Industrial Ecology: The Materials Scientist in an Environmentally Constrained World
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Industrial Ecology: The Materials Scientist in an Environmentally Constrained World Braden R. Allenby Introduction For most materials scientists, as for most people, John Donne's lines "and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." are simply inspired verse. Increasing recognition of the interplay between human economic activity and global environmental perturbations, however, are beginning to add a cold air of prescience to John's words: "Ask not for whom the CFCs are emitted. They are emitted for thee." The need for greater understanding, and new, more systematic approaches to
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these intertwined economic/environmental issues is becoming more apparent. What is perhaps not so clear is the critical role that materials scientists and engineers must play in this effort. An analysis of the symbiotic relationships among economic development, human population growth, and the uses and flows of materials throughout the economy clearly demonstrates this role. The intuitive feeling held by many technologists—that they are part of the solution, not part of the problem—certainly appears to be correct. But it will require
Annual Carbon Production (Tons)
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From R.A. Houghton And G.M. Woodwell, "Global Climate Change , Scientific American, 260:4 (April, 1989), 36-44.
Figure 1. Annual production of carbon from anthropogenic fossil-fuel use and land use changes.
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Anthropogenic Environmental Perturbations It is sobering to pause for a moment and place some of the impacts in perspective. What is important is not just the numbers themselves, but their magnitude and the relatively short historical time they represent. Since 1700, the volume of goods traded internationally has increased 800 times. Since 1900, global consumption of fossil fuel has increased by a factor of 50; since 1980 alone, energy use has increased by a factor of 80. In the last 100 years, the world's industrial production has increased more than 100-fold. In the early 1900s, production of synthetic organic chemicals was minimal; today, it is over 225 billion tons per year.1"3 Human population growth is, of course, a major factor fueling this explosive growth, and thus parallels the expanded use and consumption of materials. Since 1970, human population has grown eightfold; it is now approximately 5.3 billion and is anticipated to peak between 10 and 15 billion.4-5 Three underlying trends deserve attention. The first is the consumption of regional and global sinks, particularly the atmosphere, as a result of disposal of byproducts of human economic activity. For example, carbon production associated with human economic activity has grown dramatically (Figure 1), which has resulted in the familiar, but exponential, increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the beginning of the industrial revolution (Figure 2). In other words, the atmosphere is rapidly losing its ability to act as an infinite sink for the byproducts of our economic activity
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