Second Nature | The Role of Engineers in Creating an Environmentally Sustainable Future
The Role
of Engineers in Creating an Environmentally Sustainable Future
Anthony
D. Cortese, ScD
Annual
Thomas R. Camp Lecture of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers - Environmental
Technical Group
Boston, Massachusetts
March 31, 1998
Background
It is a great honor to be asked to give the Annual Thomas R. Camp Lecture of
the Boston Society of Civil Engineers. Although I never had the pleasure of
meeting him in person, his leadership in environmental engineering was legend
to me as an undergraduate and graduate student in environmental engineering
at Tufts in the late 1960s. From his research in some of the most commonly used
treatment methods for water and wastewater such as flocculation, sedimentation,
filtration and grit removal, to his life long interest in learning and mentoring
young engineers, his active involvement in professional engineering societies,
his advocacy or public health and the environment and in building one of the
most well known and respected engineering and consulting firm in the world,
he has had an incredible impact on the quality of our environment and our lives.
In researching his contributions (aided by an excellent article by Bob Marini
in The Diplomat, the magazine of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers),
I learned that he was the first associate professor of sanitary engineering
at MIT and was a pioneer in bringing faculty from the chemistry, biology, public
health and civil engineering departments to develop a curriculum in sanitary
engineering. So it is indeed an honor for me give the prestigious lecture in
his name.
The Contribution of Engineering to Modern Life
Civil engineering has played a critical role in increasing the health and quality
of life in the last 50 years, From developing better water supplies, municipal
sewer systems, wastewater treatment plants to the design of buildings to protect
us from natural hazards and provide health care, to improved agriculture through
water resource development and distribution projects to rapid and dramatic changes
in transportation systems, civil engineers have developed the basic infrastructure
on which modern society depends. Civil engineers were the first engineers and
continue to be dedicated to technology development for the common good and the
general public.
Our work has helped reduced the death rate dramatically which is one of the
principal reasons that population has been able to grow so dramatically in the
last 150 years. And as Don Roberts (retired vice president of CH2MHill) has
pointed out, the improvements in transportation alone have enabled rapid migration
of large numbers of people all over the world and increased the volume of raw
materials and finished products in international trade 800 times in the last
century. Economic output has increased over 20 times, fossil fuel 30 times and
industrial production 100 times in the last century. Along with this growth
has come some undesirable environmental, health and social impacts, particularly
in the last half century.
The Need for a New Human Perspective
In the last five decades, the population of the world has more than doubled
to 5.9 billion people and the world's economic output has increased fivefold.
This unprecedented growth is altering the face of the earth and the composition
of the atmosphere. Pollution of air and water, accumulation of wastes, destruction
of forests, erosion of soils, depletion of fisheries, and damage to the stratospheric
ozone layer threaten the survival of humans and thousands of other living species.
Humans are conducting an uncontrolled experiment unprecedented in scope and
scale that represents the reversal of natural evolution which produced clean
air and water and increasingly complex and diverse ecosystems -- systems which
made human evolution possible.
These changes, a result of unsustainable and inequitable patterns of production
and consumption, are likely to accelerate with the addition of 81 million people
to the planet each year. In Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective
on Development and the Environment, Stephan Schmidheiny, chairman of the
Business Council for Sustainable Development, points out that we are a society
living off its natural capital, not its income. We are acting like a planet
in liquidation. Schmidheiny calls this bad business.
These trends prompted a United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
in Rio in 1992, from which emerged a declaration of action, Agenda 21, and some
treaties and conventions to move society on a sustainable path. Also recognizing
that these trends placed humankind at a profound crossroads, scientists around
the globe, including 102 Nobel laureates, signed the World Scientists' Warning
to Humanity in 1992, which read in part:
Human beings and
the natural environment are on a collision course. Human activities inflict
harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources.
If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future
that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so
alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner
that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision
our present course will bring about.
WARNING. We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific community,
hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship
of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided
and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.
Despite these warnings
and the rhetoric of commitment to address environmental problems, since the Rio
Conference in 1992, all Earth's living systems have continued to decline. Moreover,
the degradation of natural systems is likely to accelerate with the addition of
81 million people to the planet each year unless strategies to meet human needs
are made more sustainable and just.
