Reconstructing Earth: Technology and Environment in the Age of Humans - Softcover

Allenby, Braden

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597260150 ISBN 13: 9781597260152

Publisher: Island Press, 2005

Synopsis

The Earth's biological, chemical, and physical systems are increasingly shaped by the activities of one species - ours. In our decisions about everything from manufacturing technologies to restaurant menus, the health of the planet has become a product of human choice. Environmentalism, however, has largely failed to adapt to this new reality. Reconstructing Earth offers seven essays that explore ways of developing a new, more sophisticated approach to the environment that replaces the fantasy of recovering pristine landscapes with a more grounded viewpoint that can foster a better relationship between humans and the planet. Braden Allenby, a lawyer with degrees in both engineering and environmental studies, explains the importance of technological choice, and how that factor is far more significant in shaping our environment (in ways both desirable and not) than environmental controls. Drawing on his varied background and experience in both academia and the corporate world, he describes the emerging field of "earth systems engineering and management," which offers an integrated approach to understanding and managing complex human/natural systems that can serve as a basis for crafting better, more lasting solutions to widespread environmental problems. Reconstructing Earth not only critiques dysfunctional elements of current environmentalism but establishes a foundation for future environmental management and progress, one built on an understanding of technological evolution and the cultural systems that support modern technologies. Taken together, the essays offer an important means of developing an environmentalism that is robust and realistic enough to address the urgent realities of our planet. Reconstructing Earth is a thought-provoking new work for anyone concerned with the past or future of environmental thought, including students and teachers of environmental studies, environmental policy, technology policy, technological evolution, or sustainability.

About this title

About the Author

Braden Allenby is professor of civil and environmental engineering and professor of law at Arizona State University. Until 2004, he was vice president for environment, health and safety at AT&T, and is author or co-author of numerous textbooks.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Reconstructing Earth

Technology and Environment in the Age of Humans

By Braden Allenby

ISLAND PRESS

Copyright © 2005 Braden Allenby
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59726-015-2

Contents

About Island Press, 
Title Page, 
Copyright Page, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction - The Evolution of a Movement, 
CHAPTER 1 - The Human Earth, 
CHAPTER 2 - Real Rubber on Real Roads: Technology and Environment, 
CHAPTER 3 - From Overhead to Strategic, 
CHAPTER 4 - Alice in Wonderland: Environmental Management in the Firm, 
CHAPTER 5 - Thoroughly Modern Marxist Utopianism: Sustainability, 
CHAPTER 6 - Faith and Science, 
CHAPTER 7 - Complexity: The New Frontier, 
CHAPTER 8 - How Humans Construct Their Environment, 
CHAPTER 9 - Implementing Earth Systems Engineering and Management, 
Index, 
Island Press Board of Directors, 

CHAPTER 1

The Human Earth

The Earth has become an anthropogenic planet. The dynamics of most natural systems—biological, chemical, and physical—are increasingly affected by the activities of one species, ours. The debate over how to manage global climate change; the efforts to recreate the Everglades and similar regional resource regimes to support both environmental and economic values; the effect of rapidly growing urban areas around the world on their hinterlands; the evolution of a global economy and market-oriented culture networked by information and communication systems that did not exist twenty years ago all testify to a planet whose characteristics, from the biological to the electromagnetic frequencies it radiates to space, are increasingly defined by human action. As the journal Nature put it in a 2003 editorial, "Welcome to the Anthropocene"—welcome to the Age of Humans.

This trend is not new, of course. Although this process has been accelerated by the Industrial Revolution, "natural" and human systems at all scales have in fact been affecting each other, and coevolving, for millennia, and they are now more tightly coupled than ever. Copper production during the Sung dynasty, as well as in Athens and the Roman Republic and Empire, are reflected in deposition levels in Greenland ice; and lead production in ancient Athens, Rome, and medieval Europe is reflected in increases in lead concentration in the sediments of Swedish lakes. The buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began not with the post–World War II growth in consumption of fossil fuel, but with the growth of agriculture in, and thus deforestation of, Europe, Africa, and Asia over the past millennia. Humanity's impacts on biota, both directly through predation and indirectly through the introduction of new species to indigenous habitats, has been going on for centuries as well.

