By Oscar Cheung (Practical Philosophy Year 2 Student)
Humans have been seeking ways to tackle or alleviate the environmental crisis that we are facing for years. Techno-solutionism—the belief that technology is able to solve all difficulties thoroughly with the well-intentioned endeavor to advance technological innovations—is an assumption underneath technological solutions to environmental problems advocated by many people. AI is commonly believed to be the hope to tackle the environmental problems in the future. Is the attitude of techno-solutionism justified? Relatedly, can AI be used for sustainability?
These questions were discussed in the guest lecture delivered by Prof. Checketts from HKBU academy of Chinese, History and Philosophy, who is an expert specializing in technology ethics. The event, held on 22nd October, 2025, attracted dozens of CIE students and alumni from different majors and years. (Image 1) By reserving a great deal of time for Q&A, they were encouraged to interact with Prof. Checketts and to express their views in response to his lecture, forming a vibrant academic atmosphere.
Prof. Checketts began by demonstrating that the climate crisis has escalated significantly since Industrial Revolution, that is, when there was a big progress in technology. Then, he provided two comprehensive graphs to illuminate the relationship between the emission of CO2 and temperature (Image 2). Prof. Checketts pointed out that if we make efforts on reducing the emission of CO2, then the climate crisis will be alleviated effectively or even resolved in future.
Ironically, the problem is proposed to be solved by means of its cause. Technology to significant extent leads to the climate change, while techno-solutionists assert that technology will resolve it. Prof. Checketts refuted such an attitude by introducing the concept of “moral hazard”. This concept is borrowed from economics, which refers to the situation in which an economic actor runs a high financial risk since some insurances are provided for him to offset the negative consequence. Prof. Checketts indicated that techno-solutionists are more or less the same kind of people as the economic actor. Relying on AI to solve the problem of climate change is running a high risk of a worse environmental outcomes. Such an attitude leads people to ignore the unbearable consequences of blindly relying on AI, and be diverted from any current actions that can really tackle the problem fundamentally. Prof. Checketts showcased 7 proposed solutions to “tackle” climate changes by AI, including using AI to track pollutants. But while how doing so can alleviate the problem remains unclear, it is clear that it does not solve the problem at its root.
Worse still, Prof. Checketts revealed the environmental harms begotten from the development of AI, especially in Asia, are broader and more detrimental than what most people know. First, AI needs a lot of data centers to support its training process and operation, and the operation of data centers consume a large amount of electricity, which is usually generated by fossil fuels. It therefore emits more CO2 to worsen global warming. Second, the rise in temperature is an effect of the operation of data centers, so a good deal of fresh water is used to cool them down. Consequently, some places like Texas (USA) are damaged by drought. Third, rare earth elements (REE) are the raw materials for constructing high-end-computers. However, the process of mining and refining REE are producing a large quantity of hazardous waste in places like Bayan Obo in China. Consequently, local people around the mine fields are suffering from a variety of diseases, like cancer. Fourth, toxic e-waste, the remains of data centers, are disposed in different parts of the world. The huge amount of e-waste is a result of the short life expectancy of technological components used in the data centers, and very few of them are successfully recycled.
Prof. Checketts ended the lecture by noting that both Catholicism and Buddhism would hold an opposite position to techno-solutionism. We should solve the environmental problems in a fundamental way, and get rid of the illusive insurance from AI. The lecture got me to think: some people might think an individual’s power is extremely limited; however, when we are not relying on AI, we are promoting some messages to the people around us. If the promotion proceeds from the people around us, continuously, just like a chain-effect, then there could be a big progress. Therefore, starting from ourselves is always a justified way to combat climate change and similar collective harms.
