Technology and Environment (1989) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 159-204
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From page 159... ...
Technology and Environment.
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From page 160... ...
As some engineers had warned, slipping by the neatly devised and heroically built system were 37,000 inappropriately designed landfills, hundreds of thousands of leaking gasoline tanks, and millions of tons of untreated nutrients and metals left over from secondary treatment. Worst of all, discharges of storm water, as polluted as raw sewage and laden with heavy metals and exotic chemicals, continue to run untreated into our lakes, rivers, and estuaries.
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From page 161... ...
However, after 20 years of study on Lake Okeechobee, biologists still cannot describe with any certainty the nutrient regime of the lake. They are similarly confused on issues surrounding the effects of acid rain and other major ecological disturbances.
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From page 162... ...
Fourth, appropriate development of water supplies and efficient use of available resources are going to be of major importance as water becomes increasingly scarce in many parts of the world. It has been estimated that global warming, with an increase of 2°C in temperature and 10 percent
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From page 163... ...
Fourth, there Is a common tendency to rely on "high-tech" solutions and use "low-tech" human beings to implement them. Three Mile Island, Bhopal, and Chernobyl all come to mind.
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From page 164... ...
Still another new profession, the environmental mediator, has leaped into the fray. THE REAL WORLD OF DECISIONS Many times I have heard competent industrial managers say that they are frustrated by expensive regulations which they feel are irrelevant or by local citizens who fail to distinguish between a real risk and what is merely a fear.
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From page 165... ...
By contrast, the entire Clean Lakes program (authorized under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, Public Law 92-500)
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From page 166... ...
Information Technology and Sustainable Development. Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute.
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From page 167... ...
For this purpose, it is necessary to go back to basics and make institutional changes affecting engineering design, research, and education as discussed in this chapter. REGULATORY TRENDS In the short term, the requirement for industry to comply with federal right-to-know laws by disclosing emissions of toxic chemicals will stimulate 167
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From page 168... ...
A new precedent for regulatory action has been set at the international level by the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer (Doniger, 1988; United Nations Environment Program, 1987~. The commercial use of these compounds began in the early 1930s.
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From page 169... ...
The developing countries in southerly latitudes, however, as well as East Asia, had the largest percentage increases in NOR emissions from 1966 to 1980 (Figure 2~. These increases portend a substantial spread in NO=-affected areas around the world, with accompanying photochemical smog and acid deposition.
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From page 170... ...
170 Op ~ ~ : ~q~ .o to CO ._ LL · .
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From page 171... ...
In my view, however, it is unlikely that we will be able to predict in much detail, very far in advance, the onset of new technologies and their environmental effects. Over the long term, however, institutional changes affecting engineering design, basic research, and education are necessary to shape the development of new technologies with an understanding of potential environmental consequences.
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From page 172... ...
172 09 I; a: Fly i: .~ ~: 0£ a: ._ AL o a: ·_ to 00 0\ o 0\ O 0` ~q _ :: o o ._ C ~ ." ·S o to e_ ~q Ct ~.
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From page 173... ...
This movement has been called waste reduction (National Research Council, 1985; U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, 1986)
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From page 174... ...
Five methods of waste reduction were identified in a study by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (1986, p.
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From page 175... ...
The challenge in the next phase will be to develop guidelines for basic engineering research underlying waste reduction. As director of the Engineering Research Center for Hazardous Substance Control at the University of California, Los Angeles, I recently consulted with members of our industry-government advisory board on research in waste reduction.
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From page 176... ...
Chemical manufacturing processes may employ alternative chemical reaction paths and raw materials to reach the desired reaction products. The use of alternate reaction paths as a generic approach to waste reduction has recently been discussed in Fronners in Chemical Engineenng (National Research Council, 1988, p.
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From page 177... ...