Current strategies to meet human needs are not sustainable. Eighty percent of
the world's resources are being consumed by 20 percent of the world's population.
The world's poorest 20 percent earn 1.4 percent of the world's income. According
to the UN, the income ratio of the richest 20 percent to the poorest 20 percent
was 28:1 in 1960; it was 74:1 in 1994. For 30 percent of the world's population,
poor sanitation, malnutrition, and air pollution are still the major causes of
illness and death. The rural poor will increasingly migrate and be transformed
into an urban poor, and environmental health and social problems will multiply.
By the year 2005, for the first time in history, more people will live in
urban than in rural areas.
In the US, air pollution is believed to kill more people than automobile accidents
-- more than 60,000 premature deaths per year according to the EPA. By the time
population growth stabilizes in the next century, a five- to sevenfold increase
in consumption of energy and goods will be needed just to raise the consumption
level in the developing world to that in the industrialized world. Agricultural
production must increase threefold in the next forty years for all humans to have
adequate nutrition -- we are already appropriating the most productive 40 percent
of the land-based biomass for human purposes. Simply to maintain the current
unhealthy levels of pollution and waste loadings will require an 80-90 percent
reduction in pollution generated per unit of economic output. This cannot
be achieved by building more waste treatment plants or air pollution control devices.
The world will need an unprecedented two billion jobs in the next twenty to thirty
years to employ the current 1 billion underemployed and unemployed people and
the new job seekers that will enter the market. This cannot be done with economic
activity that substitutes capital for labor, consumes large amounts of materials
and energy and creates large volumes of pollution and waste, particularly when
we have geometric growth in population. Paul Hawken points out that with a sextupling
of population and increasing economic output over 100-fold we have the reverse
of the situation at the start of the industrial revolution which was an abundance
of natural resources and the ability of the biosphere to assimilate wastes. "Our
thinking is backwards: we shouldn't use more of what we have less of (natural
capital) to use less of what we have more of (people)."
There is increasing social and political instability worldwide despite the end
of the Cold War and the increased globalization of the economy (which many argue
contributes to the instability). According to Worldwatch Institute there are 27
million environmental refugees, unprecedented migration of people from East to
West and South to North, 68 regional military conflicts, the UN has seen its influence
erode and their is increased isolationism on the part of major powers such as
the US.
As the astronauts said in Apollo 13, "Houston, we have a problem!" --
a societal problem caused by the "design" of an economic and social
system which lives off its support system in a degrading, unhealthy and unsustainable
manner. We will need a paradigm shift in the relationship of humans to the environment
and each other -- one in which humans live in harmony with both natural systems
and each other. We cannot achieve these results with our current thinking. Being
the visionary that he was, Tom Camp recognized this in 1963 when he said in his
own book, Water and its Impurities:
"Neither water treatment nor waste treatment can be a satisfactory remedy
for pollution of our watercourses by pesticide sprays or by salt used for melting
snow and ice on our highways. These materials must be controlled at their point
of use, because they are damaging to land, plants and animals, as well as to water.
Similarly, excess soil erosion cannot be abated by water or waste water treatment.
Better land use is needed. In water quality problems, the whole environment must
be examined."
As Einstein observed, "the significant problems we face cannot be solved
at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." In the next
twenty to forty years, society must adopt new strategies that allow the needs
of an expanding population to be met in an environmentally sustainable and equitable
manner. But our response to the situation described above has been irresponsible
and dangerously inadequate. The current ideology of growth has captured our imagination
to the degree that we continue to believe that more of the same resource intensive
and pollution creating economic growth remains the best way to serve the common
good.
We have known for quite some time that a healthy environment is essential to human
existence, health and well-being. Humans can live for about four minutes without
air, four days without water, and four weeks without food. Plants, animals, and
the habitats they occupy provide the food that sustains human life. The earth
and all its living organisms supply all raw materials for human activities. All
economic, social, and community systems derive resources from, and are a part
of, the biophysical system we call the biosphere. There is no inherent conflict
between protecting the environment and a strong human economy since the environment
is the support system for all human activity. As Peter Dunne said in a New
York Times editorial, "The environment is not a competing interest; it is
the playing field on which all other interests intersect."
