In the age of technological advancement,
technology plays a vital role in human life, especially in environmental issues.
On the one hand, technology makes people exploit natural resource more
severely, for example, human has invented stronger ship which can catch more
fish in the deep ocean, so this invention leads to a significantly sharp
decrease in the number of ocean fish. On the other hand, technology enables
mankind to save the world more effectively such as pollution
absorbing poster, which Pop has discussed last week in his blog post.
According to Pop’s response “Pollution absorbing poster”, scientists have just invented a new technological breakthrough, pollution
absorbing poster, and he thought that this invention will perfectly work in
this decade, because, nowadays, remaining lands in the world are not enough for
planting trees helping reducing pollution in the earth’s atmosphere. However,
he pointed out that the price of this product may be too high, so scientists
have to work hard continually to make better, yet cheaper products.
At the moment I read his blog post, I thought
that this is such definitely good news for mankind, because in the near future,
natural disasters will be more extremely, and their causes are from
environmental problems which are made by human e.g. extinctions of animal
species is brought about by too much deforestation, landslide is the result of
too much mining, and most of all is climate change which is brought about by
the emission of carbon dioxide. So, pollution absorbing poster – actually, this
technology is not only for poster, but it can be applied to other
nanotechnology products just like clothes – will considerably help people to
reduce the intensity of climate change.
However, are technologies the answer of
environmental problems? To me, technologies may be a crucial part of environmental
reduction, but they are not a perfect answer, because only technologies are not
enough to completely solve environmental problems. Why?
Economic theory talks about “common goods”, a
prime reason why technology cannot completely resolve environmental problems. Definition
of common goods is that, easily, goods – or things – that every people can be an
owner and can use this goods, but the use of its leads to its deterioration. For
illustration, grassland in a village is common goods for herdsmans – every
herdsman can use this field, yet, when every herdsman use this land, they meanwhile
ruin this field; grass is eaten by their herds. There usually is a crucial
problem happens to common goods like this grassland; in other words, every
herdsman want to use this field, but there is no one want to maintain this
land, because the ownership of this land – also for other common goods – is not
clear, so every herdsman is unwilling to spend money on it. It is easier to say
that when people want to use common goods, they think that goods are theirs,
but when they have to maintain that goods they think that it is a responsibility
of the others. This leads to the rapid deterioration on the common goods. In
particular, environment and natural resources are kinds of public goods; therefore,
they are ruined very quickly.
This is the point. Regarding pollution absorbing
poster technology, I suppose that although in the near future, scientists can
develop an effective pollution absorbing poster which can work perfectly, and its
cost is quite lower, so normal people can afford it, there may be nobody want
to spend money on it to make the world greener, according to the theory of
common goods discussed above – note that climate is a kind of common goods, so
everyone tend to use it without any preservation.
In my opinion, technology is just a tool. It can
save the world, and also destroy, depending on how we use it. Even if we have a
lot of perfect tools, we cannot still make the world better, if we misuse the
tools. Perhaps, the most important things to help the world is not technology,
but it is public awareness.
Visuthisakchai S. (2014, May 16). pollution absorbing poster. Peter AEP Blogspot. Retrived May 21, 2014 from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2014/05/pollution-absorbing-poster.html
Wow! Your blog post is about Pop's blog post. Interesting!
ReplyDeleteIf I write a blog post about your blog post which is about Pop's blog post, would it work?
It will work for me if we can comment on a blog post by Pueng that discusses P's post discussing ideas in Pop's.
Deleteso, P'Pueng's blogpost is about my post which discuss Pop's blogpost that is inspired by BBC News which is recommended by your blogspot, isn't it?
DeleteWow! It seems very complicating. T T
DeleteIs the economic concept of an externality also relevant here?
ReplyDeletewow, have you ever learnt Economics? sure! externalities -- it's much more easier to say external impact -- is the main cause of the problem which people have when they use common goods.
Delete