The Limits to Transforming the Environment

Abstract

As we have seen, the social implications of science and technology present a number of challenges which the previous chapter began to address.¹ Some of these problems — and solutions — also apply to understanding how society shapes and is shaped by transforming the natural environment. Environmental issues have, for obvious reasons, recently come onto the agenda in sociology. These include energy, climate change and pollution. This chapter provides an account of environmental transformation and how it is rebounding on social change. To do this, it will draw on several disciplines, but above all argue for a long-term comparative-historical perspective combined with the realist sociology of science and technology that was presented in the previous chapter. This chapter will focus on energy — since the foreseeable bounds to using energy sustainably provide the most important illustration of the idea that transforming the environment is confronting limits, even if the argument has broader ramifications. Focusing on energy, however, is one way to think about whether there are potential social forces that may be able to counteract the future tensions arising from environmental transformation. The argument will be that only two of these countervailing forces — namely state intervention and technological innovation — stand a realistic chance of counteracting these tensions, even though these solutions themselves face severe constraints.