Sustaining the Good Life

Mechanical Engineering, Nov 2005 by Hutchinson, Harry

Once seen as the problem, engineers devise solutions for coexistence with the environment.

The first human being to plant seeds was wrestling with the natural environment. It was progress. More people, with more to eat, would live longer and better.

The population would increase, eventually to stress available resources by lighting more fires, crowding the living space, and fouling the water supply. That was the cost of progress.

With only a few setbacks-as in the plague years or the Dark Ages-technology steadily advanced from its rock-and-stick phase until, by the late 20th century, industrialized societies burning fossil fuels had achieved unprecedented prosperity and comfort.

At the same time, the entire world had achieved unprecedented numbers. Some six billion human beings were looking at global patterns of air and water pollution, evercostlier fuel supplies, and, in many cases, crushing poverty.

By the middle of the century, headlines told of lethal smog, exacerbated by vehicle exhaust, in London, Los Angeles, and other cities. As years passed, chemical pollution and oil spills made the front pages, too. Names like Exxon Valdez and Love Canal can still stir bitter memories.

Eventually, a significant minority of the people of the Western World began to wonder if perhaps the good life had become too rich for the planet's health. Maybe for the first time in history, large numbers of men and women started to fear the extinction of their own species.

Technology in general and engineers in particular were seen as a large part of the problem.

Samuel Florman of the construction firm of Kreisler, Borg, Florman in Scarsdale, N.Y., talks about that in his book, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. But he has more recently noted-for instance, in an article that appeared this past summer in The Bent, the magazine of Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society-that any anti-technology reaction based on environmental concerns "seemed to dissipate as it became apparent that protection of the environment was itself a form of engineering."

The last century brought us unleaded gasoline, the catalytic converter, and new technologies for cleaning the smokestack emissions and effluents of industrial plants. Engineers designed and refined those technologies, which helped industry adhere to government regulations, and which went a long way toward improving the quality of air and streams.

In other words, engineers and the technology they devise are a big part of the solution.

Timeout for the Environs

Thirty-five years ago, the United States got its so-called "year of the environment." April 1970 marked the first observance of Earth Day, a global publicity effort for the ecology movement. But the year got its nickname because of a proposal to Congress a few months later. In July, President Richard Nixon proposed a federal reorganization that included the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The new agency would take over a number of programs, from safeguarding the water supply to regulating pesticides, that were already in place, spread out among various federal agencies, primarily in the Departments of Agriculture, the Interior, and Health, Education, and Welfare. It would not be the first federal effort to protect the environment. It would, however, be the first coordinated federal effort to do so.

Congress moved fast. The EPA was in place and operating that December.

Compared to farming, or even to steam power, spending money to protect things like air, water, and forests doesn't have deep roots in our culture. In the United States, the idea didn't enjoy much backing until the second half of the 19th century. Yellowstone, the first U.S. National Park, was created by an Act of Congress in 1872.

One of the first attempts to treat water, the Milwaukee River Flushing Station, was built fewer than 125 years ago. It is among ASME's Mechanical Engineering Landmarks. Built in 1888, the plant was "one of the earliest water-pollution control systems, reducing the concentration of pollutants in an urban stream," the citation says.

ASME's Environmental Engineering Division got its start as the Environmental Controls Division in 1949, addressing technology to curb the emissions of power plants.

The Technology and Society Division was established in 1972 in response to rising concerns about the limits of technological progress and its effect on society. As published on the division's Web site, "The common issue that concerns members of the Technology and Society Division is how our actions-as engineers, technologists, teachers, and leaders-impact greater society today and in the future."

Areas of interest include professional ethics, public policy, energy, and economics. One of its newest units, formed two years ago, is the Sustainable Engineering Committee.

According to the current chair of that committee, Ramesh Talreja, sustainable engineering "requires going one level higher to make sure all is done without, in the long term, depleting Earth s resources and hurting the livability on Earth. This paradigm shift will come when we educate engineers to practice engineering differently."