{"id":638859,"date":"2026-10-07T07:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T07:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/638859\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T07:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T07:20:10","slug":"scientists-who-put-faith-in-technology-less-likely-to-take-climate-action-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/638859\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists who put faith in technology less likely to take climate action | Climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists who believe technology will largely solve the problems caused by the climate crisis<\/a> are less likely to engage in civic action on the issue, according to a study.<\/p>\n

The report from the London School of Economics found they are 23% less likelyto sign petitions or take part in protests than peers who doubt that technology is the answer. They are also 18% less likely to make high-impact lifestyle changes, from reducing flights to changing to a vegan<\/a> or vegetarian diet.<\/p>\n

Fabian Dablander, the lead author, said the belief that technology will largely solve climate change and its consequences, labelled \u201ctechno-optimism\u201d, can lead to an over reliance on unproven solutions at the expense of the far-reaching socioeconomic transformations needed to address the climate and nature crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnological solutions are often politically attractive because they promise to address climate change without requiring changes to how people live and consume,\u201d said Dablander.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrikingly, we see the same tendency at the individual level, with greater faith in technological solutions going hand in hand with less engagement in climate action. Yet technology cannot substitute for the broader societal changes and large-scale shifts in consumption that are also needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study<\/a> surveyed more than 9,000 scientists across 115 countries. Overall 27% said they agreed with the statement \u201ctechnology will largely solve the problems caused by climate change\u201d and 44% disagreed (29% neither agreed nor disagreed).<\/p>\n

The \u201ctechno-optimist\u201d scientists reported engaging in less civic actions and protests, signed fewer petitions and engaged in less advocacy. They were also less likely to reduce the number of flights they took, cut their car usage or follow a mostly vegan or vegetarian diet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The report, published in Environmental Research Letters, also found that techno-optimism was most prevalent among scientists with right leaning political views and those working in applied and natural sciences.<\/p>\n

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Prof Kevin Anderson, one of the world\u2019s leading climate scientists, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester, who was not involved in the study, said in his experience \u201ca significant proportion of climate academics who enjoy very high incomes from their work, particularly when those incomes are accompanied by prestige, status and glittering honours, have enthusiastically swallowed the blue pill\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt offers a convenient escape from any uncomfortable sense of personal responsibility, allowing them to maintain the comforting fiction that they are deeply concerned about the world their children will inherit while continuing to live lives that contribute disproportionately to the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added the \u201caccompanying faith in future technological salvation provides another crutch: a way of postponing difficult choices today by placing hope in solutions that may arrive tomorrow\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet strikingly often, the evidential basis for these promises falls far short of the standards of scrutiny they would demand of research conducted by others. The result is a remarkable inversion of scientific practice: the more uncomfortable the implications of the evidence, the greater the enthusiasm for believing in a future that the evidence does not support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists who believe technology will largely solve the problems caused by the climate crisis are less likely to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-638859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}