Technology and Environmental Policies

This article explains how fundamental aspects of technology and technological innovation are involved in the environmental policies in terms of practicability and possibility of reaching their objectives. After a brief presentation of fundamentals of technology and its innovation, it discusses the limits of the precautional principle and its valid substitution with a risk analysis considering not only the dangers of using technology but also the dangers of not using technology. As regards problems of pollution and depletion of resources, this article describes the two environmental systems of natural capitalism and circular economy, while considering non-viable the objective of mature circular economy. As regards global warming, it discusses the available free carbon technologies and technologies under development in view of a global substitution of all conventional technologies. Environmental policies are criticized because the problem of global warming may be essentially solved by political agreements without taking account of technological implications. Scenarios of development of various green technologies are considered in the frame of various types of structural organization carrying out their development. Finally, this article observes the absence of a technological strategy considering the uncertainty about the time necessary for a full control of global warming, and the necessity to develop technologies able to mitigate its unavoidable dangerous effects.