Ecology and Technology

The chief reason for the sharp increase in environmental stress in the United States is the sweeping transformation in production technology in the postwar period. Productive activities with intense environmental impacts have displaced activities with less serious environmental impacts; the growth pattern has been counter-ecological. This conclusion is easily misconstrued to mean that technology is therefore, per se, ecologically harmful. That this interpretation is unwarranted can be seen from the following examples.

Consider the simple transformation of the present ecologically faulty relationship among soil, agricultural crops, the human population, and sewage. Suppose that the sewage, instead of being introduced into surface waters as it is now, whether directly or following treatment, is instead transported from urban collection systems by pipeline to agricultural areas, where—after appropriate sterilization procedures—it is incorporated into the soil. Such a pipeline would literally incorporate the urban population into the soil's ecological cycle. It would restore the integrity of that cycle and incidentally remove the need for inorganic nitrogen fertilizer—which also strains the aquatic cycle. Hence, the urban population would no longer be external to the soil cycle and therefore would be incapable either of generating a negative biological stress on it or of exerting a positive ecological stress on the aquatic ecosystem. But note that this state of zero environmental impact is not achieved by a return to "primitive conditions" it is achieved by an actual technological advance; the construction of a sewage pipeline system.

Or consider the example provided by the technological treatment of gold and other precious metals. Gold is, after all, subject to numerous technological manipulations that generate a series of considerable economic values. Yet we manage to accomplish all of this without intruding more than a small fraction of all the gold ever acquired by human beings into the ecosphere. Because we value it so highly, very little gold is "lost" to the environment. In contrast, most of the mercury that has entered commerce in the last generation has been disseminated into the environment with very unfortunate effects. Clearly, given adequate technology—and motivation—we could be as thrifty in our handling of mercury as we are of gold, thereby preventing the entry of this toxic material into the environment. Again, what is required is not necessarily the abandonment of mercury-based technology, but rather the improvement of that technology to the point of satisfactory compatibility with the ecosystem.

Environmental impacts resulting from ecologically faulty technology strain the basic ecosystems that support the life of human beings, destroy the "biological capital" that is essential to the operation of industry and agriculture, and may, if unchecked, lead to the catastrophic collapse of these systems. The environmental impacts already generated are sufficient to threaten the continued development of the economic system. Witness the current difficulties in the United States in siting new power plants at a time of severe power shortage and the recent curtailment of industrial innovation in the fields of detergents, chemical manufacturing, insecticides, herbicides, chlorine production, oil drilling, oil transport, supersonic aviation, nuclear power generation, and industrial use of nuclear explosives—all resulting from public rejection of the concomitant environmental deterioration.

It seems probable that, if we are to survive economically as well as biologically, much of the technological transformation of the U.S. economy since 1946 will need to be, so to speak, redone in order to bring the nation's productive technology much more closely into harmony with the inescapable demands of the ecosystem. This will require the development of massive new technologies for systems to return sewage and garbage directly to the soil; for the replacement of synthetic materials by natural ones; for supporting the reversal of the present trend to retire soil from agriculture and to elevate the yield per acre; for the development of land transport that operates with maximal fuel efficiency at low combustion temperatures; and for the sharp curtailment of the use of biologically active synthetic organic agents.

In effect, what is required is a new period of technological transformation of the economy that will reverse the counter-ecological trends developed since 1946. The cost of the new transformation might be estimated from the cost of the former one, which must represent a capital investment in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars. To this must be added, of course, the cost of repairing the ecological damage that has already been incurred, such as the eutrophication of Lake Erie—again, a bill to be reckoned in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The enormous size of these costs raises a final question: Is there some functional connection in the economy between the tendency of a given productive activity to inflict an intense impact on the environment (and the size of the resultant costs) and the role of this activity in economic growth? For it is evident from even a cursory comparison of the productive activities that have rapidly expanded in the U.S. economy since 1946 with the activities they displaced that the displacing activities are also considerably more profitable than those displaced. The correlation between profitability and rapid growth is one that is presumably accountable by economics. Is the additional linkage to intense environmental impact also functional, or only accidental?

It has been pointed out often enough that environmental pollution represents a long-unpaid debt to nature. Is it possible that the U.S. economy has grown since 1946 by deriving much of its new wealth through the enlargement of that debt? If this should turn out to be the case, what strains will develop in the economy if, for the sake of the survival of our society, that debt should now be called?