What is different is that the impacts of the past were relatively minor and localized. Since the Industrial Revolution, they have become progressively more global and systematic (see "History, Responsibility, Design"). Indeed, in some areas, such as biotechnology, new fundamental technological and scientific advances have generated the potential for subsuming large chunks of previously (relatively) natural systems into human systems—in this case, genetic engineering combined with existing legal treatments of intellectual property creates the means by which the vast information store of biological genomes can be "commoditized" and made part of human economic systems (see "The Commoditization of Nature"). From a systems perspective, population and economic growth, and the evolution of ever more dense information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructures, has facilitated the linking of previously disparate local and regional patterns of human activity into globally synchronized systems, as well as ever closer coupling of human with fundamental natural systems. For the most part, we neither perceive nor recognize this state, in part perhaps because it has evolved without our conscious guidance; in part because recognition would require that we try to respond responsibly, rationally, and ethically and we do not know how to do that; and in part because the reality conflicts so basically with the popular mythology of "nature" as sacred. After all, to the extent we regard nature as something "outside the human," it becomes that much harder to recognize how much the human has actually affected the natural world.

So we should not be surprised that the language and mental models we often rely on in thinking about environmental issues have a powerful ideological and religious content, yet they are regarded by most of us as representing objectively real phenomenon. Thus, for example, terms such as "nature," "wilderness," "sustainable development," and even "environment" tend to be used as if they represented unquestionable, concrete facts and components of objective reality, but they are in fact products of a particular place, time, and culture, and have changed significantly over time. The concepts and meanings of "nature" alone make it one of the most complex of these cultural constructs. It can mean desirable; morally right; an independent source of value; the sacred; and, especially these days, the nonhuman, as "natural" ingredients are taken to mean "not made by humans" despite the fact that the products identified by such adjectives clearly are packaged, processed, and distributed in highly complex human structures. This implies that humans and their products, and especially their technologies, are somehow beyond the pale, profoundly "nonnatural."

The irony, of course, is that this implication arises at the very point in human history characterized by increasing globalization of economic, technological, and cultural patterns. This does not mean that we are entering an era of global monoculture, but, rather, increasing complexity: there are more communities, units, systems, interests, political and social entities, and technology clusters, at many different levels, and more relationships among them and natural systems at many scales than ever before. Production, consumption, economics, culture—and environmental issues—are all part of the same, increasingly complex package, and viable solutions must deal with all the varied dimensions of that package.

Dealing ethically and rationally in such a world requires a sense of realism. Environmental issues are occasionally framed in apocalyptic terms, with people speaking glibly of "saving the planet." It is highly unlikely, however, that "the world," "life," or even the existence of the human species is threatened by current levels of human activity (indeed, as regards the latter, it is well-known that generalist species, of which humans are the outstanding example, do better than others in periods of rapid change). What is threatened is the stability of global economic and social systems; especially endangered, as always, are the poor and powerless, and those who do not belong to the dominant culture. Regional and global current system states—climate and oceanic circulation systems, biological systems at all scales, elemental and hydrological cycles, and the like—are also evolving rapidly. What the dramatic language indicates is not that the planet itself is threatened, for it will certainly continue to evolve, although elements of it will follow a different path than they would in the absence of humans. Rather, it is people's judgments about the world they want, and their underlying mental models and ideologies, that are at risk: it is not the planet, but individual, culturally contingent, and particular visions of a desirable state, that are under threat. And, of course, visions, and values, differ significantly depending on culture, economic status, and the like. Again, this is not to suggest that human activities might not result in sudden and unanticipated shifts in various critical systems—the climate or oceanic circulation systems, for example. But the widespread use of such apocalyptic language does suggest that the environmental discourse—the dialog, ideas, and institutions that taken together form the environmental movement—tends to conflate values, their vision of ideal ultimate ends, and reality with dangerous naïveté. What a "desirable" world is depends greatly on who, or what, is doing the desiring.