How We Got Here -- Western Human Beliefs
- Humans separate
from nature, highest species on evolutionary scale and dominant
- Denial of threats
- Resources free
and inexhaustible
- Technological
fixes for most problems
- Nature's infinite
assimilation capacity
- Material acquisition
and accumulation most important determinant of success
As a result, the general
public has little awareness that a healthy natural environment is essential to
our very existence. We see ourselves as separate from the natural world and are
unaware that it provides all the resources which make life possible while absorbing
our wastes and enriching our lives with its incredible diversity of plants, animals
and other species. Much of the population has little idea about where goods come
from and where they go and the destructive impact of pollution on human health.
We believe that natural and physical resources are free and inexhaustible and
that the environment can assimilate all our pollution and waste. The general public
has little idea that it is not just industrial enterprise, but the aggregate of
all human activities -- all the individual and the collective daily decisions
-- that are irreversibly changing the earth.
Vision for a Just and Sustainable Future
How do we create a life that allows all present and future humans to be healthy,
have their basic needs met, have fair and equitable access to the earth's resources,
have a decent quality of life and preserve the biologically diverse ecosystems
on which we all depend? Future scientists, engineers, and business people must
design technology and economic activities that sustain rather than
degrade the natural environment, enhance human health and well-being,
and mirror and live within the limits of natural systems. We must dramatically
reduce the resource and energy throughput of our economy and minimize our ecological
footprint to maintain the life support system that will make a sustainable future
possible. This calls for a New Industrial Revolution that builds upon the
information and biotechnology revolutions of the past half century.
The vision of a sustainable future is one in which:
- The world
population is stabilized at a level that is within the short and long
term carrying capacity of the earth's finite resources. This level is of great
debate and is probably between eight and nine billion people, a level we will
reach in the next twenty-five to forty years.
- Resources
are used efficiently. Leading organizations such as the Wuppertal Institute
and the Factor 10 Club and a growing number of individuals such as Ernst von
Weizsacker, Paul Hawken and Amory Lovins have been calling for a huge increase
in resource productivity -- by a factor of 4-10 in order to increase
wealth for 4/5 of the world's population and to decrease environmental impact.
This is critical because the industrialized economy is incredibly wasteful
in use of resources while the planet has a finite amount of resources and
a finite ability to absorb and process wastes. For example, only 3 percent
of the energy produced by a nuclear or coal-fired power plant to power an
incandescent light bulb actually results in light!
In their recently
released book Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use, by
Ernst von Weizsacker and Amory and Hunter Lovins call for a revolution in energy
and resource productivity and provide over 50 demonstrated examples of factor
4 increases in energy, material and transportation productivity from a variety
of institutions around the world. With a few exceptions they all cost less than
conventional means of doing business and increased social and economic as well
as environmental sustainability.
One of my favorite
energy examples illustrates the possibilities and the challenges ahead. From
1973 to 1986, the US economy grew by 40 percent, yet energy consumption did
not increase. Higher prices in oil led to industrial conservation and government
efficiency standards for automobiles, refrigerators and electric motors. The
economy saved $160 billion a year. And there is still room for improvement.
Germany and Japan obtain twice as much economic output per unit of energy consumed
as the US and ten to twelve times as much as China. Since 1986 the price of
oil has fallen to an historical low due to the success of conservation. As a
result, in the US, the size (witness the growth in gas guzzling sport/utility
vehicles which now make up 45 percent of new car sales) and number of automobiles
and the number of miles driven has continued to grow, driving energy consumption
up steadily each year. The US now imports more oil just for gasoline
than the total amount of oil imported during the 1973 oil crisis (Kyoto Climate
Conference, 1997).
- We will mirror,
learn from and live within natural systems. Humans are the only species
on earth that produce waste which is not a raw material or nutrient for another
species. Also, we are the only species to produce wastes that can be broadly
toxic and build up for long periods of time. As Bill McDonough, Dean of the
University of Virginia School of Architecture, has said, a sustainable society
would eliminate the concept of waste. Waste is not simply an unwanted and
sometimes harmful byproduct of life; it is a raw material out of place. Waste
and pollution demonstrate gross inefficiency in the economic system since
they represent resources that are no longer available for use and/or create
harm in humans and other species.
