Bleak and Bright Environmental Science and Engineering ecent nominations of Carol Browner, Lisa Jackson, Ken Salazar, and Steven Chu as officials in the Obama cabinet signal a renewed emphasis on environmental science and engineering. Happy days may be here againsdays not seen since the late 1960s, when ES&T was launched. These nominations provide a moment of circumspection to look both backward and forward. Ironically, the planet’s environmental future seems bleak, but the prospects for our field are bright. It’s a huge responsibility. Historically, environmental professionals can claim many successes. The 20th century saw truly great stories and successes of public health in drinking-water treatment, disinfection, and sanitation along with controlling sulfur oxides, particulate matter, and lead in urban air. Worldwide investment in wastewater treatment and renewal of our rivers to a more “swimmable and fishable” condition was an amazing achievement. Erika Engelhaupt’s recent story of Love Canal’s 30th anniversary (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2008, 42 [22], 8179-8186) provides a poignant example of successful remediation and hopefully a superior paradigm of pollution prevention. But we have still failed to stem the global tide of a burgeoning population and its monstrous need for consumption that diminishes our culture, consumes our land, pollutes our coastal waters, and changes our atmosphere. Simply put, we are using more resources than a single planet can supply, and the impact of this would-be juggernaut is changing the climate from pole to pole. Our environmental footprint is huge. We’ve graduated to global-scale problems with little advice for government on how to combat the consequences. Society is mired in outmoded practices of fossil energy, landfills, end-of-pipe treatment, and centralized public utilities, while environmental researchers offer few compelling alternatives. If ES&T and its contributing disciplines are to remain relevant and vital in the coming decade, we must integrate information, technologies, and services to protect humans and ecosystems while renewing our economy. We’re producing a high-velocity history of changing climate, peak oil use, and stressed water resources. Boundary conditions have changed. The very statistics that we use to calculate consumption of food, water, and energy are in flux, prompting Milly et al. to declare, “Stationarity is dead” (Science 2008, 319 [5863], 573-574). Severe storms, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, and loss of species are the ever-increasing norms. Recently, I had the good fortune to attend an international workshop on Delivering Sustainable Infrastructure for the Built Environment, near Auckland, New Zealand (www.sustainableinfrastructure.typepad.com). I’ve never heard environmental professionals speak so openly about natural catastrophes and a total breakdown of the goods
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10.1021/es8036719
2009 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 01/29/2009
and services delivery system, both locally and globally. Participants felt that infrastructure and material flows are so prone to disruption that it is only a matter of when and where collapse will occur. Still, they haven’t given up. Rather, they are rethinking our urban infrastructure, buildings, hydraulic structures, water and wastewater treatment, energy systems, urban agriculture,...everything (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37 [23], 5330-5339). A central question revolves around whether future designs should be more distributed or more centralized (or a hybrid of both) to create a resilient infrastructure that can withstand crushing perturbations, both natural and human-inflicted. What should a resilient, self-healing, human-dynamic system look like, and how should it be expected to perform? The vulnerability of our human settlements is rivaled only by the vulnerability of the ecosystems upon which we depend. Fish catch per capita is declining, and food production is threatened. There are plenty of challenges for developed and developing countries alike, and they are more interdependent than ever. The UN Millennium Development Goals constitute a modern manifesto for every environmental scientist and engineer, but how many of us are teaching them in the classroom? To the rescue comes President-elect (at time of writing) Barack Obama, promising to re-emphasize the environment and to promote science in his administration in a way not seen since John F. Kennedy. Upon announcing the nomination of Jackson, Browner, Salazar, and Chu, Obama said, “The truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resourcessit’s about protecting free and open inquiry.” Obama seems to recognize that education and training of young scientists will be needed to rebuild the economy. He’s being prodded by think tanks like the Worldwatch Institute, which in an open letter to the nominee for Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, stated, “The President should announce a sweeping initiative to support education as a cornerstone of our new clean energy future...with green jobs and green education to help Americans of all ages, all backgrounds, and all walks of life transition to the green economy.” With an action agenda like that, we can only hope that environmental science and engineering will play a central role.
Jerald L. Schnoor Editor
[email protected] February 1, 2009 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 9 549
