Nature, Technology and the Human in the Anthropocene or From Industrial Ecology to Earth Systems Eng

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Nature, Technology and the Human in the
AnthropoceneorFrom Industrial Ecology to Earth
Systems Engineering and Management

• Brad Allenby
• Lincoln Professor of Ethics and Engineering
• Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Arizona State University

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What is the Anthropocene? Human and natural?
Just as the Anthropocene begins? One hundred
years ago, the postcard from the Northeast had a
smoking factory.
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So long as we do not, through thinking,
experience what is, we can never belong to what
will be. The flight into tradition, out of a
combination of humility and presumption, can
bring about nothing in itself other than self
deception and blindness in relation to the
historical moment.
Source M. Heidegger, The Question Concerning
Technology and Other Essays, translation by W.
Lovitt (New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1977), The
Turning, p. 49 The Age of the World Picture,
p. 136.
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Global Economic History 1500 - 1992
Source Based on J. R. McNeill, 2000, Something
New Under the Sun (New York W. W. Norton
Company), Tables 1.1 and 1.2, pp. 6-7, and
sources cited therein.
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Global Land Cover( in 106 km2 all figures
approximate)
Source Based on J. R. McNeill, 2000, Something
New Under the Sun (New York W. W. Norton Co.),
Table 7.1, p 213, and sources cited therein.
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Energy Production and Consumption1800 - 1990
1 in millions of metric tons 2 all forms,
millions of metric tons of oil equivalent
Source Based on J. R. McNeill, 2000, Something
New Under the Sun (New York W. W. Norton
Company), Table 1.4 and 1.5, pp. 14-15, and
sources cited therein.
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Global Freshwater Use1700 - 2000
Use (in percent)
1 In richer countries, water use stabilized
after the 1970s. In the U.S., total water use
peaked around 1980 and had declined by a tenth as
of 1995, despite simultaneous addition of some 40
million people.
Source Based on J. R. McNeill, 2000, Something
New Under the Sun (New York W. W. Norton
Company), Table 5.1, p. 121, and sources cited
therein.
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Decoupling U.S. Water Consumption from Economic
Performance
GDP trillion 2002
Water consumption km3 per year
Population
Adapted from The Economist, Priceless a survey
of Water, July 19 2003, center section, Pg 4.
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What is Industrial Ecology?

• Industrial ecology is the multidisciplinary study
  of industrial and economic systems and their
  linkages with fundamental natural systems. It
  incorporates, among other things, research and
  data involving energy supply and use, new
  materials, new technologies and technological
  systems, basic sciences, economics, law,
  management and social sciences.

Allenby, 1999, Industrial Ecology Policy
Framework and Implementation (Upper Saddle River
Prentice-Hall), p 40.
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What is Industrial Ecology?

• The word industrial by and large, it is meant to
  apply to all kinds of human activities that
  relate to material and energy stocks and flows,
  including agricultural, manufacturing,
  transportation, mining, fishing, and service
  industries, not just factories. It includes not
  just production but consumer behavior and
  consumption systems.

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Mass Flows for the U.S. Automotive
System(million metric tons, 1998)
Natural gas liquids
Gas 17.2
51.3
Other petroleum products
Brake fluid, etc.
Lube oil
Antifreeze
PETROLEUM REFINING
0.42
GASOLINE BLENDING Benzene, Tolvene and Xylene
53.6 Other 243.8
Crude oil 679
297.44
Other uses
1.5
EDB (0.03)
Vehicle miles traveled
40
TEL (0.04)
55.6 Refining losses
213.76
MBTE 4.225
Salt 5
1.51X1012
PERSONAL TRANSPORT BY AUTOMOBILE
Bitumen (asphalt)
Losses in distribution
Bitumen 16 Portland cement 10 Steel 35
Slag 15 Sand and gravel
600 Crushed stone 840
1.7
ROAD CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE
Road highway maintenance and repair materials
250
Combustion wastes CO2, CO, NOx, HC
0.3
0.15
Replacement tires
15
Used oil
5
1.128
Tire wear
15.24
Fluids
Salt
Rubber, carbon black, chemicals
0.323
1.05
TIRE MFG
AUTO MFG (10,530,000 cars 1,442 metric tons/car)
SCRAP RECOVERY
Used tires
Iron and Steel (70) Plastics (7) Rubber (4.3)
Aluminum (4.5) Glass (2.8) Cu, Pb, Zn (2.1)
Fluids and (10) miscellaneous
1.6
0.4
Glass
Fluff
1.0
Iron and steel
0.3
1.0
Tires
Nonferrous metals
1.5
Source Based on Figure II, R. U. Ayres and
Leslie W. Ayres, Use of Materials Balances to
Estimate Aggregate Waste, in P.C. Schulze, ed.,
Measures of Environmental Performance and
Ecosystem Condition (Washington, DC, National
Academy Press 1999), 96-156.
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Industrial Ecology Systems Hierarchies
The Automotive Technology System
Social Structure (e.g., dispersed communities
business, malls)

• Infrastructure Technologies
• Built infrastructure (e.g., highways)
• Supply infrastructure (e.g., the petroleum
  industry)

Automobile subsystem (e.g., the engine)
The Automobile Manufacture Use Recycle
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Earth Systems Engineering and Management

• Earth Systems Engineering and Management is the
  capability to design, engineer, and manage,
  through dialog and continual feedback, integrated
  built/human/natural systems that achieve the
  multivariate and sometimes mutually exclusive
  goals and desires of humanity, including at the
  least personal, social, economic, technological,
  and environmental dimensions, within the
  constraints imposed by the states and dynamics of
  existing complex adaptive systems.

