Engineering Within Ecological Constraints (1996) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
A Perspective on the Relationship Between Engineering and Ecology
A Perspective on the Relationship Between Engineering and Ecology
Pages 65-78
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From page 65... ...
It is generally recognized that the quality of the environment must be maintained so that living creatures can survive, that is, extract oxygen and water and give off waste products. Our living conditions are intended to give us warmth, comfort, and safety and serve as a place for physical and spiritual nourishment, while at the same time their creation influences the collective environment, causing such problems as air pollution, solid-waste accumulation, and the greenhouse effect.
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From page 66... ...
In support of these concepts, ecologists should make available to the engineering community as much knowledge as possible on the ecosystems that could be affected, their vulnerabilities, and the specific technical reasons for caution. Perhaps the ecological community should develop a new applied subject area in which consideration is given to engineering applications of a specific type and the resultant stresses, costs, and effects on related ecosystems are evaluated, using various generic cases.
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From page 67... ...
Such a situation can lead to artificial or unnatural boundary conditions with regard to interactions with other systems. On the other hand it is ethically proper that engineering be applied in a timely manner to ensure survival by diminishing human disease, drudgery, and the threat of starvation; but in so doing the application of engineering concepts takes on an ethical component as well, to ensure that new approaches improve the quality of human life.
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From page 68... ...
Proper cost accounting of industrial processes and their ecological impacts will assist industry to justify environmentally sound business practices. · There should be an aggressive public education effort to explain the scientific basis for concerns regarding air pollution, stratospheric ozone depletion, global warming, and pollution of the oceans, land, and groundwater, especially as these matters relate to choices in human behavior.
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From page 69... ...
In addition, gasoline internal combustion engines release nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds. These gases, in turn, lead to the production of smog and tropospheric ozone, the latter also being an important greenhouse gas.
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From page 70... ...
Even though traffic systems are complex, with individual actors independently operating independent machines, 75 percent of the variance in the fuel consumed per unit distance for an automobile with a gasoline combustion engine in an urban street network can be explained by a single variable, average speed. In addition, it is also possible to describe the overall
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From page 71... ...
In this context we refer to Edward Tenner, who recently wrote a very interesting article that addresses some of the above-mentioned difficulties when dealing with complex problems (Tenner, 1991~. The article is entitled "Revenge Theory or why new highways develop gridlock, labor saving appliances create more housework, simplified tax regulations are harder to follow, paperback books cost what clothbound books used to, and why Murphy was an optimist." While it is not easy to classify all the types of outcomes that cause us difficulty, Tenner suggests the following set: repeating, recomplicating, decongesting, regenerating, and rearranging.
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From page 72... ...
More pointedly it reminds us that we are what we were and will be what we are. To quote more precisely, We should not allow the infrastructure to develop only on the basis of individual utility and short-term measures of cost and benefit, or narrowly measurable attributes that are tractable with current analytic tools.
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From page 73... ...
The present administration has set national priorities for scientific research to strengthen industry, protect the environment, improve the educational enterprise, create jobs, and the like. These, of course, are lofty goals worthy of the attention and effort of our scientific and engineering community.
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From page 74... ...
have claimed that to spread the equivalent of Western World quality of life ubiquitously over the entire globe, the current world population would have to be reduced significantly. These authors ask, "Does human society want 10 to 15 billion humans living in poverty and malnourishment or 1 to 2 billion living with abundant resources and a quality environment?
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From page 75... ...
Nobody is sufficiently prescient to know where new important developments may lie, and we surely must shun an outlook that smothers human receptivity to new thoughts and pathways. All of us, especially those in positions of power and control over resources, should take careful note of some of these ideas so beautifully and succinctly expressed by Leonardo da Vinci in his notebooks: Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass and does not know whither he is going....
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From page 76... ...
Our eternal struggle for new knowledge that on the one hand adds to the inner core of our understanding and on the other has useful consequences for humanity requires a great and constant effort as well as a high level of devotion. This is an extremely difficult task since as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "Nature seeks to hide." Science is not an isolated pursuit, it is embedded in society and intertwined with all knowledge, especially engineering, and all of human experience.
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From page 77... ...
1992. Technology, human interaction, and complexity: Reflections on vehicular traffic science.
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From page 78... ...
Technology Transfer Special Issue, Beam Line, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Spring:3-5. Russell, B
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