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Kyle Whyte, Ryan Gunderson, and Brett Clark compare and contrast the notion of insidiousness in the philosophy of technology and environmental philosophy, the idea that the adoption of a new technology erodes intimate relationships with the environment. The authors reject the idea that technologies are neutral or disinterested but instead embody values, preferences, and lifestyles. The authors argue that technologies can indeed sometimes transform our social and environmental relationships in insidious ways. They conclude with five questions philosophers and social scientists should consider when examining different technology-society-environment interfaces: 1) What social and social-environmental relations give rise a technology and how does it reproduce or transform these relations? 2) Who is in control of the design and application of the given technology? 3) How is the given technology governed? Which social groups and environments benefit from it? 4) Which social groups and environments are harmed by it? 5) Which values, interests, and politics are reflected in the design an application of the given technology? The answers to these questions may not determine that technology is insidious but they will likely counter the view that it is neutral and disinterested.

Philip Brey focuses on the role technologies play in the relationship between sustainable development and consumerism in light of ecological modernization, the development practice that aims at greening production and global economy in ways that leave existing economic and political institutions intact. He agrees with critics who claim that sustainable development is incompatible with modernization’s ideal of unlimited growth. A more fundamental reform of development must also transform patterns of consumption and challenge the values and beliefs that underlie consumerism and materialism. The development of sustainable consumer products should promote sustainable behaviors and lifestyles, as well as reduce or eliminate consumer products that are unsustainable. In addition to these ecologically designed green products are persuasive technologies designed to change the attitudes or behaviors of users. But Brey worries that the redesign of technologies will be not sufficient to engender sustainable systems of consumption. Technological reform will certainly be of great help in the move towards sustainable patterns of consumption but it should be seen as part of a comprehensive strategy that also includes social and economic incentives and public debates about values, lifestyles, and the very future of the planet.

Don Ihde examines the “congenital dystopianism” shared by environmentalists, environmental philosophers, and philosophers of technology. Each group employs a “rhetoric of alarm” that connects the use of technologies with environmental degradations. Ihde calls attention to how excessive rhetorical strategies have locked us into a false dichotomy: either technological-environmental utopianism or dystopianism. The problem is that we have not yet fully diagnosed either what our technologies can or should do, or what the environmental crises actually are. So long as we continue to accept either utopian or dystopian forecasts we are unlikely to bring either technologies or ecosystems into appropriate focus. Techno-environmental problems are complex, ambiguous, and interwoven; they rarely lend themselves either to an easy techno-fix or simple solution. The hardest problem of them all is how to turn major actors in the economy green: large scale development projects and multinational corporations. The challenge for a proactive philosopher is to get on the ground floor of technological research and development in order to help figure out how to green the economy itself.

J. Baird Callicott questions the basic premise of Lynn White Jr.’s essay “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” where White attributes the environmental crisis to Genesis where God created man in his image, gave man dominion over the rest of creation, and commands him to subdue the Earth. Callicott examines White’s very epistemic assumption: that what we do depends on what we think. On this reckoning, we need to rethink the nature of nature, human nature, and the relationship between humans and nature in order to save the world from ecological disaster. But Callicott reminds us that the Lynn White Jr. of Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962) also proposes a theory of technological determinism to explain the fate of the West. So which is it? Is the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton the product of Christian theology or mechanical technologies? Perhaps nature is more affected by things than ideas. If so, environmental philosophers have to give up the pretense that they alone can save the world from environmental destruction because they alone are expert at uncovering underlying conceptual presuppositions. Revolutionary developments in real material things are just as important as revolutionary ideas.

Zhang Wei examines the role of design in environmentally sustainable products. Most models of sustainable design focus too much on the environmental impacts of products and too little on their interactions with users. The result can be paradoxical consequences in which undesired effects can offset any environmental impacts, for example, energy saving lights installed (and left on) in places there were no lights before, such as a garden or garage. Or the unintended effects of symbolic consumption, where perfectly functioning goods are discarded when their social use value ends. Current approaches to eco-design do not really help make sense of these unintended consequences because they focus on physical properties of thing at the expense of their psychological impacts. The key, according to Zhang, is to design not only sustainable products but also sustainable behaviors -- a “both/and approach” to eco-design. The goal of both/and eco-design is not just to create green products but also to design sustainable behaviors, particularly lasting attachments that can overcome the pull of symbolic consumption and waste. Successful eco-design creates relations between humans and products for the sake of the environment.