By identifying and supporting a broad set of basic research areas underlying waste reduction, more of our best research engineers and scientists can be encouraged to participate in this challenging taste Encouraging university research of this type will ensure that our studen~the next generation of engineers and managersbetter understand the issues involved. ENVIRONMENTALLY COMPATIBLE CONSUMER PRODUCTS Some consumer products have major environmental consequences either during use (automobile or aerosol sprays)
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From page 178... ...
. The ability of industry to design environmentally compatible products will strongly affect the extent of government intrusion into the marketing of such products.
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From page 179... ...
For example, concepts related to NOR emissions can easily be introduced into discussions of power cycles in undergraduate engineering thermodynamics classes. As a part of an education in chemical engineering, courses in separation processes, chemical reaction engineering, and especially, the senior-level design course should all incorporate problems and examples related to minimization of pollution.
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From page 180... ...
Engineering education should routinely incorporate environmental constraints into the design procedures of existing engineering disciplines, and environmental consequences of technology and the basis of regulatory standards should be part of the engineering curriculum. In plant design, there must be a growing emphasis on waste reduction rather than end-of-pipe treatment and disposal However, waste reduction needs a fundamental engineering research base, which is still under development and merits high priority.
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From page 181... ...
1987. Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer.
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From page 182... ...
During the summer of 1988 the news media helped to make everyone who reads or watches television aware of a variety of unpleasant, costly, and disturbing events, all of which reflect the continuing crises of long- and short-term environmental changes. All the environmental news sounded bad and seemed to promise to become worse: droughts, floods, forest fires, solid waste washing up on public beaches, sewage pollution of water supplies, ozone depletion, the "greenhouse effect," acid rain, and more.
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From page 183... ...
Confronted with the prospect of closing filled or nonconforming landfills, more stringent federal and state design and operational requirements, and rebellious communities unwilling to tolerate the construction of new ones in their vicinity, public works officials sought other alternatives to landfills, such as loading garbage on trucks, trains, boats, or barges for shipping to some far-off place or shifting to newer incineration technologies.3~4 Shipping solid wastes someplace else in the United States turned out to be expensive and was not greeted graciously or with much enthusiasm (Public Works, 1988~: Whether it's solid waste from historic Philadelphia, classy garbage from New York City's fifth Avenue, or trash from the finely landscaped lawns of Northern New Jersey, the fact is nobody else wants it. The summer of 1988 was special in the annals of environmental history.
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From page 184... ...
The universe of environmental changes, for the purpose of discussion, can be divided into mo classes: global and local. Local changes have the following characteristics: They are often obvious (they can be seen, smelled, felt, etc.~.
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From page 185... ...
If one of our objectives is to prevent deterioration of environmental conditions for reasons of health and safety, then regulations compelling all producers to include the costs of pollution control in the prices of all goods and services would have a salutary effect on the behavior of organizations and individuals. It is true that regulations reduce our freedom of choice, but so does a deteriorating environment Until recently, it has been difficult to collect compelling scientific evidence to demonstrate that global environmental changes are taking place, and despite the new information, not everyone is convinced.
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From page 186... ...
Over the past two decades, society has benefited a great deal from its ability to devise technological fixes, whereas the social and political processes have accomplished relatively little by way of "social engineering." However, these short-run solutions have not brought us much closer to confronting successfully the major environmental changes with which we and future generations have to deal. When Weinberg suggested that technological fixes buy time, he implied that more long-lasting solutions were identifiable (or knowable)
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From page 187... ...
The result, as expected, is to move from crisis to cnsis. Long-run solutions do not arise from technology alone; thus, we must look for answers that arrange decent marriages between social engineering and technology (Gray, this volume)
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From page 188... ...
The time has come to develop an R&D program that truly represents a national commitment to address the threat, if not the clear and present danger, posed by environmental changes at both local and global levels Without such support it will not be possible to provide the technological base required to cope with the ever-changing and expanding demands to which society must be prepared to respond. A broad range of R&D topics must be explored to gain a better understanding of pollutants and to develop treatment and disposal processes for dealing with them.
