The fact that the possibilities of technical progress for solving environmental problems are to be used within the framework of a responsible strategy that anticipates the potential unintended consequences is unlikely to be doubted ethically. Controversies extend to what precisely "responsible" should mean, which unintended consequences must be expected in which scenarios, how to weigh the environmental relief objectives pursued against possible side effects, and which measures promise the best overall impacts. These are the normal challenges for a technology assessment (Grunwald 2019), as they are processed on the basis of concrete technologies and context-related requirements. At this point, further imperatives for action that go beyond individual technologies and contexts are to be considered and classified:
- Bioeconomy in the sense of ecomodernism: Technical progress should be accelerated as a key contribution to solving environmental problems.
- Ecomodernism alone: Environmental problems should be tackled by decoupling human civilisation from nature.
- Bioeconomy alone: Technical progress should be geared towards consistency with natural material flows and cycles.
- Efficiency and consistency: Other measures, such as a departure from the growth paradigm or behavioural changes, do not need to be pursued, at least not urgently.
Bioeconomy and ecomodernism
At this conceptual level, bioeconomy and ecomodernism both see technical progress not only as a necessary condition for sustainable development, but also as a sufficient condition. They thus burden technical progress and its possibilities with total responsibility for solving environmental problems. Criticism at this level therefore affects both approaches equally. However, the differences in premises 2 and 3 allow for a differentiated ethical assessment.
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| Any acceleration of technical progress reduces the chances of learning from experience with new technology, even with unintended consequences or insufficient fulfilment of expectations, for further action. Acceleration increases dependence on technological progress and reduces the chances of being able to think about alternatives or complementary measures at all. It creates factual constraints and undermines consider- ation of alternatives, which is essential for informed decisions on how to proceed. Ill-considered demands for acceleration also ignore the questions of the risks associated with trust in technological progress and the options that remain if trust in technological progress turns out to be unjustified. |
Hans Jonas (1979) warned against risking "the whole thing" on a bet. However, the ecomodernist position does exactly that: it relies completely on technical progress and does not place any demands on technology other than to continually increase efficiency. In doing so, it makes future developments in the Anthropocene dependent on this trust in technical progress being justified. If this hope were not fulfilled, however, "the whole," in the sense of Hans Jonas, would be endangered, since no other option would be available as an alternative. This is nothing more than the position of a moral hazard-maker who bets everything on one card. The ecomodernist position in its purest form is thus ethically unjustifiable (Grunwald 2018). The dominant hope in ecomodernism of solving problems through technical progress must be supplemented. In terms of ethical responsibility, precautions must be taken in the event that its techno-optimistic assumptions are not realised or are only realised in part.
Bioeconomy also relies
The bioeconomy also relies on technical progress, but has more far-reaching requirements for the environmental compatibility of future technology. By demanding consistency with natural processes, environmental compatibility is to be virtually integrated into the agenda of further technological development. Problem solving is not expected from technical progress itself, but from technical progress that is aligned with the principle of consistency. Here, one can connect to an idea of the highly technicoptimistic Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch. According to this, technology should no longer be developed and used against nature, an approach that Bloch sees and criticizes as characteristic of traditional modernity (Bloch 1985). Bionics, the orientation of technical solutions towards models from nature, can also be used to refer to the concept of alliance technology by Ernst Bloch (von Gleich et al. 2007). Instead of viewing nature as an enemy and trying to bring it under complete control, as was the goal of the Bacon project (Schäfer 1993), technology should be pursued in alliance with it. This early thought appears compatible with the bioeconomy demand for strategic consistency of human economic activity with natural material flows. In this way, the bioeconomy appears to be more responsible and ethically sustainable than the ecomodernist position in its purest form.
Potential of the bioeconomy
However, the potential of the bioeconomy is also not guaranteed, nor is the absence of counterproductive side effects of bioeconomy implementation. Therefore, a one-sided strategy based on bioeconomy would ultimately be problematic in terms of responsible ethics. Even if the prospects of coping with, or at least mitigating, environmental problems appear to be better, in principle, than those in ecomodernism, which is based on an accelerated "continuation as before" approach, due to the higher demands on environmental compatibility, options must also be provided or developed here in the event that expectations are not met. This applies, in particular, to post-growth strategies that use social or sociotechnical innovations to ultimately target other values of action, other lifestyles and behavioural patterns, but also other value chains and social incentive systems (Jackson 2009; Dietz and O’Neill 2013; D’Alisa et al. 2014). Against this background, the expectations in political and economic institutions appear to be one-sided. A discussion between the different positions of the bioeconomy on possible combinations of a technical bioeconomy based on technical efficiency and consistency with social science considerations on adequate lifestyles and value patterns seems overdue.
Bioeconomy is promising
The bioeconomy is promising, but bioeconomy it alone does not guarantee a more environmentally-friendly technology and economy in the future. This follows solely from the well-known problem of rebound effects, of which there are more than enough examples of disappointed expectations for environmental relief (Sorrell 2007). It should also be remembered that bioeconomic production lines and value chains are by no means environmentally neutral, as the example of energy crop cultivation, with its ecological side effects, shows. In principle, therefore, the overall ecological balance must also be examined in bioeconomic approaches so that it can be regarded as a sustainable bioeconomy.