On February 4, 1996, CGRER co-director Jerry Schnoor presented the Thirteenth Annual Presidential Lecture on the University of Iowa campus. This lecture series provides a public forum in which distinguished faculty members share their work with persons from other disciplines and the general public.
Jerry's talk was the first such presidential lecture to focus on the natural environment and its problems. He opened his talk, which he titled Eco-logic: An Environmental Perspective for the 21st Century, by explaining the root cause of today's problems:
Humans have always been in tension with their environment as they seek out a better standard of living. Land has been cleared for agriculture or commerce, and animal populations have been exploited. What is different about the situation today is the magnitude of our impacts... Five and three-quarters of a billion people on earth seek out an existence, and we are multiplying. Every six months, there is another population equal to that of France, almost 50 million people for whom to provide food, housing, shelter, and jobs. Every ten years, there is another population nearly the size of China. And coupled with population growth is the problem of an ever-increasing per capita consumption, especially among developed countries. We are powerful. Twin juggernauts: burgeoning population and per capita consumption are driving environmental change.
Jerry went on to briefly outline the evolution of approaches to environmental problems, including the history of improvements in pollution emissions (see figure 1). He included the following discussion of "industrial ecology" or "green design" (see figure 2), which he believes could be the next step toward unification of technology with the needs of our natural world:
Figure 1: The manner in which our society has dealt with pollutants, the types of pollution that have captured our attention, and the quantity of pollutant emissions have changed through time.
Figure 2: Industrial ecology, in which "green design" sequences replace those of conventional design, is now being taught to College of Engineering students to assure their success in the future world marketplace.
Industrial ecology is a new paradigm in which industry is the agent of change for environmental innovation and control... It may sound like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop, but I believe we need to try innovative approaches. Government would set the goals and monitor for environmental improvement. Industry would innovate using life cycle analysis of its products, pollution prevention programs, changes in operations, materials substitutions, and the three R's (recycle, reuse, and remanufacture) to achieve the goals. If this concept is to be effective, consumers must become involved. No longer would it be acceptable to simply throw away our old Nike tennis shoes (regardless how they smell)... They would be shipped back to the manufacturer for incorporation into new tennis shoes (remanufacturing) or, less advantageously, into asphalt roads (down-cycling)... In the College of Engineering, we are charged with teaching this new paradigm to our students so that they will become competitive in the world market... The environment is big business. Two percent of our gross national product (approximately $157 billion per year) is spent on environmental controls. Learning how to make products in a cost-effective, environmentally friendly manner will define successful companies in the world marketplace of the future.
Later in the presentation, Jerry described some of the other projects on which he and his graduate students have worked:
One of our students, Richard Ney, and I recently completed a report on emission of greenhouse gases in Iowa. Because of Iowa's sparse population density, continental climate, and high-input agriculture, we are 15th worse among the 50 states in greenhouse gas emissions per capita. Each Iowan emits, on the average, 29 tons of carbon dioxide per year to the atmosphere. Every time we fill up our car with gas (10 gallons), 190 pounds of CO2 is released upon combustion! On a per capita daily average, we generate 5 lbs of garbage, 5-10 lbs of hazardous waste, 160 lbs of carbon dioxide; and we dispose to the sewer 150 gallons of water (more if you have teenagers). Each person in Iowa generates more than their weight in waste each day! There is plenty of room for improvement. Louis Licht was a student of mine in the mid-1980s, who had a simple idea. He wanted to plant trees. I tried to dissuade him, it wasn't "academic" enough, but he was persuasive, and I acquiesced. At first, we planted trees for agricultural runoff control at Amana, Iowa. Then, we estimated the huge amount of carbon dioxide that fast-growing hybrid poplar trees could remove from the atmosphere and sequester in woody tissue, and we planted more trees for carbon dioxide sequestration. Most recently, we have been planting trees at hazardous waste sites because, it turns out, they are capable of metabolizing a wide variety of toxic organic pollutants. In total, we have planted more than 200,000 trees in six states and three countries.
A decade ago, Louis Licht, a College of Engineering graduate student, and Jerry Schnoor commenced research that has shown how tree plantings control agricultural runoff, remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, and metabolize toxic organic pollutants.
Untold future generations have the right to enjoy a high quality of life, as we in the developed world have. This concept embodies the "Sustainable Development" movement which dominates environmental political discussions today... We should not foreclose on our children's future by preemptive utilization of resources that they will need. While conceptually powerful, this is a difficult concept to implement because we do not know exactly how our actions today will affect future generations... Quite anthropocentric, it encompasses the desire for ecological preservation only through the needs of future human generations...
I might go further in defining the needs of future generations. In my kind of "Eco-logic," the following questions would be relevant to any action taken by individuals, government, or industry:
If the action is irreversible, we simply should not do it. Examples include species extinctions, soil erosion, and the clear-cutting of tropical forests (where soil runs off after trees have been cleared). We must make it our highest priority to avoid short term gains which preclude future generations from having access to needed resources.
Is it persistent and over what time scale? How many generations will be affected and at what cost? Adam Smith's invisible hand is not so good at incorporating externalities into the cost of goods that pollute the air, water and soil over long time periods. Examples of persistent chemicals that probably should not have been used include pesticides like DDT, dieldrin, and chlordane, and industrial chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and CFCs...
How uncertain are we about the consequences of a particular action? You see, the problem is that our decisions today impact the next 20 generations, 200 billion unborn people... They have no vote on our referendums and no voice in our deliberations. It is a concern of generational equity. Because of that, we must act with the utmost caution in cases where scientific uncertainty is great and the consequences of the action are large...
Is it socially just?... In the United States, we emit 20-25% of the world's pollution for 5% of its people. Among western countries, it is neither socially just nor politically stable for 20% of the world's population to use 80% of its resources. It is in our own best interests to help developing nations... They are the market for our products in the future, and they will provide us with much-needed nonrenewable resources through trade.
We are in a global race, a race to educate faster than eradicate, a race to improve institutions and the human condition faster than population growth and consumption tear them down. We should view our environmental predicament in its historical context, we should seek solutions rather than blame, and we should seek to understand before expecting to be understood.
Pressure on the planet will increase. We can expect that we will lose more land and more species, but I think that we can and must slow the process... If we want developing countries to limit their emissions, to preserve their biodiversity, and to protect their tropical forests so that we (the developed world) may continue to enjoy a high standard of living, then we will have to pay for it in some way. We can gain credibility by helping other countries with technology transfer, development, and by controlling our own consumption patterns... Environment and development must go hand in hand...
Jerry Schnoor and Julius Pohlenz, sample the pH of a Swiss alpine lake. Reducing acid rain pollution (and thus controlling acidification of natural lakes) would be one signature of a responsible, sustainable development policy that acknowledges the rights and guards the health of future generations