A shared opinion of all three authors was that technological fixes are temporary in the ever-changing society that we live in. The Huesmann’s stressed more on explaining the high probability of dangerous results because of people being dependent on limited technology. Saying that people’s problems don’t simply go away, they change. Johnston was more neutral saying that they are better at buying time rather than fixing the actual problem, but the possibilities of problems being swept under the rug and never re-attended is a risk better not taken. The critiqued version of Douthwaite’s statement from the two other authors perspective would be;
“technological fixes are a last resort, the kill-save for society when it’s too late for action and all other efforts are exhausted.”
The consequences of nature seem to have this doge or die effect on organisms. If you have the skills or adaptive qualities to avoid natural selections purging process, you pass on your genes. Adding technological fixes to the equations is like holding a shield. You don’t have to work as hard to run around and dodge what’s thrown at you, but with time you become accustomed to just blocking and forget how to dodge. Your dodging abilities have been passed down for millions of years and proven effective. Your ability to use a shield is useful but has not been tested nearly as mercilessly as your genetic gifts. Eventually, something is going to come your way that you can’t block and you with be swept away with other failures unless you maintain your ability to dodge. Together you can dodge things you can’t block and block things you can’t dodge. In history, the best survivors trust the system that has been proven to work and make changes as the last resort to prevent suffering unforeseen consequences. While those who fully accept new ideas feel vicious the bite of their ignorance.
I definitely agree with you on the viewpoints of each author; Douthwaite being pro-technological fix, the Huesmann’s being relatively anti-technological fix, and Johnston being somewhere in-between the two. However, I disagree with some of the statements that you made in your second paragraph. Natural selection is, of course, always at play regardless of what technological fixes we throw at it, but letting it run its course without attempting to solve the resulting issues doesn’t help anything. Another thing is that the rate of change in the global environment is unprecedented, and through conservation and remediation efforts we are able to slow the negative impacts on certain regions/species to allow them more time to adapt (though probably still not enough time). To just sit back and watch it all happen without so much as trying to solve the issues seems unethical toward both people and other organisms in the world.
I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to your shield analogy. With our dependence on and capacity to create new technology ever increasing, we are drifting away from our connections to nature that were slowly improving on themselves for countless years. In other words, we are trying to create some sort of shortcut to get ahead, but in reality that shortcut could actually cripple us by taking away our natural “shield” that protected us from nature, and protected nature from us/