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Science Technology and the Economic Future edited by Susan Raymond
Mark Schaefer
Assistant Director for Environment,
Office of Science and Technology Policy,
Executive Office of the President of the United States
Based on remarks delivered at the New York Academy of Sciences, September 14, 1994. In 1995, Dr. Schaefer moved to the U.S. Department of the Interior, where he is the a Deputy Assistant Secretary.
The facts are easy enough to understand. We live in a world of more than 5.5 billion people with finite physical and biological resources. The global population is growing rapidly, placing even greater stress on already degraded resources. What is the likely outcome?
Pessimists can paint a harrowing picture: degraded waterways worldwide, unsanitary living conditions, steadily declining forested land, loss of biodiversity at accelerating rates, heavily polluted air in urban areas. It is a sorry image of failed industrialism, growth gone awry, and decrements in quality of life as a result of short sighted economic gains. If the pessimists prevail we will have passed along a world that none of us would want our children to live in.
The Preferable Scenario
In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development, more commonly known as the Bruntland Commission, articulated an alternative view—a forward-looking, optimistic scenario founded on two fundamental objectives: economic growth and environmental quality. Together these two objectives represent the cornerstones of a new global approach to the future: "sustainable development." In the words of the Commission, sustainable development is "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Implicit in this idea is the assumption that the global economy can grow steadily if resources are utilized in a sustainable fashion.
While the general concept of sustainable development is likely to be debated, redefined, and tested at its vague philosophical edges for years to come, its core principles should stand the test of time. The real question is whether 50 years from now, sustainable development will be viewed as the watchwords that awoke a profligate global community and set it squarely on a path of continued improvement in quality of life, or whether it will be eulogized as the much criticized and largely unheeded words of the wise. Will the promise of sustain ability simply become a vaguely remembered goal in a commission report that went on to collect dust on the world's bookshelf of lost causes? Since the answer to this question will define the world that our children will live in, we must hope not.
Critical to the simultaneous pursuit of both economic growth and sustainable resource use are environmental technologies—those technologies that advance sustainable development by reducing risk, enhancing cost effectiveness, improving process efficiency, and creating products and processes that are environmentally beneficial or benign.
The Bridge to a Sustainable Future
Environmental technologies fall into four major classes—control: the traditional "end-of-pipe" technologies that limit effluents into the water or emissions into the air; remediation and restoration: technologies used to redress environmental contamination and rejuvenate damaged ecosystems; monitoring: devices to track toxic substances in industrial systems, the distribution of pollutants in air, land, or water, or large-scale changes in the global environment; and avoidance or prevention: technologies that limit the production of pollutants or wasteful practices that degrade the environment or consume resources in an unsustainable fashion.
To expect industry to design and manufacture environmental technologies as an act of environmental and societal altruism is unrealistic. Although the public good is a consideration, economics is the ultimate driver. Hence governmental policies aimed at the public good must be devised in ways that foster innovation and commercialization by harnessing market forces. Where these forces fail to ensure the health and safety of the public and protection of
the environment, regulatory actions are necessary. Moreover, when carefully crafted, many traditional command and control regulatory actions also spur technological innovation. A central challenge of future environmental and economic policy making will be to determine the proper mix of incentive and control-based regulatory actions that will drive the development, application, and diffusion of environmentally benign or beneficial technologies. Environmental technologies are the bridge to a sustainable future, to a future economy and resource use practices that will ensure a high quality of life for future generations. The path toward this future promises tremendous near-term as well as long-term economic benefits.
Presently, global markets for environmental technologies are conservatively estimated to be more than $300 billion. That estimate is based on a narrow definition that focuses on control, remediation, and some monitoring technologies. A broader definition that includes industrial processes and energy production technologies that prevent or minimize wasted materials and pollution would result in a considerably higher estimate.
World markets for environmental technology are projected to grow rapidly over the next decade, offering tremendous opportunities to those companies that can provide products, services, and low or no waste industrial processes at competitive prices. As shown in the table overleaf, the U.S. market is now, and is likely to continue to be, the largest source of global revenues for environmental technologies. However, growth in Latin America, Canada, and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is projected to outpace growth in the United States over the period from 1992 to 1997. This pattern of growth offers both challenges and opportunities to U.S. industry.
In a recent report, Promoting Growth and Job Creation Through Emerging Environmental Technologies,the National Commission on Employment Policy points out that more than one million workers were employed directly by the environmental technology industry in 1994. In addition, roughly an equivalent number of workers were employed in jobs that depend indirectly on this industry. According to the Commission, the annual rate of direct job creation in this industry is "more than double the average annual rate of growth in total employment for the U.S. economy in recent decades." If U.S. companies that develop and deploy environmental technologies can maintain a strong competitive position in the years ahead, the nation will reap tremendous benefits, including the continued growth of high-quality jobs for American workers.
