Climate & Environment
Techno-Fix
A technology deployed to solve a problem without addressing the system or behaviour that caused it.
Definition
A techno-fix is a technological solution applied to a problem whose roots are social, economic or behavioural — treating symptoms while leaving causes intact. The critique, running from 1960s critics of technology to today's geoengineering and offsetting debates, is not that technology is useless but that fixes framed as substitutes for structural change delay it: cleaner cars instead of fewer car trips, carbon capture instead of phase-out, desalination instead of demand management.
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