Dragged by my 16 year old to see Batman (needed a driver for her and her friends) I was surprisingly taken with the story if not the violence.
Batman faces a dilemma – he’s invented a fusion generator possibly the greatest source of renewable energy the world will ever know. But it could also be the world’s greatest bomb.
At the start of the film the generator has been mothballed for 3 years – by the end (spoiler alert) it’s been destroyed.
It was a story about what is and is not appropriate technology.
Fritz Schumacher talked about Small is Beautiful – not because he hated big technology but because he thought we were obsessed by it and ignoring the huge potential of small scale, local and decentralised. I would argue that while the definition of small may have changed we are still obsessed with new, ignoring traditional and proven technologies. Vital technologies for poverty reduction.
So in the next Batman and Robin – I hope to see Batman fighting for decentralised, renewable, sustainable energy technologies for poverty reduction.
He and James Bond can truly save the world!!
Ps the last James Bond film Quantum of Solace was about Technology Justice and how that is worked through in relation to water – or maybe I have a warped perspective!