Technology Impact Cycle Tool

Introduction into the SDGs

In September 2015, as part of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, 17 Sustainable Development Goals were adopted. Why 17? We have no idea.

This one minute video lists them all.

Sustainability is more than environmental sustainability alone. Some of the SDG’s have a direct relation to the environment (like climate and affordable and clean energy) and others an indirect relation (like infrastructure, production and consumption).

SDG number seven

Let's take a short closer look at Sustainable Development Goal number seven: affordable and clean energy. Watch this video (3 minutes).

This is a short video, but it contains a lot of questions, insights and controversies around environmental sustainability. Questions like:

• Did you know that 1.2 billion people still have no access to electricity?
• Is nuclear energy really a bad thing because of a few incidents?
• Is there enough renewable energy for the fast-growing demand?
• And did you ever hear about piezoelectric harvesting technologies (dancing for the environment)? 

Questions like this and many more will be covered in this crash course.

Outline

In this crash course we focus on the environmental impact of technology. We take a look at the relationship between the environment and technology from four different angles.

• First, we look at the impact of technology on the environment in general;
• Second, we look at the assessing the impact of technology by the materials used;
• Third, we look at the assessing the impact of technology by energy used;
• Finally, we look at a movement called ecomodernism, in which technology is the solution for the environmental issues.

Take aways from section one:

• Sustainability (and sustainable development) is more than just environmental sustainability.