Class Session X>

1. Technology and You

In the last two weeks, we’ve looked at population growth and consumption of resources. We’ve learned that the world’s current population is 6,315,492,785 and is projected to increase to 7.5 billion by 2020 and to 8.9 billion by 2050. Also, we’ve learned that consumption of biomass, chemicals, energy, land, materials, minerals, waste, and water have been increasing faster than population and are projected to continue to increase faster than population growth. In this week’s notes, we’ll look at the final variable, technology.

2. The Industrial Revolution

Before we look at today’s technologies and those of the future, let’s first look back at the history of technology development. It is largely this history which has determined the kind of world we live in today. Okay, you’ve heard about it, you’ve probably read about it, and maybe even seen a video on it. So, what was the Industrial Revolution? To begin with, the term “Industrial Revolution” was coined by writers in the late 19th century who, upon reflecting about the changes that occurred during the last quarter of the 1700’s, realized that the changes were, well, revolutionary. They termed those changes the “Industrial Revolution” to differentiate them from two other revolution’s going on about the same time, both political, the French Revolution and the American Revolution. So, it wasn’t that some writer or historian woke up one morning, looked out the window of his shack or cottage, saw what was going on in the streets and shrieked “On no, it’s the Industrial Revolution!”

To better understand the changes that occurred during the “Industrial Revolution”, it may be useful to look at like before. If we look at the humans of the 18th century, we see they were contemporaries to us on the level of ideas about nature, about God, about the world in general, and that their minds and passions were very similar to ours. If we look again, however, at a human from the 18th century and look at the details of his or her material life, tremendous distances would open up between them and us with regards to lighting, heating, transport, food, illness, and its' cures, and even personal hygiene.

First, most societies were primarily agrarian societies. Though there were traders and bankers and artisans, like today, the vast majority of the population were farmers and even many of the people engaged in service occupations in the cities and towns were part-time farmers. The world between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries consisted of one vast peasantry; where between 80% and 95% of people lived from the land and from nothing else. The rhythm, quality and deficiency of harvests ordered all material life.

Second, the conditions under which pre-industrial societies lived and live do not even distantly approach the state of being adequately nourished, in good health, and with a culture that promotes helpful pleasures, as modern, western industrialized societies today. Last, before the eighteenth century, the human sphere of action was tightly circumscribed and largely limited to what an individual could achieve by their own physical effort.

The industrial revolution fundamentally changed human society in varied and diverse ways. These notes will not attempt to focus on all the changes, social, political, and economic, brought about by the industrial revolution. There are numerous texts and treatises on the Industrial Revolution and the interested student is advised to search these out in local libraries and/or the Internet. These notes, rather, will focus on one particular, and important, aspect of industrialization - the substitution of inanimate energy sources for animate energy.

Animate energy is the energy contained in living organisms. Both human and animals contain animate energy. Inanimate energy is the energy from non-living sources, such as the wind, sun, and fossils fuels. Wood and other forms of biomass are living, but when the tree is burned it is dead and so is considered to be a form of inanimate energy.

Spinning wheels in England in the early 1700's were devices which were driven by pedals, powered by humans. During the mid-1700 an English clock maker Richard Arkwright, designed a horse drawn and then a water driven spinning wheel to substitute for those driven by human foot power. As Arkwright was a clockmaker, he, no doubt, had a keen understanding of how gears worked, and so applying those principles to another set of technologies might have seemed somewhat familiar.

About the same time that Arkwright was gearing up, an inventor by the name of James Watt was experimenting with using coal to create steam which powered an engine known as a steam engine. The advantages of coal, in comparison to the other inanimate forms of energy in use at the time as well as animate energy are several. First, coal was abundant in England at the time. Second the amount of energy can be controlled, whereas wind and water energy is variable. Last, coal is a fairly concentrated form of energy.

The substitution of the steam engine, driven by inanimate energy, for tasks formerly conducted by animate energy, is really what the industrial revolution was all about and what drove all of the other changes, social, economic, and political, that took place at the time. In fact, the same substitution of inanimate for animate energy is what much of the technological focus of the last 200 years has been about. We now live in a world where just about every task we formerly did by hand or feet, we now do with the assistance of inanimate energy such as the electric knife used to carve the Thanksgiving turkey, to electric leaf blowers and toothbrushes. The machine that I'm typing these notes on is powered by inanimate energy and has largely replaced the pen, powered by hand and mechanical typewriters.

The early inventors, Richard Arkwright and James Watt, as well as those that came later, Peter Cooper, Robert Fulton, and Eli Whitney, among others, were interested in designing inanimate energy driven machines that could increase productivity by using a more reliable, or controllable, energy source. There were not aware, or concerned, about the possible long term impacts of emissions from coal, though societal concern about coal emissions had been raised in London as far back as the 1500’s as coal had been used for heating for centuries.

