ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the informed and critical analysis of techno-optimism', informed by an explicitly transdisciplinary approach. It offers a precautionary analysis of the role of technology within the transition from unsustainability, through a focus on critically interrogating techno-optimism. The chapter also offers a middle path between a Luddite green rejection of technology and simplistic techno-optimism. A radical extension or ramping up of techno-optimism within the climate change energy nexus is the recent research on and growing support for geo-engineering solutions to climate change and non-renewable energy solutions to the transition to a low carbon energy future. As Michael Keary perceptively notes, technology is at its most powerful in environmental policy not when it harnesses what is, but when it harnesses what is possible'. In many respects a more political and ethical framework for understanding and making judgments and decisions about the place of technology in the transition from unsustainability is at the same time a more interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective.
