Can We Tip Sustainably? Ethical Considerations on the Role of Sustainable Technology in Societal Tipping Points

In this paper, I explore how to assess technologies’ potential to aid a sustainable transformation via societal tipping points. I do this by providing a definition of sustainability that combines justice, well-being, and the value of nature with insights from value-sensitive design and the technology assessment literature. This exploration serves as an additional consideration for the developing societal tipping point scholarship. I argue that research surrounding societal tipping points can be meaningfully bolstered through philosophical reflection on the inherent ethical implications of sustainability, and the value-ladenness of technological development. There is a salient push within various strands of climate adaptation and sustainable transition scholarship towards systems thinking. In order to reorient society within the Anthropocene, and to adapt to a destabilized climate, such scholarship argues that the underlying subsystems society currently relies on need to change. Conceiving societal structures, such as institutional, political, and financial arrangements, the various planetary spheres (bio-, cryo-, hydro-, atmo-, and geosphere), and the techno-scientific infrastructure as interdependent systems has heuristic and practical allure. As a heuristic, it allows researchers and policymakers to account for the numerous interrelated systems that affect climate change and environmental degradation. Practically, this heuristic should enable the identification of impactful and sustainable action. Knowing how the subsystems interoperate, what drives them, and what function they provide, accordingly serves as a baseline to identify possible leverage points to change them. Conceptually mirroring climate tipping points, there is growing interest in societal tipping points as possible catalysts for decisive climate action. This interest is premised on the idea that societal tipping points within a currently unsustainable global societal-ecological-technical system can be identified and operationalized in order to tip the system (or subsystems) into a sustainable direction This premise raises at least two critical issues that have so far received little attention. First, the question arises what tipping towards a more sustainable system would look like. The concept of sustainability is arguably vague, especially when it comes to its aptness in describing climate action. Answering this question requires a reflective and ethically thick conception of sustainability, which in turn, needs to represent a future-oriented conception of justice, well-being, and nature. Second, it is crucial to reflect on the interdependent ways in which technological development and the implementation of new technologies affect the societal values and norms that drive them, since technology plays a central role for achieving societal tipping points. If technology is seen as a an accelerator and facilitator for a sustainable transition, the value-ladenness that technological innovation comes with needs to be addressed. Importantly, some technologies that seem sustainable on the surface, may actually entrench and enforce existing unsustainable modes of behavior and policies. Accordingly, this paper expands on the societal tipping points literature by proposing a concept of sustainability that serves as a means to assess the potential of technologies to facilitate sustainable tipping.