The Speculist

Greenpeace Chimes in

Ever the good sport, Howard Lovy is giving Greenpeace the final word on the debate sparked by their initial (somewhat hysterical) report on nanotechnology and Howard's own (shall we say) robust response to it.

The Greenpeace guy, one Douglas Parr — their chief scientist in the UK— comes across pretty well. Here he lays out what I consider to be a reasonable position:

[C]laims about the benefits of future technology development need to be rooted in a solid appraisal of whether they are actually going to happen, otherwise it’s a con. If nanotech can help deliver affordable, clean energy like solar power to billions who don't have it – and would otherwise use polluting energy sources – Greenpeace will be cheering, but we’re not naive enough to believe that cheaper solar cell manufacture on its own will make it happen.

Further, campaigning to stop things – as Greenpeace frequently does – is fundamentally unsatisfying. We would like to see answers to problems – technology has the ability to deliver some of these answers. We would like to see the central priorities of nanotech being that of delivering social and environmental benefits, whilst being mindful of the real-world realities.

The behavior Parr describes as "campaigning to stop things" is one of the major reasons I no longer consider myself an environmentalist in the mainstream sense of the term. Inherent in this approach is the notion that solutions always lie backwards on the timeline, that technological and economic development are evil by definition. It's refreshing to see a leader from Greenpeace (!) challenge those notions. I wonder if Parr is aware that "social and environmental" benefits have been part of the nanotechnology agenda from the very begining.

It would, indeed, be nice to see those benefits become the central priorities of nanotechnological development, but I doubt that's realistic. Developments in nanotechnology are currently being driven by the marketplace. Being a good lefty, Parr is uncomfortable with this approach:

Most technology development chases income from the already-rich. That’s because for many Western economies in the last two decades, scientific innovation has been explicitly linked to revenue raising, and intellectual property rights arrangements have supported that. Inevitably, this downplays technology applications for some environmental improvements or meeting the needs of developing countries where markets are poorly developed or nonexistent.

In that sense, nanotech is no different from many other technology developments. But what marks out nanotech is that its potential is so huge for either good or bad, getting it right is a prize worth working for. We have called for direct public involvement in the agenda setting for the priorities of nanotech R&D and are awaiting responses from the (UK) ministers and research councils.

I think Parr is incorrect to say that nanotech is "no different" from other technological developments. Again, nanotechnology was conceived with those kinds of benefits in mind. And his call for direct public involvement in setting the agenda is a tad quaint. The Foresight Institute has been doing that for, what? 10 years?