Early natural or “environmental” writers, such as Henry David Thoreau and James Muir, could not have imagined the industrial and economic changes that took place during the 20th century and the accompanying environmental degradation. In the 1700 and 1800’s the world must have seemed vast and the idea that humans might, one day, play a powerful role in affecting natural forces and systems, unimaginable and ludicrous.

Nonetheless, here we are a little over 200 years out from the Industrial Revolution with a global economic system that relies on non-renewable, polluting, energy sources for which wars are fought to maintain and the use of which are changing the earth’s climate in an unprecedented way. So, where do we go from here?

3. Eco-Technology Revolution

Since global environmental awareness came to the forefront in the late 1960’s the world has been in the midst of an “enviro-tech” revolution. Spurred by legislation at the national level in the U.S., as well as other countries, as well as a desire among companies and consumers to reduce their environmental impact, thousands of new earth-friendly or environmental technologies have been developed. The following is a listing of environmental technologies by major sector or area.

1. Agriculture – There are a wide variety of organic processes, products, and technologies which can replace more environmentally damaging agricultural techniques. These include composting, no and low till methods, soil mineralization, companion planting, polyculture, and insect vacuums, among others. Eco-agricultural technologies include bio-herbicides, natural pest management, organic fertilizers, and high protein foodstuffs from keratin sources.

2. Air Quality – Air pollution technologies, for the most part, either remove particulates or gaseous emissions or convert them to a less polluting form before discharge into the atmosphere. A number of different processes are used including absorption, adsorption, separation, condensation, combustion, filtration, scrubbing, catalytic reduction, conditioning, and recovery. Technologies utilized to accomplish these processes include filters, gravity settlers, cyclones, electrostatic precipitators, mechanical collectors, bag houses, and scrubbers. Auxiliary technologies include fans, hoods, ducts, stacks, as well as handling and storage equipment.

3. Consumer Goods - In recent years, a full range of such products have entered the marketplace. For every product and use around the house or in the office, there is likely to be a more environmentally friendly alternative. Such alternatives include rechargeable batteries and solar powered charging units, rechargeable and solar powered lawnmowers, solar ovens and fans, water conserving toilets and faucets, unbleached cotton cloth goods, herbal flea and tick pet collars, natural drain cleaners and detergents, and natural citrus based solvents and cleaners. Other products include recycled paper goods, tank less and solar water heaters, solar outdoor patio and walkway lights, natural insecticides, solar watches and radios, shoes and handbags from recycled rubber, recycled building materials, natural sunscreens, reusable coffee filters, and toilet paper made from recycled paper stock.

4. Energy - Alternative and renewable energy technologies include solar photovoltaic systems for producing electricity from sunlight, fuel cells, refuse derived fuels, co-generation and more efficient end use products such as low flow showerheads, compact fluorescent light bulbs and passive solar window films and shades.

5. Environmental Monitoring - monitoring technologies including potable and waste water test kits, emissions testing and monitoring devices, radiation measurement equipment, and chemical and bacterial detection systems.

6. Ground Pollution - Ground pollution cleanup can be especially daunting and requires specialized processes, techniques and apparatus. These include containment tanks, oil reclamation equipment, underground storage tank monitoring systems and repair services, excavation equipment, bioremediation, in situ immobilization of contaminated soils, soil vapor extraction technology, and soil sampling and coring equipment, among others.

7. Indoor Pollution - To counter the myriad types of indoor pollution, a wide variety of processes and technologies are used. These include radon measurement devices, lead paint testing kits, water filtration systems, fume extractors, dust suppression and collection systems, static eliminators, vapor recovery systems, noise barriers, electronic air cleaners, and asbestos detection equipment, among others.

8. Information - computer based archive and retrieval services, to software development and design, environmental modeling, and publishing.

9. Waste

A. Hazardous & Nuclear - Such technologies include hazardous waste compactors, radiation detectors, nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, and mobile decontamination systems.

B. Recycling - Technologies used in recycling include balers, bins, hoppers, and magnetic separators, among others.

c. Solid Waste - Technologies include membrane liners for landfills, ash handling equipment, collection and transport equipment, digesters, and leachate collection systems, as well as several others.

d. Wastewater – Wastewater or sewage treatment technologies convert raw sewage into a relatively harmless effluent for discharge into nearby bodies of water and to safely dispose of the solids or sludge produced in the process.

10. Water Quality - Technologies used to assure water quality include degreasers, ultraviolet water purifiers, desalination systems, activated carbon regenerators and oil skimming equipment.

4. The Next Industrial Revolution

While the Eco-Technology Revolution has been instrumental in making the world a cleaner place, there is another environmental technology revolution underway that may have even more profound implications for the way we do things. At the forefront of this new revolution are an architecture professor from Virginia named William McDonough and a German chemist named Michael Braungart.

McDonough’s and Braungart’s view on the world is a little different. They believe that the only way to get on a sustainable path is to “re-design” the buildings we work and live in as well as the products we use.