A sustainable economy
would mirror nature's "circular" method of using matter and employ
the concepts of design through which all waste would be the "food"
(waste = food) for another activity. This idea is illustrated in the
concept of industrial ecology. Metal extraction and conversion would
be replaced by strategies to continuously cycle existing metals through the
economy. For example, recycling aluminum rather than using virgin bauxite ore
cuts energy use by 95 percent and pollution by 99 percent.
- We will use
renewable resources at a rate less than or equal to the natural environment's
ability to regenerate the resource. This means living off the income,
not the capital -- e.g., practicing sustainable forestry, sustainable
fishing and sustainable agriculture. Every ton of paper made of recycled fiber
saves seventeen trees and cuts air and water pollution 30-50 percent. Organic
farming and agricultural production which minimize the use of pesticides and
fertilizers while conserving soil and water are safer and more sustainable.
- We will rely
directly on solar energy to drive our economic system. Over 85 percent
of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels. This form of energy use causes
major environmental and health problems such as black lung disease, air pollution,
acid rain, oil spills and global climate change, to name a few. The desire
for a continuing "cheap" supply of fossil fuels has had enormous
military and economic costs to keep the oil and gas flowing around the world,
especially from the Middle East. Moreover, this fossil fuel dependence is
economically unsustainable for more than a few decades -- it took 10,000 days
for nature to create the fossil fuels that society consumes in one day!
- We will increase
production of durable, repairable goods and eliminate persistent, toxic and
bioaccumulative substances. At the same time, we will eliminate
disposable goods as much as possible and detoxify the production process by
minimizing the use and discharge of toxic substances. Products would be designed
for disassembly so that the materials could be utilized in making new products.
For example, several manufacturers (Volkswagen, Volvo, BMW) are redesigning
automobiles so that 90 percent or more of the materials can be recycled into
new automobiles. In 1993, the Gillette Company, one of the world's leading
manufacturers of shaving equipment, had reduced its Toxic Release Inventory
(US EPA definition) wastes in the US by 97 percent from their 1987 level.
According to Factor Four, between 1981 and 1993, Dow Chemical's Louisiana
Division with 2,400 workers implemented 1,000 projects (costing under $200,000)
to save energy or reduce waste. For the 575 projects subsequently audited,
the average annual return on investment was 204 percent and the annual savings
was $110 million!
- We will focus
on providing the ultimate ends of products or services not the products or
services themselves. German chemist Michael Braungart and Bill McDonough
have invented the concept of "products of service." A key to resource
efficiency is to understand products as a means to deliver a service
to a customer. For example, people do not want energy, they want the service
it provides such as heat or light. Similarly, people want access to people,
places, things and experiences not necessarily increased transportation. An
example of a company that has adopted this idea is Interface, the largest
commercial carpet tile company in the world which now leases carpet
through its Evergreen Lease. The lessee gets the service of the product --
warmth, softness, acoustic value, and aesthetics for a fee. When the carpet
is worn out, Interface takes it back and recycles it into new carpet.
- We will create
low energy consuming transportation systems. We must accelerate the development
of alternative fuel vehicles that minimize and eventually eliminate dependence
on fossil fuels and accelerate the use of mass transportation.
- All people
will understand their connection to the natural world and to other humans.
They will understand their "ecological footprint", i.e., they will
know where products and services come from, where wastes go, and what they
do to humans and other living species. They will appreciate that driving a
car in Ohio may cause flooding in Bangladesh through global warming, or that
cutting down forests in Brazil may deprive someone in Hungary of a lifesaving
drug. For all people (led by professionals such as engineers) minimizing their
ecological footprint and "walking lightly" on the planet will be
"second nature."
- All current
and future generations of humans will be able to meet their basic needs, pursue
meaningful work and have the opportunity to realize their full human potential
personally and socially. The average American receives 3,000 advertising
messages per day oriented toward consumption. The American public is often
portrayed as a group of consumers, not citizens. But increased consumption
and material acquisition alone has not led to a happier, safer and more secure
population in the US, nor has it done so elsewhere.
This June, the
prestigious Councils of the Royal Society of London and the United States National
Academy of Sciences issued a statement calling for an urgent need for better
understanding of human consumption and related behaviors and technologies, so
that effective action may be taken to expedite the transition to a sustainable,
desirable life for the world's people in the coming century. In the statement
they said, "It has often been assumed that population growth is the dominant
problem we face. But what matters is not only the present and future number
of people in the world, but also how poor or affluent they are, how much natural
resource they utilize, and how much pollution and waste they generate. We must
tackle population and consumption together." Sufficiency of resource
use and accumulation is as important as resource efficiency and productivity.