This cultural contingency only adds to the high degree of complexity surrounding environmental issues. Consider scale, an important component of that complexity. The most common dimensions are geographic and temporal; even in these familiar waters, however, confusion arising from a lack of sensitivity to scale issues is all too common. Geographically, many scale issues arise because of a mismatch between the physical extent of human systems—jurisdictional boundaries associated with political systems such as nations, for example, or, more subtly, the geographic dimensions of markets and trading systems—and natural systems.

The temporal scale is a little more subtle. In the short term, social, cultural, and legal systems can reasonably be regarded as fixed, and policy development is relatively easy. Moreover, human individual and institutional perception is oriented to the short term: most people do not think beyond a few years. With the evolution of environmental focus from impacts localized in time and space, such as clean air, clean water, and defined waste sites, to perturbations that express themselves only over many decades, if not centuries, and over continental, if not global, geographical scales, the situation changes dramatically. Cultural constructs, fundamental institutions such as the family unit, the state, private firms and NGOs, and economic systems change profoundly, and none can be regarded as fixed. It is one thing to prescribe a scrubber technology that controls emissions of chlorinated solvent fumes from a manufacturing facility; quite another to mandate reduced fossil fuel use in response to global climate change. The former decision can be easily reversed if wrong; the latter significantly bounds the paths available for continued human evolution. It is not that a particular solution is "right" or "wrong"—rather, it is that scale issues make the latter a much, much more complex question.

Moreover, it is not clear that meaningful dialog on fundamental environmental perturbations, such as loss of biodiversity, global climate change, anthropogenic shifts in elemental and hydrological cycles, and the like involves only two dimensions. Indeed, one can argue that the appropriate "phase space"—set of dimensions required to functionally define the perturbations at issue—include a cultural dimension, a technological dimension, an economic dimension, and perhaps an information dimension as well. And the choice of phase space may itself reflect the level of the system that one is interested in. Choosing information technology as an example, there is a significant increase in complexity as one moves from a component, to a subassembly, to a router, to the Internet as a physical network, to the Internet as it functions in society, to the patterns of cultural change induced by the Internet as they in turn affect environmental systems. However, how to define each level in terms of complexity, and the way each level interacts with other networks reflecting other dimensions of the phase space at the appropriate scale is, to say the least, still opaque.

The challenge of complexity is significantly complicated in the real world by fundamental and accelerating changes in governance systems in a globalizing culture. "Governance"—the multitude of ways in which society is managed and administered—includes but is not limited to governments, which are formal institutions creating and administrating laws and regulations, and maintaining civil order. In the past, "government" and "governance" were quite similar. Indeed, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the traditional global governance structure has been based on the institution of the nation-state. Thus, for example, the negotiations about mitigating global climate change are conducted entirely by nation-states, although firms and environmental NGOs participate and lobby behind the scenes. But this international governance system has become much more complex over the past decade. Where the nation-state used to be dominant, it now is just one of many institutions involved in international governance. Private firms, NGOs, and communities of different kinds now increasingly share responsibility for international policy development and implementation, notably in the environmental, human rights, and financial arenas. We have yet to catch up with this new reality, and most of the relevant players remain somewhat unclear about their roles in the still evolving governance structures.

