Preparing Cartographers for An Undiscovered Country he future is much on the minds of the world at the time of this writing. The Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is well underway, where delegates attempt to set contingencies to avoid a future miasma. While developed and emergent super-economies temper regulatory pronouncements against financial disaster, some nations fear for their very physical existence. The prospect of climate change is frustratingly complex, as it can spell seemingly incongruous fates: economic boom and bust, drowning and desertification, explosive eutrophication and mass die-offs. Mixed in with the moving target of geopolitics exacerbated by modulating physical geography, technological innovation, population growth, and demographic inversions, change is the new constant. It is imperative to continue the production of a workforce that is adequately equipped to confront new challenges. This means specialized training for growth fields and imbuing an intellectual flexibility on graduates for a future uncertain to their instructors. Environmental Science & Technology occasionally has manuscripts addressing this issue, such as the review of sustainability engineering programs in U.S. institutions that graced the August 1, 2009 cover. In this issue, Gonzales and Keane draw attention to a worry that an insufficient number of students are enrolling in geosciences (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2009, DOI 10.1021/es902234g). As research and commercialization efforts continue apace for example with carbon capture and sequestration/storage, along with environmental assessment surveys, there is an apparent gap between geoscience student numbers and workforce prospects.
T
10.1021/es903759v
2010 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 01/13/2010
While both these articles focused on the domestic picture, education is of course a multi-national concern. In the December 15, 2009 issue, Barbara Fraser reported on South American initiatives to improve environmental policy through education (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2009, DOI 10.1021/es9033233). If anyone still thinks that regional efforts have little import (especially once “Copenhagen 2009” is a citation), the global economy sees to the spreading of environmental impact as assessed by Xu, Williams, and Allenby herein (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2009, DOI 10.1021/es901167v). As you mull these issues and think about your next lesson plan, exam, or career, we will assemble our next issue theme of tracing anthropogenic activity through environmental analytical chemistry.
Darcy J. Gentleman Managing Editor
[email protected] P.S. The citations listed in this and the January 1 Managing Editor’s Comment (MEC) give “2009” as the year associated with the DOI, though the articles appear in 2010 print issues. As the DOI leads to the digital record of its associated article, this choice of year reflects when the ASAPs were released on our website, which constitutes publication of the article of record. I apologize for any confusion this may create, for certainly a citation to the print version will invoke the volume (44 for the year 2010) and the page numbers which were not yet established at the time of writing these MECs.
January 15, 2010 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 9 545
