Scientists who put faith in technology less likely to take climate action

The lead author says technological solutions are often more attractive than lifestyle and consumption changes. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenThe lead author says technological solutions are often more attractive than lifestyle and consumption changes. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty ImagesScientists who put faith in technology less likely to take climate action‘Techno-optimism’ may lead to reliance on unproven solutions at expense of societal changes needed

Scientists who believe technology will largely solve the problems caused by the climate crisis are less likely to engage in civic action on the issue, according to a study.

The report from the London School of Economics found they are 23% less likelyto sign petitions or take part in protests than peers who doubt that technology is the answer. They are also 18% less likely to make high-impact lifestyle changes, from reducing flights to changing to a vegan or vegetarian diet.

Fabian Dablander, the lead author, said the belief that technology will largely solve climate change and its consequences, labelled “techno-optimism”, can lead to an over reliance on unproven solutions at the expense of the far-reaching socioeconomic transformations needed to address the climate and nature crisis.

“Technological solutions are often politically attractive because they promise to address climate change without requiring changes to how people live and consume,” said Dablander.

“Strikingly, we see the same tendency at the individual level, with greater faith in technological solutions going hand in hand with less engagement in climate action. Yet technology cannot substitute for the broader societal changes and large-scale shifts in consumption that are also needed.”

The study surveyed more than 9,000 scientists across 115 countries. Overall 27% said they agreed with the statement “technology will largely solve the problems caused by climate change” and 44% disagreed (29% neither agreed nor disagreed).

The “techno-optimist” scientists reported engaging in less civic actions and protests, signed fewer petitions and engaged in less advocacy. They were also less likely to reduce the number of flights they took, cut their car usage or follow a mostly vegan or vegetarian diet.

The report, published in Environmental Research Letters, also found that techno-optimism was most prevalent among scientists with right leaning political views and those working in applied and natural sciences.

Read moreProf Kevin Anderson, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester, who was not involved in the study, said in his experience “a significant proportion of climate academics who enjoy very high incomes from their work, particularly when those incomes are accompanied by prestige, status and glittering honours, have enthusiastically swallowed the blue pill”.

“It offers a convenient escape from any uncomfortable sense of personal responsibility, allowing them to maintain the comforting fiction that they are deeply concerned about the world their children will inherit while continuing to live lives that contribute disproportionately to the problem.”

He added the “accompanying faith in future technological salvation provides another crutch: a way of postponing difficult choices today by placing hope in solutions that may arrive tomorrow”.

“Yet strikingly often, the evidential basis for these promises falls far short of the standards of scrutiny they would demand of research conducted by others. The result is a remarkable inversion of scientific practice: the more uncomfortable the implications of the evidence, the greater the enthusiasm for believing in a future that the evidence does not support.”