Recently, I asked Tommaso Bitossi to explain “sufficiency before efficiency,” a core philosophy of Transsolar, where he works as an associate partner. “It’s about looking at how efficiency, in the past, has failed us,” Bitossi told me. “In other words, our computers now are much more efficient than in 1995. However, now we have two laptops per person, one iPad, one smartphone et cetera. So our carbon emissions didn’t change. Perhaps they increased! Or, our servers are now cooled very efficiently, but with the advent of A.I., we are exponentially increasing our need for data storage and computational power.”
The gist: Technology will not save us. Or, technology alone will not save us. It’s a fascinating standpoint for a climate engineering firm, but it resonates more and more throughout the…
