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Environmental technology (envirotech) is the use of engineering and technological approaches to understand and address issues that affect the environment with the aim of fostering environmental improvement. It involves the application of science and technology in the process of addressing environmental challenges through environmental ...
Other examples of environmental technology include deforestation and the reversing of deforestation. [82] Emerging technologies in the fields of climate engineering may be able to halt or reverse global warming and its environmental impacts, [ 83 ] although this remains highly controversial. [ 84 ]
Productivity-improving technologies date back to antiquity, with rather slow progress until the late Middle Ages. Important examples of early to medieval European technology include the water wheel, the horse collar, the spinning wheel, the three-field system (after 1500 the four-field system—see crop rotation) and the blast furnace.
Digital technologies are acting as integrating and enabling technologies for the economy and profoundly affect society; changes in technology use have damaged the environment but also have the potential to support environmental sustainability. [6] [7]
This reflects E. F. Schumacher's concept of "intermediate technology," i.e., technology which is significantly more effective and expensive than traditional methods, but still an order of magnitude (10 times) cheaper than developed world technology. Key examples are: the Malian peanut sheller; the fonio husking machine; the screenless hammer mill
The criteria for this list is that the technology must: Exist in some way; purely hypothetical technologies cannot be considered emerging and should be covered in the list of hypothetical technologies instead. However, technologies being actively researched and prototyped are acceptable. Have a Wikipedia article or adjacent citation covering them.
Despite these early examples, Dr. Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher is credited as the founder of the appropriate technology movement. A well-known economist, Schumacher worked for the British National Coal Board for more than 20 years, where he blamed the size of the industry's operations for its uncaring response to the harm black-lung disease inflicted on the miners. [3]
In one line of thought, technology develops autonomously, in other words, technology seems to feed on itself, moving forward with a force irresistible by humans. To these individuals, technology is "inherently dynamic and self-augmenting." [28] Jacques Ellul is one proponent of the irresistibleness of technology to humans. He espouses the idea ...