Global environmental collapse risks: is digital technology a solution or a problem?

Pierre-Yves Longaretti is a theoretical astrophysicist at CNRS. In the last 15 years, he has also been involved in research on sustainability science issues at local and global scales. He has co-founded the INRIA STEEP team with Emmanuel Prados (Sustainability Transition, Environment, Economy and local Policy), and co-elaborated the team research agenda, which bears on sustainability issues at local scales under global change constraints, as well as on related public policy decision help. His research activity in this field focuses mostly on global collapse risks, on the environmental impacts of the material and energy flows of the economy, and more generally on the impacts of the human activity on ecosystems and their services to society.

Crises of all sorts are more and more prominent in the news: climate change, biodiversity loss, finance… Various lines of analysis suggest that these are symptoms of a deeper problem, bearing on the risks of global collapse of the occidental model of development, now almost ubiquitous on the planet.
To meet this challenge, many voices promote the digital transition as an ambitious means for the ecological transition. However, this seems at odds with a number of impacts of the digital work on society and its environment.