The most serious thinkers in terms of socio-ecological transition are all of the opinion that, among the various solutions envisaged to curb the environmental and climate crises, technological development constitutes a weak link. Indeed, in his remarkable study on the energy and digital transition, Guillaume Pitron clearly demonstrated that new technological products from robotics, computing, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, because of their dependence on metals rare, cause unprecedented environmental destruction, as damaging, if not more so, than that linked to the fossil fuels they aim to replace.
In Quebec, since 2020, the number of mining claims has jumped by more than 400% in the south of the province in response to the Legault government’s plan for the valuation of metals linked to the energy transition and new technologies. This is why a new coalition of lake protection associations is calling for a moratorium on these activities that are incompatible with the protection of the territory. In fact, the Nouveau Monde Graphite mining company, located north of Lanaudière, whose objective is to provide the ore necessary for the manufacture of batteries for electric cars, already sits on the sad list of the most destructive projects in wetlands. .
The bias of our elected officials for technology reflects the traditional values of globalized capitalism: GDP growth, marketing of new products for export, race for innovation. From this perspective, the climate and environmental crises and the energy transition are considered first and foremost as business opportunities. It is this same deadly ideology, unanimously decried by thinkers of socio-ecological transition, which is at the origin of the implementation of the Zone Agtech project in the MRC de L’Assomption, a geolocated industrial zone which aims to position Quebec in the new sector of technologies intended, among other things, for intensive greenhouse farming as well as the robotization and computerization of farms.
In addition to its dramatic environmental impacts linked to materials, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions and the gigantic needs for energy and water, it should also be mentioned that the Agtech sector, with its very high costs, serves above all the interests of “agribusiness” multinationals, banks and large industrial monoculture companies, whose practices are extremely damaging to the environment and the climate. The economist Hélène Tordjman has well documented the ecological, economic and social excesses of these new agricultural technologies. And production for export takes us away from the local agroecological solutions advocated by many experts to decarbonize the economy.
To promote a real agro-ecological transition, L’Assomption could instead welcome agricultural tool manufacturing companies. low-tech intended for new organic farms on a human scale, decarbonized and regenerating the soil. The municipality could also house a food processing center to freeze, dehydrate, preserve and enhance food that is produced in abundance locally during the hot season and thus ensure food security throughout the year.
It could even help to facilitate the settlement on its territory of agricultural workers from the South, massively expelled from their lands which have become infertile, and who flock by the thousands to our borders. And there would still be room to build small greenhouses heated by passive solar power, as part of an urban agriculture that respects the cycle of the seasons, and to plant a nourishing forest for the generations that will follow us, while the food shortages will hit hard.
By persisting in ignoring the direct and indirect impacts of new technologies of a so-called “green economy”, by continuing to make choices based on market opportunities rather than according to a rigorous program of planned energy degrowth, decarbonization and protection of ecosystems, elected officials and other promoters of green tech feed the mirage of a possible way out of the crisis, while they push us even further into it.
The example of L’Assomption shows us that, even more than technology, it is additional education and democracy that we urgently need if we want to succeed in preserving a habitable Earth.