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From page 189... ...
The consequences to ourselves and, more important, to future generations are so monumental that it would be irresponsible not to face up to these matters. The crisis before us is of a special kind: it demands the rejection of avoidance and denial, and a genuine and complete national commitment to confront the environmental changes that lie before us.
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From page 190... ...
Needless to say, all of them are absolved from responsibility for the final producL NOTES 1. These kinds of episodes are likely to continue even though Resource Conservation and Recovery Act rules do not permit any waste defined as hazardous to be exported "unless .
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From page 191... ...
1966. Can technology replace social engineering.
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From page 192... ...
It also provides an appropriate introduction to my principal theme, which is a paradox of our time: the mixed blessing of almost every technological development. Technological developments come about as people seek solutions to specific problems and needs, and they often open the way to other innovations and applications that were unimaginable at the outset.
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From page 193... ...
Increasingly, the positive consequences of a development are, or are understood as, incremental or marginal in character. As a result, the natural human tendency to avoid change, the unknown, and risk becomes more dominant in considering new technological developments.
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From page 194... ...
Air pollution in industrial England had severe local effects, as in the killing smogs of London, but these problems seemed not to have significant global consequences and were, in any case, largely dealt with locally. The impact of technological development on our environment as reflected in degraded air and water qualibr, warnings of possible global warming and the depletion of stratospheric ozone, and the hazards of tone waste is, in large measure, a consequence of the fact that there are many more of us on this planet.
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From page 195... ...
Creators of new technological developments and poli~nakers thus have a particular responsibility to explore, as thoroughly and aggressively as possible, the multiple consequences of new developments to make those considerations an integral part of the process of technological development. They need to develop guidelines and policies for sustainable development that reflect concern for the long-term, global implications of large-scale technologies and that support the innovation of less intrusive, more adaptable technologies at all levels.
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From page 196... ...
by the burning of wood and fossil fuels, and there is now clear evidence that the concentrations of these greenhouse gases are steadily increasing. As a result, the average temperature of the earth must increase to maintain the heat balance between solar input and infrared output.
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From page 197... ...
and the World Meteorological Organization recently recommended the following actions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the face of growing populations and increased economic activity (eager, 1988~: Reduce fossil fuel use by increasing end-use energy efficiency. The experience of the past 15 years in response to the increase in oil prices induced by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
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From page 198... ...
Replace fossil fuels with alternative energy sources such as solar energy, wind and tidal power, ocean thermal conversion, and nuclear power. This is, to my mind, the only viable long-term approach to offset the forces of continued population and economic growth.
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From page 199... ...
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl cannot be expunged from our collective consciousness. Seabrook and Shoreham are real-time examples of the depth of the conviction held by our political leaders, perhaps even by a majority of the public, about the risks and benefits of nuclear power.
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From page 200... ...
We must make an earnest and sustained effort to educate the public about the risks and benefits of nuclear power in terms that permit quantitative comparison with other energy sources.
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From page 201... ...
Absolutely risk-free operation cannot, like absolutely anything else, be guaranteed: one can postulate a meteor falling on the reactor, after ale Nevertheless, the degree of risk to the environment and to human life can be driven down below the levels of corresponding risk inherent in the present alternative of fossil fuels.
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From page 202... ...
They need direct engagement with these issues in their education. These students should tackle subjects and engage in research on topics that directly address the political, economic, and social considerations integral to scientific and technological developments.
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From page 203... ...
COOPERATION FOR THE FUTURE The issues raised by the paradox of technological development are profound and difficult. Nonetheless, I am optimistic that, in this era of global interdependence, responsible people will recognize that appropriate public policies to ensure sustainable development can and must be developed from an iIlternationa1 perspective.
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From page 204... ...
Geneva: World Meteorological Organization and United Nations Environment Program. Lidsky, Lo M
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