CAN technology save us from climate change? “Spoiler alert, it can’t,” according to Fremantle author Richard King. 

Drawing inspiration from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, King’s new book Brave New Wild compares ecomodernism to the dystopian novel’s “perfect” society, which is “rational, integrative, productive, organised”, but is not conducive to humanity, according to Mr King. 

“The human beings within in it, in their natural state, don’t do as well as one would expect in a ‘perfect society’,” he says.

“Rather than change the society such that it creates happier human beings, what the controllers of the World State do is to change the human beings so they can fit within the society. 

“Although it is quite broad, the idea does seem to me to describe a lot about our world, in the sense that we seem to be out of ideas socially, politically, philosophically, morally; and so we find ourselves falling back on technology all the time. 

“It’s really an application of that inversion, having created a system that is in key ways destructive of the nature that surrounds and sustains us, [and] we’re now proposing to change not the system, but nature itself.” 

• Author Richard King warns about falling back on technology to save society from its woes. Photo by Bohdan-Warchomij

Brave New Wild delves into ecomodernism, a theory which deals with the climate crisis through “technoscientific, technocratic solutions” at the expense the human condition. 

“I’m not just talking about the people who would describe themselves as ecomodernists, I’m talking about the technosolutionist mindset… in their hardcore form, they are very exuberant about technology, they want to see geoengineering, biotechnology, nanotechnology, moon and asteroid mining,” Mr King said.

“Some of them have lots of good and interesting things to say, and some of the things that come out of the ecomodernists’ mouths are enough to make a cat laugh… because the tipping points [of the climate crisis] are being crossed and because we’re not going to swerve this crisis now, we’re just going to have to move through it. 

“What we’re finding is that risk calculus is changing dramatically… it’s now being taken seriously by people who need to be listened to, but they didn’t used to be in favour of it and they’re no less cognisant of its risks, but now they’re in favour of it and they see that the problem is if they don’t [implement] it, what happens?”

Mr King “very determinedly” did not write Brave New Wild from a scientific perspective and offers ecohumanism as an “alternative way forward” to ecomodernism to forge a solution from a “humanities and social sciences” perspective. 

“I try to encourage us to think about what we can do in response to climate change, with a more thorough examination of what the kinds of things we need in order to be free and flourish,” Mr King said. 

“If we could save the planet ‘with technology’ in the same ways that the Controllers in Huxley’s Brave New World save society by changing the human beings within it, anyone coming in from the outside is going to look at that and think, ‘this is disgusting’.

“Of course technology is going to be a part of it, but we seem to rely on technology solely in a way that makes a few people very rich, rather than thinking about the social and political innovations that might be needed in order to have a different relationship with technology and with the world which we’re trying to change.”

Brave New Wild is Mr King’s second book in as many years, following Here Be Monsters: Is Technology Reducing Our Humanity? published in 2023, and the two books are “closely related” in its “techno-critical” perspective. 

“I’ve put that idea of the human condition next to the technologies that are now being talked about with regard to climate change and its attendant calamities… I found unsurprisingly that not only are there material risks to geoengineering and de-extinction technologies, but there are also deep human, emotional, spiritual risks,” Mr King said. 

“What would it mean, for example, to have to live in an environment that was an artifact, like any other that you were controlling and were already deeply alienated from nature… taking it up that extra level would seem like a moral hazard, to say the least. 

“The two books can almost be read together, but you can read them in isolation as well.”

by KATHERINE KRAAYVANGER