In his article “Aren’t We Clever?” Thomas Friedman claims that while the U.S. politics continues to struggle with the mere concept of human induced environmental change, China’s embracement of the idea of green development has given the Asian nation a comparative advantage in the world economy that poses a threat to the United States. He states, “by becoming more energy efficient per unit of G.D.P, China saves money, takes the lead in the next great global industry and earns credit with the world for mitigating climate change.”
While I can see the value of making a “green” argument from a neoliberal and purely economic standpoint, as it uses the existing discourse that dominates the United States to advocate for a revolutionary change in the modus operandi and thus making it fit in the traditional and conservative agenda, I argue that the changes that are achievable in this fashion only create a time window for fundamental alterations in the relationship of human beings and nature to be developed and adopted; in order to truly address climate change successfully, the capitalist, competitive, economy-driven, and technology-embracing lifestyle of human beings needs to be abandoned as life is not and should no longer be identified as the mere interplay of demand and supply in a global market but instead as this complex construct of synergetic symbioses between living creatures and nature on which human values should be based.
To start, I very much agree with Laura’s point that the competitive tone Friedman uses in his argument is extremely damaging to any effort of protecting the environment as it forms one of the core problems of environmental degradation: it is exactly this idea of human success being found in winning the “game” of economic growth and technological advancement that makes people, corporations, and even nations adopt a very selfish perspective, putting their very own interests on top of their list of priorities, which prevents human beings from realizing that the world they live on is one planet that they share as a habitat with every other living creature and which prevents them from realizing that their own actions have consequences far beyond the border of their own country. Paul Wapner states, “in many ways, it has been our self-centeredness – our placing ourselves at the core of existence and our willingness to do whatever it takes to advance our interests – that has been the cause of our environmental dilemma.
Thus, as Laura puts it, “since the earth is shared by everyone on this planet, shouldn’t environmentalism be about cooperation instead of competition?” I concur. Thus, Friedman’s neoliberal argument of clean energy technologies and “green jobs” giving China a competitive edge and threatening the United States’ position as the “capitalist leader” might motivate U.S. decision-makers to develop “greener” technologies and procedures, but the basic rules of the game stay the same, which prevents a real change for the better from occurring.
Furthermore, the combination of competitiveness and the desire for self-centered growth through economic and technological advancements results in discoveries that pose a serious threat not only for the environment but also for the human race itself. Bill Joy explains, “in truth, we have had in hand for years clear warnings of the dangers inherent in widespread knowledge of GNR technologies – of the possibility of knowledge alone enabling mass destruction. We should have learned a lesson from the making of the first atomic bomb and the resulting arms race. We didn’t do well then, and the parallels to our current situation are troubling.”
Thus, Friedman’s framing of the issue of an environmental movement as par of a economic and technological competition between the U.S. and China seems dangerous. He warns, “while American Republicans were turning climate change into a wedge issue, the Chinese Communists were turning it into a work.” Calling China communist clearly identifies it as the enemy of the United States and sparks hostilities.
Similarly, Friedman’s concluding remark that Biddle is American-educated and financed but brings profits to China and Europe implies the hostile relationship the United States sees between itself and other nations of the world as its opponents threatening to take a bigger “slice of the pie” than itself. In this sense, a competitive framing of the environmental issues as a race between technologies and economies not only is contra-productive to protecting the environment in itself, although maybe leading to short-term successes as the adoption of “green” technologies can slow down the degradation, it also threatens human life in general as the tense relationship between countries can quickly turn into violence and destruction as the history of the last century has proven.
Consequently, confronted with this information, I have to agree with Bill Joy’s argument “the only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge. If open access to unlimited development of knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction, then common sense demands that we reexamine even these basic, long-held beliefs.” I don’t want to imply that knowledge in general is bad and human beings should be forced to simple and dull lives for their own sake, but instead that our current definition of knowledge is dangerous. The seeking of knowledge for the sake of outsmarting others, for outcompeting other, or even for the sake of knowledge seems a perversion of intellectual engagements; but the fault for that doesn’t lie in us being in the possession of a brain capable of those thoughts but instead our own desire to use it in that way. Thus, it is the norms and values that make knowledge a tool for destruction that need changing.
Bill Joy, himself a technology creator as the cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, argues, “but I believe we must find alternative outlets for our creative forces, beyond the culture of perpetual economic growth; this growth has largely been a blessing for several hundred years, but is has not brought us unalloyed happiness, and we must now choose between the pursuit of unrestricted and undirected growth through science and technology and the clear accompanying danger.” However, this fundamental change will not occur by maintaining the status quo and simply using the existing discourse of competition, free market, growth, and technological innovation; it requires a revolution of the dominant capitalist ideology, establishing a new system of values and norms that acknowledges and embraces the importance of life as this complex system of living creatures and nature – and which might also allow us human beings to find true fulfillment and content, which I believe, and Bill Joy seems to agree, we haven’t really achieved yet.
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