And it becomes more complicated yet, for modern institutions involved in governance—from major religions and cultural systems, to the family unit, to geographic and virtual (online) communities, to firms, NGOs and activist movements—all continue to rapidly evolve. The power and information relationships they embody, and participate in, are shifting rapidly as well. Under such circumstances, there are no firm points from which one can begin developing intellectual frameworks and policy systems; rather, all is in fundamental flux. Cultural systems, institutions, and individuals tend to find such an environment uncomfortable, and will accordingly try to deny the reality of change and cling to previously valid patterns. Taken another way, rapid change creates the ironic but powerful incentive to neither perceive, nor acknowledge, the change that is actually occurring, and to retreat to the ideologies and mental models of the past. Indeed, the rapid rate of change that characterizes the modern world is probably a significant reason for the upsurge in fundamentalism, from the Middle East to the American South. Such a retreat is also appealing with a discourse as emotionally potent and ideologically charged as environmentalism: would you rather have the task of trying to understand and manage a world that is at the verge of the Anthropocene or be the romantic, muscular, dressed-in-black ecodefense warrior pictured in Foreman and Haywood's 1993 deep green classic, Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching?

Governance structures also matter because shifts in power do not necessarily result in public benefit. One advantage of a government-based governance structure is that governments, to a more or less effective degree, are entities that implicitly try to balance mutually exclusive goals and conflicting ontologies, distributing costs and benefits of various policies among disparate groups—they are the integrators of civil society. Firms and NGOs, on the contrary, are far more limited in scope: firms generally exist to make money, and NGOs reflect their own idiosyncratic ideologies and belief systems, often exclusively. Both, given the opportunity, can dominate policy formulation to the exclusion of other voices and interests. It is probable that, as the current fragmented governance structure continues to evolve, mechanisms will emerge that integrate the social, environmental, and economic as the nation-state used to. For now, that desirable result does not always prevail.

This is especially true as the approaches of industry, governments, and NGOs to environmental issues tend to lag economic and technological evolution, and thus run the risk of focusing, like the Maginot Line, on past challenges rather than on present realities. The environmentalism that developed in the 1970s tended to focus on managing the effects of manufacturing and industrial activity, and to a lesser extent on products, particularly chemicals. If one assumes that environmental perturbations arise primarily from such activity, it is reasonably fair to declare victory and turn to other issues. If, however, environmental perturbations arise from the accumulated economic, technological, and cultural evolution of a rapidly growing population, and the increasing dominance of planetary systems by one species, then our ignorance is, in fact, far more pervasive than we might at first think.

Two trends suggest that this may be the case. The first is the shift in developed economies from a primarily manufacturing to a primarily service economy: depending on how "services" are defined, they now constitute 70 to 80 percent of developed economies. Moreover, this is not a simple shift in production technologies, for it is aligned with a substantial increase in the importance of information as economic input and output—the rise of the so-called knowledge economy. An environmentalism still focused on manufacturing deals but weakly with the environmental costs, and opportunities, of the modern service economy. Second, and equally important, is the growing realization that it is impossible to understand the modern world, and the interactions of human and natural systems, unless one understands technology systems and their evolution. Here, also, we know surprisingly little: in fact, we lack a robust theoretical framework. But it is certainly likely that human society will be profoundly changed by the confluence of information and communication technology, biotechnology, cognitive sciences, and nanotechnology. Consider some potential examples. How will future generations increasingly integrated into information networks rather than outdoor wilderness activities regard "nature"? What happens when biodiversity becomes increasingly a function of genetic engineering rather than existing species preservation? What is the effect of creating systems that enable humans to control machines and mechanical contrivances at a distance, wirelessly (the U.S. military is allegedly working on planes that are directly and wirelessly integrated into the brains of pilots, so that the plane becomes just another appendage of the human pilot)? What happens when medical science and nanotechnology combine to create human lives averaging well over a hundred years? Yet how often are these subjects considered seriously as part of the environmental movement (as opposed to simple Luddite dismissal)? Indeed, when are they considered seriously in public discourse generally? It is not merely rhetorical to wonder what a high-technology, high-information-content, environmentally desirable society might look like, for it is where we are heading—only, there is the distinct risk that the environmental piece might simply be an accidental, unintended, unplanned, and unpleasant result of other systems evolving, rather than a thought out, desired, and important component of our future.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Reconstructing Earth by Braden Allenby. Copyright © 2005 Braden Allenby. Excerpted by permission of ISLAND PRESS.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Island Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1597260150
• ISBN 13: 9781597260152
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224