Technological Trajectories and the Human Environment (1997) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
The Liberation of the Environment
The Liberation of the Environment
Pages 1-13
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The Liberation of the Environment JESSE H AUSUBEL The passage of time has connected the invention of the wheel with more than ten million miles of paved roads around the world today, the capture of fire with six billion tons of carbon going up in smoke annually.
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· In 1830, when cholera epidemics in many cities and towns literally decimated the populations that dumped their wastes in nearby waters? · In 1700, when one hundred thousand mills interrupted the flow of every stream in France?
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End users in office buildings and homes do not want smoking coals. America has pared its carbon intensity of gross domestic product per capita per constant dollar from about three kilos in 1800 to about three-tenths of a kilo in 1990.
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In the United States since about 1800, the production of a good or service has required 1 percent less energy on average than it did the previous year. Nevertheless, embracing the full chain from the primary energy generator to the final user of light or heat, the ratio of theoretical minimum energy consumption to actual energy consumption for essentially the same mix of goods and services is still probably less than 5 percent (Ayres, 1989~.
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What is a reasonable outlook for the land used to grow crops for ten billion people, a probable world population sixty or seventy years hence? Future calories consumed per person will likely range between the 3,000 per day of an ample vegetarian diet and the 6,000 that includes meat.
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Total industrial water withdrawals plateaued a decade earlier than total US withdrawals and have dropped by onethird, more steeply than the total. Notably, industrial withdrawals per unit of GNP have dropped steadily since 1940, from fourteen gallons per constant dollar to three gallons in 1990.
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Yet, as Robert Frosch theorizes (this volume) , the potential surely exists to develop superior industrial ecosystems that reduce the intensity of materials use in the economy, minimize
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As advised by the great early nineteenth-century natural historian Alexander von Humboldt, we should participate in the whole as part of a part of a part of it, together with others. We may draw parallels between expanding notions of democracy and enfranchisement within human societies with respect to class, gender, and race, and our broadening view of the ethical standing of trees, owls, and mountains.
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However, many of these, including vaccines and antibiotics, came well after the aerial invaders were already in retreat. Formerly, most aerial attacks occurred in winter, when people crowded indoors; most aquatic kills occurred in summer, when organic material ferments speedily.
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Our technology not only spares resources but also expands the human niche, within particular time frames. As Robert Kates explains (this volume)
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In the world's largest indoor ski center, Ski-Dome near Tokyo, the slope extends 490 meters by 100 meters, with a thrilling drop of 80 meters that satisfies the standards of the International Ski Federation for parallel slalom competition. On the South Island of Kyushu, Ocean-Dome encloses 12,000 square meters of sandy beach and an ocean six times the size of an Olympic pool, filled with 13,500 tons of unsalted, chlorinated water kept at a warm 28°C.
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The builders of the beautiful home of the US National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., inscribed it with the epigraph, "To science, pilot of industry, conqueror of disease, multiplier of the harvest, explorer of the universe, revealer of nature's laws, eternal guide to truth." Finally, after a very long preparation, our science and technology are ready also to reconcile our economy and the environment, to effect the Copernican turn.2 In fact, long before environmental policy became conscious of itself, the system had set decarbonization in motion. A highly efficient hydrogen economy, landless agriculture, industrial ecosystems in which waste virtually disappears: over the coming century these can enable large, prosperous human populations to co-exist with the whales and the lions and the eagles and all that underlie them if we are mentally prepared, which I believe we are.
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From page 13... ...
Pp. 81-92 in National Water Summary 1987-Hydrologic Events and Water Supply and Use.
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