A number of councils in the UK have declared a climate change emergency. Max Wide says that while better technologies will help, they will not save us – and what’s really needed to change behaviour is ‘bold, artful and technologically aware leadership’

How many times do you hear people say ‘It’s not about the technology’? It is and it always has been. Technology is an ever-present character in the history of human development. The origin of the word is in ancient Greek transliterated: ‘techne’ and ‘logos’. Techne means art, skill, or craft. Logos means word, as in the way which inward thought is expressed. That combination has been responsible for the most momentous and most horrific episodes in history, from landing on the moon to exploding the atomic bomb.