The politics of technology in the Anthropocene.

Abstract

Whereas Ulrich Beck suggested that modern societies have become «risk societies», it has been recently proposed that we now live in the «Anthropocene», namely a historical epoch in which humanity turns into a global environmental agent. In both accounts, tehnology plays a key role. However, political theory —including environmental political theory— has overlooked the crucial subject of technological change. How does it happen? Can we control or direct it? Whereas radical environmentalism typically responds with a rejection of technology on normative grounds, aiming at 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. Nevertheless, the political dimension of technology remains unexplained. Can we have democratic monitoring and technological change? That is the subject of this paper, which will proceed by offering an overview of the subject before discussing the trilemma of technological change: efficiency, democracy, and social consensus cannot be secured at the same time.