Brad Allenby
Engineering Maintainable
DEVELOPMENT Should environmental scientists intentionally interfere in major biogeochemical cycles? Brad Allenby says "yes." KELLYN S. BETTS
ustainable development is a laudable goal, says Brad Allenby, but it is failing to help the world's poor and halt decreasing biodiversity diroughout the planet. "I'm tired of hearing people talk about how all we need to do is turn the world's economy into a garden," Allenby laments. "The situation we face is much more complex." A more effective, egalitarian, and maintainable solution to our global problems, Allenby argues, is "earth systems engineering". He is convinced that the only way humans can effectively tackle intractable problems like global climate change is by accepting responsibility for both the anthropogenic and natural components of biogeochemical cy-
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© 2000 American Chemical Society
cles such as the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the water cycle. Allenby spouted these radical ideas from an unlikely location: his executive office overlooking a lake at AT&T's New Jersey headquarters. The organization pays him not only to manage environment, health, and safety for the company's worldwide operations, but also to spend his time thinking as broadly as possible about how human activities—like AT&T's services and operations—affect the planet. He has made an unlikely corporate career out of devising new conceptual frameworks like "industrial ecology" and earth systems engineering (see sidebar on 425A) to aid in considering the humanOCTOBER 1, 2000 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 4 2 3 A
FIGURE 1
Earth systems engineering in space and time Environmental engineering tends to be focused on smaller-scale projects that take place over a relatively short time frame, but earth systems engineering is geared toward long-term solutions on a global scale.
Source: J. Ind. Ecol. 1999, 2(3), 73-93.
environment interface. And he is constantly pushing into uncharted territory, discovering ecological impacts that are often overlooked by more conventional scientists. That Brad Allenby's ideas are influential has little to do with his official role as vice president for environment, health, and safety at AT&T, or even his position as an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Instead, it is simply a testament to the popularity of his writings and his personal charisma, which he regularly unleashes during the 30-40 public lectures he gives each year. In the five years that have elapsed since he coauthored the first textbook on industrial ecology, which holds that businesses and industries should try to mimic ecosystems through activities like using one company's waste as a feedstock for another's mainstay process the U.S. EPA has begun incorporating the industrial ecology COIlC6Dt into all of its activities. Even the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is embracing industrial ecologv^a recent Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program session in late 1999 featured Allenby as a keynote speaker and covered green weapons systems green missiles green bullets and even submarine,pollution prevention And industrial ecology is now the subject of a Gordon Research Conference; the latest one held in June 2000 was chaired by Allenbv and not sumrisinelv focused on earth systems •'
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Of course, Allenby has his critics. "He evidently has no qualms about treating the global environmental problem as an engineering problem to be dealt with by industrial engineers (with minimal interference by regulators)," says Robert Ayres, environment director of the INSEAD Foundation's Centre for the Management of Environmental Resources in Fontainebleu, France. "I disagree quite strongly. . . . I think engineers as a breed are both far too selfconfident and far too narrow-minded, which makes them more likely to make the problems worse, rather than better." Lester Lave, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie-Mellon University, praises Allenby for his systems-level thinking, but he raises the possibility that Allenby is overstating scientists' understanding of these systems and how well they will be able to modify them "When you're dealing with systems-level issues it's very hard to have confidence that your engineering is going to turn out" to be effective or on net to do die right tiling " People trying to act on these concepts "can easily wind up doing more harm than good " he cautions Such criticisms do not appear to be curtailing Allenby's momentum too seriously. The National Academy of Engineering is devoting some of its discretionary funding to study the concept of earth systems engineering (see Figure 1), according to the organization's president, Willlam Wulf. And Allenby conttnues to push into uncharted territory. In addition to maintainable alternatives to sustainable development, his energies have lately been focused on the environmental impacts of the Internet, new ways to influence the global carbon cycle, and how to inspire businesses to create "good" technology that takes a lower toll on ecological systems. He's even contemplating what the hallmarks of a "fijreen W3J*" iniffht be This may not sound like environmental science and technology as it is traditionally practiced in these pages, but "out of the box" thinkers like Allenby can play a crucial role in driving the field's long-term direction. And Allenby does hold a Ph.D. in environmental sciences from Rutgers University, as well as a law degree and a master's degree in economics from the University of Virginia. His undergraduate degree is from Yale University. If you talk to Allenby, however, you. get the sense that he is first and foremost a philosopher. Allenby is particularly adept at asking the kinds of questions inspired by studying the nature of reality, particularly the current reality of environmental science. Earth systems engineering: Science fiction or second nature? When Allenby gives a talk on the subject of earth systems engineering, one of the common responses is, "You've gotta be out of your mind. This is some fantasy dreamed up by an engineer." As the author of the concept, which has also been compared to sci-
ence fiction, Allenby's standard response is, "We're already doing it as a species. If I [were] an alien, and I came down and looked at the world, I'd see a monoculture. There are very few biological communities that haven't been impacted significantly by invasive species, for example." Think about it, Allenby says: The vast majority of these invasive species were transported to their new locations by humans. Humans have also affected all the earth's major biogeochemical cycles, he adds. "Earth systems engineering is something that our species has been doing for centuries," Allenby concludes. "We just don't want to recognize it."
Allenby is quick to stress that his notion of earth systems engineering does not imply the kind of control typically associated with engineering activities. "The problem is one of extreme complexity in the systems that we're working with," he says. "The only way to impact the evolution of that kind of system is through decentralized control feedback mechanisms. Centralized control in a case like that is an illusion." He sees no way that "coercion and some kind of centralized, global government" could successfully reduce anthropogenic impacts on the carbon cycle, for example. "No regulatory fiat can understand the complex-
Allenby on Earth systems engineering and management The idea behind earth systems engineering and management (ESEM) is simple: the biosphere is now dominated by the activities of one species—ours—at scales from the genetic to the species and community levels (1). This is the result of the Industrial Revolution, the globalization of the Judeo-Christian Eurocentric civilization and its technologies, and explosive growth in human population levels and economic activity, which have altered the dynamics of many fundamental natural systems for example
challenges facing humanity as it approaches the 21st century. (3)" ESEM may be defined as "the capacity to rationally engineer and manage human technology systems and related elements of natural systems in such a way as to provide the requisite functionality while facilitating the active management of strongly coupled natural systems. (4)" It is clear that the institutional, ethical, and knowledge base necessary to support ESEM as an operational field does not yet exist. But experience to date with complex systems the carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, engineering projects; international efand hydrologic cycles and the atmoforts to manage stratospheric ozone spheric and oceanic systems. depletion loss of biodiversity and habiThis observation is neither new nor unique: it was powerfully expressed over tat and global climate change; and "adaptive management" practices rea hundred years ago in the classic Man garding complex natural resource sysand Nature by George Perkins Marsh (2). As William Clark noted more than a dec- tems such as the Everglades or the Balade ago in a 1989 special issue of Scien- tic ^.pa can he assessed tn npnpratp a tific American entitled "Managing Planet hasir
