Engineering Within Ecological Constraints (1996) / Chapter Skim
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Why Aren't All Engineers Ecologists?
Why Aren't All Engineers Ecologists?
Pages 129-138
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From page 129... ...
Current concern for ecological sustainability focuses especially on the longterm and less-apparent costs of human modifications, on the counterproductive effects or "unintended consequences" of human activity, on paying attention to the "by-products" (costs to natural systems) as well as the products (benefits to humans)
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From page 130... ...
This paper is offered as an argument that ecologists and engineers have a great deal in common, and that recognition of that common ground offers significant opportunity for a new twenty-first century synthesis that could give energy and direction to the quest for sustainability. ENGINEERING STUDENTS AND ECOLOGY The impetus for this paper came from a recognition of a recurring phenomenon in my course in environmental politics.
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From page 131... ...
Both ecology and engineering seek to understand the integration of components of systems to produce functional wholes. This approach actually equips the engineer to be receptive to ecosystem models, because ecosystems, like artifacts, have to work; their parts have to fit together.6 If the engineers and ecologists share an interest in working systems, why is it that the two disciplines often assume conflicting positions on issues?
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From page 132... ...
Indeed, engineers are well equipped to understand impacts of human activity on ecosystems; any reasonably complete materials balance analysis of a manufacturing process reflects the fact that car manufacturers produce more than cars, that steelmakers make more than steel, and that nuclear plants generate more than electricity. The profession we would most likely charge with determining the impact of a year's production of automobiles on air and fuel resources would be engineers.
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From page 133... ...
Monetary, not ecological, cost drives engineering design. In practice, the bulk of this power lies in the hands of the economic decision makers in the business world.7 But the design parameters for engineers can be ecologically wrongheaded for a variety of other reasons besides inaccurate estimate of environmental externalities.
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From page 134... ...
As indicated, this is necessarily a political undertaking, one which, while not partisan in the traditional sense, does require some managerial or leadership effort to redefine engineering practice. While in one sense this might seem threatening to standard engineering practice, it would be a fundamental misunderstanding of the argument to perceive such change as problematic for engineering.
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From page 135... ...
Accordingly, twenty-first-century engineering and development must challenge industrial gigantism and expanding control and scale with a commitment to reengineer the developed world to have less impact on ecosystems. In practical terms, engineering within ecological constraints means turning engineering away from natural systems and back onto previously engineered systems.
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From page 136... ...
. would be to thetheoria of the physical sciences as induction is to deduction, as the pragmatic is to the rational, as nondeterministic design is to deterministic law, as the contextual is to the universal, as the pluralistic and contingent is to the unique and necessary, as the open-ended is to the onceand-for-all, as Ciceronian rhetoric is to Platonic philosophy, as the skeptical is to the certain, as the Principle of Insufficient Reason is to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1990, p.
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From page 137... ...
1992. Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse; Envisioning a Sustainable Future.
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