in the «Anthropocene», i.e. a historical epoch in which humanity turns into a global environmental agent. However, as Michael Keary (2023) points out, political theory — including environmental political theory — has overlooked the crucial subject of technological change. How does it happen, to what degree can it be politically directed and/or channelled, whether this can be done democratically, how much new technology do we need — to a great extent, these questions remains unanswered. Yet they must be answered, lest the stabilisation of socionatural relations remains out of hand. But whereas radical environmentalism typically responds with a rejection of technology on normative grounds, aiming at a reducing the number of technologies on which societies rely and mostly defending some version of degrowth, ecomodernism decidedly bets on the design and development of new technologies — those that are capable of delivering both mitigation and adaptation of climate change while not impinging on neither economic growth or nature's preservation. This is a tall order. Nevertheless, the political dimension of technology remains unexplained. Even though ecomodernism tends to attribute a key role to the state in fostering green technologies, it is unclear whether this process allows for political and democratic deliberation and control of the latter. Can we have democratic monitoring and technological change? Do we have to choose between technocracy and the free market? Is there a way to minimise the risk of introducing new technologies such as solar geoingeneering? Does the trajectory of, and debate on, nuclear energy offer any normative or practical lessons on the subject? That is the subject of this paper, which will proceed by offering an overview of the subject before discussing in detail the trilemma of technological change: politics, democracy, and efficiency cannot be secured at the same time. Normative choices are thus required, even though they should be empirically grounded and avoid utopianism altogether.