Can technology fix our environment?

The technology to save the environment is already here, it's called the 'off switch'. While new technology may make it easier for us to reduce our impact with fewer changes to our life style, but passing the responsibility onto technology is like me blaming my dodgy decoration on the wall paper paste.

Technology will be able to fix our environmental problems in the near future. The research and development of Nano-technology could be used in many ways for the environment. Using nano-tech with swarm computing and we have a very effective way to overcome any environmental problem. For instance, the Nano-tech could be programmed to air-filter, turn carbon-dioxide into oxygen or even clear ash from the sky. They could also help dissipate harmful greenhouse gases.
Imagine, covering an oil spill in a 'blanket' of swarm controlled nanobots, it could be cleared within weeks, not months...

Talnoy
Scotland

Perhaps it could. Maybe somebody will invent outstanding technologies that scrub up CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans, that depollute rivers, clean contaminated land and reduce our need to overfish and overfarm. Even if that weren't an incredibly big ask, the real question is whether we should continue damaging the environment while we wait for this miracle cure?
I don't want to be a harbinger of doom and say the cliched 'before it's too late', but the longer the damage is inflicted the harder it will be to fix, and the more incredible the technology will have to be.

Flakkarin / Hayley Dunning

Our environmental problems are many, this multitude will require many solutions and some of these solutions will be based in technology. Will technology be a panacea for all the environmental ills? No, some will require modifications in lifestyle and it would be risky to deploy large effect technologies in a cavalier manner. For example the increased shift to bio-fuels resulted in a shortage of food stuffs, well to the best of my knowledge they did. But technology will be a part of the solution, such as in more energy efficient products and efficient transmission of energy.

Shadowwolf
Dublin
Ireland

I think it has nothing at the moment to deal with it, why?
because other natural things existing on the earth has gradually grown and during this long time they have got coordinated with the environmental issues in too many different aspects of that. but as the technology is too young in the earth's history, so as a young child can't see far enough and every aspects of an issue, so whatever is does there would be a consequence after that. but how much it's getting older and older it finds out new aspects of different issues and so it can control it, and predict exactly what would happen if it does what it decided to do.
as a conclusion I would say: yes, it can. but not now, in the future.
*I'm sorry for my mistakes in writing English.

Farzan Parsayar
Iran

Sadly I doubt it very much.
Fact is building anything that can effectivley clean up say an oil spill or maybe atmospheric carbon is actually going to become part of the problem and I'm pretty sure technology has no miracle cure up its sleeve. Even genetically engineered 'bugs' and 'plants' that could soak up pollutants are inevitably going to have consequences no-one considered at the outset. Chances are we would end up making things very much worse.

M Paul Lloyd
Seaton Delaval
Northumberland