Engineering and Environmental Challenges: Technical Symposium on Earth Systems Engineering

Biotechnology is one of the most important—if not the most important—area of human ESE activity. Biotechnology and the associated economic, political, ethical, and cultural issues provide a lens through which the complexity and challenges of ESE can be clarified.

NOTES

I am indebted to Professor Max Stackhouse of Princeton Theological Seminary for this insight.

This is not to say that all concerns about biotechnology are inappropriate, or that ideological opposition is necessarily wrong in some way. The fact that societies that turned their backs on powerful technologies in the past have been overtaken is not a normative judgment but an objective observation. One need only compare China, where many technologies were discovered but not widely used, and, hence, a technological society never evolved, with Europe, where the Industrial Revolution flourished (Needham, 1991; Noble, 1997).

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Noble, D.F. 1997. The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

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Table of Contents

Front Matter R1-R12

Keynote Address: It's the World, Stupid! 1-6

Climate Systems Engineering 7-16

Improving Climate Assessment 17-22

How Camest Thou in This Pickle? 23-32

Genetically Modified Organisms: An Ancient Practice on the Cusp 33-44

Benefits of Biotechnology 45-50

Earth Systems Engineering and Management: The Biotechnology Discourse 51-56

Gaining a Seat at the Policy Table 57-64

Successful Public-Private Research Partnerships 65-66

Defining What We Need to Know 67-72

Rethinking Urbanization 73-90

Urban Design: The Grand Challenge 91-94

Hybrid Cities: A Basis for Hope 95-104

Appendix A: About the Authors 105-114

Appendix B: Symposium Agenda 115-118

NOTES

REFERENCES