by Patrice Caine, CEO of Thales PARIS, France, 3 February 2022 -/African Media Agency/- What role can technology play in protecting humanity and safeguarding the future of the planet? In the context of an increasingly polarized public debate about climate change, these crucial issues are often misconstrued as being black and white.
But this simplistic view overlooks one fundamentally important fact: technology is merely a tool that does what we want it to do. Image of North Africa and Spain taken by the Sentinel 3A satellite built by Thales Alenia Space for the European Space Agency. This type of satellite makes it possible to understand and measure the impact of climate change. ©ESA
It is true that many promising solutions — carbon capture and even hydrogen, for example — are still at the development stage. But there is nothing intrinsically wrong with these technologies. There is simply a lack of political will. What the world needs today is massive government support for sustainable innovation so that these technologies can be developed at full scale more quickly.
People also say that relying on technology to make the transition will consume vast quantities of energy and natural resources. Indeed it may seem contradictory to start a process of decarbonisation by building new infrastructure on a massive scale.