Beyond meeting basic needs, we must examine non-material ways to fulfill
our needs for security, belonging, personal development and happiness that transcend
materialism -- a goal of most major spiritual and religious movements.
- We will have
timely economic, social and environmental signals that encourage environmentally
and socially sustainable behavior. The economic measures of success we
use today, such as the GNP and consumer price index, discourage conservation
and encourage waste, consumption, and the substitution of capital for jobs.
The price of goods services reflects all the profits to the producers but
does not include all the social, environmental and health costs to society.
In a sustainable society we would have more development, i.e., qualitative
improvement in people and value added to resource use than quantitative
growth in resource and energy intensive economies. Several national
and international organizations and thousands of individuals have called for
full cost (including social and environmental) accounting for economic activities,
development of macroeconomic indicators which truly reflect societal well-being
(e.g., Index for Sustainable Economic Welfare, Genuine Progress Indicator)
and taxation which taxes the undesirables (energy and resource consumption)
and not the desirable (employment and investment).
- Nations would
act like a Global Family. We must change the relationship between the
developed and the developing countries. Industrial countries must reduce their
consumption of the world's resources in the face of the desperate need of
developing countries to improve health and to reduce poverty, social instability
and population growth. A child born in the US today will consume as much of
the earth's resources and produce as much waste as more than 100 Bangladeshi
children. We also need new approaches for transferring technology, for training
and education, and for providing financial assistance to developing countries.
These approaches must address population stabilization, improving the educational
and social status of women, the international debt problem, and the need for
sustainable economic strategies.
The Role of Engineers
Engineers must lead this new industrial revolution. There is some excellent leadership
by professional organizations such as the World Engineering Partnership for Sustainable
Development, the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) and the
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) to make sustainable
development a high priority in engineering and business -- both in practice and
in the education of future engineers. They are promoting codes of practice, education,
mentoring programs and policy changes that will encourage the engineering profession
to lead this revolution.
A current fundamental problem is the underlying assumption (by many) that environmental
protection should be left to environmental professionals such as environmental
engineers. But environmental specialists alone will not help us move toward a
sustainable path. All humans consume resources, occupy ecosystems and produce
waste. We need all professionals to carry out their lives and activities
in a manner that is environmentally sound and sustainable. In addition, the current
education and training of most environmental professionals who are and will be
employed by government, industry, academia and environmental organizations is
narrowly focused and incomplete. Most of these professionals are trained in dealing
with a subset of environmental problems such as air pollution, water pollution,
or hazardous waste, but are not trained to deal with environmental issues in an
integrated and comprehensive fashion. The focus of training is on controlling
pollution and waste once created and in remediating environmental damage, rather
than reducing or eliminating pollution and waste generation at the source.
Designing a sustainable future requires a paradigm shift toward a systemic perspective
which encompasses the complex interdependence of individual, social, cultural,
economic and political activities and the biosphere. The engineers of the future
must be much more interdisciplinary -- the lines between the traditional engineering
disciplines must be much more fluid or removed completely. Engineers will have
to join forces with biologists, chemists, meteorologists, economists, planners,
political scientists, ethicists and community leaders in unprecedented ways to
lead society on a sustainable path. Since it is likely that we will double the
amount of housing and building construction in the twenty-first century (and buildings
utilize a tremendous amount of materials and energy) it is imperative that civil
engineers team up with architects, planners and other engineers to revolutionize
construction.
I believe that there is a special role for civil/environmental engineers in the
future. Rather than being the engineers that primarily design technologies to
control or remediate pollution, I believe the environmental engineers will
be the interdisciplinary, systems specialists who will bring together,
coordinate and manage all the specialists to solve complex environmental problems
and promote sustainable development.
Moreover, all engineers must play a much stronger role in the public policy process
to provide the right incentives for industry and others to move on a sustainable
path so that engineers can be encouraged and supported to design sustainable technology.
As Don Roberts advocates, we must become better informed of the interdependence
of environmental, economic, health and social issues, inform others and become
leaders. Otherwise the agenda will be set by others who neither know the benefits
nor the limits of technology in a sustainable modern society.
