Scientists who believe technology will largely solve the climate crisis are less likely to engage in civic action on the issue, according to a study from the London School of Economics.
The research found that such “techno-optimists” are 23% less likely to sign petitions or participate in protests than peers who doubt technology alone is the answer. They are also 18% less likely to adopt high-impact lifestyle changes, such as reducing air travel or shifting to a plant-based diet.
Lead author Fabian Dablander said the belief that technology will largely solve climate change can lead to an overreliance 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,” Dablander said. “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% agreed with the statement “technology will largely solve the problems caused by climate change,” while 44% disagreed (29% neither agreed nor disagreed).
The self-identified techno-optimists reported engaging in fewer civic actions and protests, signing fewer petitions, and doing less advocacy. They were also less likely to reduce flights, cut 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.
Prof Kevin Anderson, a leading climate scientist at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester, who was not involved in the study, said that 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.
Anderson said 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.”