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Model Carbon Cycle Management

• Step 1 Reduce emissions
• Step 2 Capture emissions (carbon sequestration)
• Step 3 Design atmosphere (ambient carbon
  dioxide management proven technology _at_ 80 to
  240 per ton)
• Step 4 Integrated earth systems engineering and
  mangement

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Carbon Cycle Governance System
CO2 Emitted
Biomass
Fossil Fuel Energy Production System
Electricity
Fossil Fuel Power Plant
Fixed Uses
Fossil Fuel
Fossil Fuel Power Plant
Buildings
Mobile Uses (e.g., transportation)
Fossil Fuel Power Plant
H2
Control Functions
Input B

• MW

Fossil Fuel
Municipal Waste
Output CO2 Emitted

CO2 Sequestered
CO2 Sequestered
Target CO2 Concentration
Metric in Atmosphere
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Earth Systems Engineering and Management Climate
Change- Carbon Cycle Schematic
Engineering/ Management of Earth system
relationships
Carbon cycle
Earth System Engineering
Other options
Geoengineering options
Energy system
Ocean fertilization
Biomass agriculture
Genetic engineering and biotechnology
Other Technology systems
Fish farming, etc
Engineering/ Management of carbon cycle
Information technology and services (e.g.,
telework)
Fossil fuel industry, etc.
Organic chemical industry, etc.
Scope of traditional engineering disciplines
Implementation at firm, facility, technology and
process level
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Information Infrastructure Boundary Issues
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Earth Systems Engineering and Management
Principles Theory

• Only intervene when required and to the extent
  required (humility in the face of complexity).
• At the level of earth systems engineering and
  management (ESEM), projects and programs are not
  just technical and scientific in nature, but
  unavoidably have powerful cultural, ethical, and
  religious dimensions.
• Unnecessary conflict surrounding ESEM projects
  and programs can be reduced by separating social
  engineering from technical engineering
  dimensions.
• ESEM requires a focus on systems as systems,
  rather than as just constituent artifacts a
  dynamic, rather than static, mental model of
  underlying phenomenon.
• Boundaries around ESEM projects and programs
  should reflect real world couplings and linkages
  through time, rather than disciplinary or
  ideological simplicity.
• Major shifts in technologies and technological
  systems should be evaluated before, rather than
  after, implementation.

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Earth Systems Engineering and Management
Principles Design and Engineering

• Earth systems engineering and management (ESEM)
  initiatives should all be characterized by
  explicit and transparent objectives or desired
  performance criteria, with quantitative metrics
  which permit continuous evaluation of system
  evolution (and signal when problematic system
  states may be increasingly likely).
• Design, engineering, and implementation of ESEM
  initiatives must not be based on implicit or
  explicit models of centralized control in the
  traditional rigid sense. Rather than attempting
  to completely define or dominate a system, the
  ESEM professional will have to see themselves as
  an integral component of the system, coupled with
  its evolution and subject to many of its
  dynamics. This will require a completely
  different psychology of engineering.
• ESEM projects should be incremental and
  reversible to the extent possible.
• ESEM should aim for resiliency, not just
  redundancy, in systems design. A resilient
  system resists degradation and, when it must,
  degrades gracefully even under unanticipated
  assaults a redundant system may have a backup
  mechanism for a particular subsystem, but still
  may be subject to unpredicted catastrophic
  failures.
• ESEM should aim for inherently safe, rather
  than engineered safe, design. An inherently safe
  system fails in a noncatastrophic way an
  engineered safe system is designed to reduce the
  risk of a particular catastrophic failure mode,
  but there is still a finite probability that such
  a failure may occur.

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Earth Systems Engineering and Management
Principles Governance

• Earth systems engineering and management (ESEM)
  projects and programs by definition raise
  important scientific, technical, economic,
  political, ethical, theological and cultural
  issues. The only appropriate governance model
  under these conditions is one which is
  democratic, transparent, and accountable.
• ESEM governance mechanisms should foster
  inclusive, multicultural dialog.
• ESEM governance models, which deal with
  complex, unpredictable systems, must accept high
  levels of uncertainty as endogenous to the
  discourse, and view ESEM policy development and
  implementation as a dialog with the relevant
  systems, rather than a definitive endpoint. ESEM
  governance systems should accordingly place a
  premium on flexibility and the ability to evolve
  in response to changes in system state, and
  recognize the policymaker as part of an evolving
  ESEM system, rather than an agent outside the
  system guiding it.
• The ESEM environment and the complexity of the
  systems at issue require explicit mechanisms for
  assuring continual learning, including ways in
  which assimulation of the learning by
  stakeholders can be facilitated.
• There must be adequate resources available to
  support both the immediate ESEM project and the
  science and technology research and development
  necessary to ensure that the responses of the
  relevant systems are understood.

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Nature as Mediated by Technology