Educating Engineers for Sustainable Development
Such a shift in the thinking, values, and actions of all individuals and institutions
worldwide calls for a long term societal effort to make environmental and sustainability
concerns a central theme in all education, particularly for engineers, economists
and business people. If we are to achieve a sustainable future, institutions of
higher education must provide the awareness, knowledge, skills, and values that
equip individuals to pursue life goals in a manner that sustains human and non-human
well-being. This is critical since higher education prepares most of the professionals
who develop, manage, teach in and influence society's institutions.
Several prominent engineering schools are making important strides such as Georgia
Tech making sustainable technology a core mission and MIT with its Program in
Environmental Education and Research (PEER). Despite these efforts and those of
a number of colleges and universities which have active environmental studies
programs and train graduate professionals, education and research about
the interdependence of and a sustainable relationship between humans and the rest
of the environment is not a priority in higher education. As David Orr has said,
"The crisis of humanity and the biosphere is a crisis of mind, perception
and heart. It is not a problem in education it is a problem of education."
To date, no engineering school in the US (or, to my knowledge, internationally)
has made design for the environment, industrial ecology, pollution prevention
or the relationship of technological development to sustainability the cornerstone
of engineering education.
Future Engineering Education
The content of learning must embrace an interdisciplinary, systemic
approach to address environmentally sustainable development on local, regional
and global scales over short-, medium- and inter-generational time periods.
The context of learning must change to make the human/environment interdependence
an integral part of the normal teaching in all the disciplines rather than
isolated as a special course or module in a program for environmental specialists
only. Because the environment provides the basis for life and is a major determinant
of the quality of life, it must be a fully integrated and prominent part of all
education. All students must understand that we are an integral part of nature
and that we are coevolving with all the other species in the biosphere. All
engineers must learn a number of concepts and skills such as:
- how the natural
world (including humans) evolved and works
- the interdependence
of humans and the environment including the relationship of population, consumption,
culture, social equity, health and the environment
- how to assess
and minimize the ecological footprint of human economic activity
- technical, design,
scientific and institutional strategies and techniques that foster sustainable
development, promote energy and natural resource efficiency and conservation,
mirror natural system resource use and cycling, remediate environmental problems,
and preserve biological diversity
- social, cultural,
legal, market and governmental frameworks for guiding sustainable development
- strategies to
motivate environmentally just and sustainable behavior by individuals and
institutions
- The educational
process includes experiential education to practice these skill on
the campus and in the larger community, including industry and government.
Recognizing the need
to assist higher education in making this transition, a small group of us led
by US Senator John Kerry established Second Nature, a nonprofit organization located
in Boston. Its sole purpose is to increase the capacity of higher education to
make justice and sustainability "second nature" in its learning, research,
operations and community outreach. In its three years of existence it has provided
technical assistance, educational materials and helped train over 700 faculty
and staff and between 25-30,000 students in 25 universities across the US. Its
co-located sister organization, the Consortium for Environmental Education in
Medicine (CEEM) is providing similar services to medical schools in Massachusetts,
Rhode Island and Texas. These efforts are important but represent a tiny fraction
of the effort that is needed to move higher education and society on a just and
sustainable path.
Conclusions
In closing, I believe we have two choices as a society: First, continue business
as usual -- promote population and rapid economic growth that maximizes throughput
of materials and energy and then head for the new horn of plenty, with no time
for recycling, efficiency or restoration as the cure for all our social, health,
political (and some say) environmental problems. Let nature set the limits which
will come through environmental collapse, poverty, malnutrition, social instability
and war. (As a psychologist friend once said, one definition of insanity is doing
the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result!)
A second choice is for humans as the most self-aware species that can learn very
quickly, to take deliberate individual and collective steps to find civilized
and cooperative ways to live in harmony with each other and the rest of nature.
This means respecting, mimicking and living within nature's limits, using energy
and resources as efficiently as possible, maintaining the integrity of the life
support system and helping all people meet their needs.
The Chinese symbol for Crisis is made up of two characters: Danger + Opportunity.
There is danger ahead but also great opportunity. I hope that we as engineers
are up to the challenge to make the best of the opportunity to design the technology
that will lead us to a sustainable future.