Comment
ENVIRONMENTAL
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
is on the Web!
The new millennium t is popular now to speculate on what the new millennium will bring, which of course no one can really know. Perhaps the more relevant questions is, how should we as environmental scientists and engineers approach it? Regardless of what exactly transpires, it would seem that our mission is straightforward; we must provide the knowledge that society needs to design itself for the decades ahead. If smart growth, the greening of business, the protection of health and biodiversity, and mat ephemeral concept of sustainable development are to be realized, we must supply the scientific knowledge base and evaluate the environmental options before us. We must continue to expand our understanding of how the planet works and how we are affecting it. We must be conscious of the changes in society that raise new problems and challenges to public health and the environment. We must be cynical of those who say that most of the environmental problems have been solved and suspicious of claims that a new technology, product, or process is benign. We must be flexible, open to new ideas and approaches, and not afraid to challenge the established dogma. In the years ahead, we will no doubt see remarkable new chemical and biological products and processes, new sources of energy generation and storage, new modes of communication and transportation, and new methods for industrial, agricultural, mining, and forest production. We must understand each of these in the context of the earth's systems and the fundamental laws of environmental science. We must help design the new settlements in which humans will live and work. Whether they are megacities or some new system of smaller communities that are linked to each other by new communications and product distribution mechanisms, we must determine their inherent environmental characteristics and help minimize their detrimental impacts on people, other species, and the earth's control mechanisms. We must develop more and more elegant sensors and keep them trained on the total environment. We must be looking when no one else is interested. We must be ready for surprises. We must continue to raise our standards and expectations for environmental science and technology. We must reach further into the basic sciences and mathematics for new tools and approaches and raise our expectations of our students, colleagues, and ourselves. We must pursue die study of our complex subject, steadily removing the layers of approximation until we approach a truly fundamental understanding of our total planetary environment from the global to the molecular scale. And in the process, we must continually be looking for entirely new research approaches that will alter the way we see nature and ourselves. With our new-found knowledge, we must also accept the responsibility of educating every single human being on earth about the importance of our subject. We must not hesitate to move out of our laboratories into society to work on the complex problems that will surely require teamwork and compromises. Throughout it all, we must not separate ourselves from our subject. Our own morals and values must coincide with those that we espouse in our work. We may not be able to solve all of the problems facing civilization for the next 1000 years, but through our knowledge and commitment, we will certainly be able to contribute.
I
© 2000 American Chemical Society
Visit us at
pubs.acs.org/est Our
Web Edition is available now!
See what we have to offer: with an ES&T Web Edition you'll enjoy these great features: Articles ASAP. (as soon as publishable) Logical links. Easily move from articles to databases. HTML or PDF display. You choose what's best for you. Search. Search by author, title, or keyword. Back issues. Access articles back to January 1996. Download capabilities. Keep and use information.
Subscribe now by calling 800-333-9511 (if outside the U.S. call 614-447-3776). See our masthead in this issue for further ordering details and subscription prices.
JANUARY 1, 2000 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 7 A