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| Figure 1. Industry revenues for environmental technologies. Source: National Science and Technology Council in Technology for a Sustainable Future, OSTP, 1994. |
Yet the benefits of these technologies go well beyond readily quantifiable near-term economic considerations. The long-term reward will be a higher standard of living and sustained economic growth in a world of finite resources: sustainable development.
Population Growth and Technological Innovation
At the end of World War I the world's population was 2.5 billion— today it is more than 5.5 billion. On the basis of medium growth rate assumptions, the United Nations projects a world population of 8.5 billion by the year 2025. Most of this growth will occur in developing countries. World population growth rates of this magnitude could have major adverse effects on global natural resources unless consumption and conservation practices change significantly. Improving, or at least maintaining, the present standard of living in nations throughout the world will require large-scale application of environmentally sound technologies—technologies that will enable the sustainable use of resources.
The population summit in Cairo in 1994 and the earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1993 highlighted the connection between rapidly increasing population growth and potential environmental degradation. According to U.S. Undersecretary of State Tim Wirth: "Everything we can do for political stability may be overwhelmed by sheer numbers of people. What can we do economically without stabilized populations? If we are concerned about the state of the Earth which sustains our species—if we are to have any chance of sustaining it—population stabilization is a vital goal."
Urban areas, particularly those in developing countries, are especially vulnerable to unconstrained growth. In 1990, 40 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas. This proportion is expected to grow to (~o percent by the year 2025 according to UN projections. In 1990, 13 cities worldwide had populations of 10 million or more. By 2010, this number is likely to double. Nearly all of these megacities will be in developing countries (see Figure 2).
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| Figure 2. In I990, I3 urban areas the world had populations of 10 million or more. In 20 years, it is estimated that there may be 26 of these megacities, according to a UN medium-growth rate scenario. These huge urban agglomerations face significant environmental problems. Source: National Science and Technology Council in Technology for a Sustainable Future, OSTP, I994. |
Major urban centers face particular challenges in ensuring adequate supplies of clean water, properly treated sewage, a dependable energy supply, and a well constructed infrastructure. In the decades ahead, the appropriate application of environmental technologies will be key to achieving a desirable quality of life in major urban centers worldwide.
The availability of clean technologies, however, is by no means the sole answer to a nation's environmental problems. Human behavior—the collective choices made on a daily basis by millions of individuals—will ultimately determine whether sustainability is achieved. Relatively minor changes in consumption practices by a significant proportion of society can lead to dramatic changes in resource and technology use. Increasing consumer preferences for products made from recycled materials or for more energy-efficient homes, for example, has spurred entirely new industries, manufacturing processes, and products. In the future, industries that provide products and services that minimize the use of virgin materials and conserve energy are likely to have a decided market advantage as resources become increasingly scarce and, hence, more expensive.
The Path to Sustainability
Technology is seen by many as the source of—not the solution to—national and global environmental problems. Indeed, there are many examples of short-sighted technological developments that have led to environmental damage: from industrial pollution associated with poorly conceived manufacturing processes, to inefficient. energy production practices with inadequate pollution controls. Yet manufacturing and energy-use technologies, systems, and practices have changed dramatically over the past quarter-century. Automobile technologies are a case in point. Since 1970, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions per vehicle have decreased dramatically. This is the good news. The bad news is that a fourfold increase in vehicle miles traveled since 1960 has largely offset these reductions, making it difficult for many U.S. cities to meet air quality standards. This example illustrates the power and limitations of technology, as well as the importance of considering population growth and consumer practices when devising public policy.
Twenty-five years ago Barry Commoner wrote in his landmark book, The Closing Circle: "The chief reason for the environmental crisis that has engulfed the United States in recent years is the sweeping transformation of productive technology since World War II. The economy has grown enough to give the United States population about the same amount of basic goods per capita as it did in 1946. However, productive technologies with intense impacts on the environment have displaced less destructive ones. The environmental crisis is the inevitable result of this counter-ecological pattern of growth." Today we can point to signs of a reversal of this trend. Increasingly, industry is developing, and consumers are purchasing, technologies and other products that are more energy efficient and generate less waste. Through ingenuity, commitment, and enlightened public policies, we may, in the near future, be able to point to a global technological transformation that pulled the world away from the brink of environmental crisis.
The Clinton/Gore Administration has worked for the past several years to ensure that federal policies encourage the development, commercialization, application, and export of environmental technologies. In July 1994, the Administration published Technology for a Sustainable Future: A Framework for Action,which describes the key policy issues associated with the advancement of these technologies. This report served as the foundation for more than two dozen workshops and conferences held throughout the country involving hundreds of individuals from the private sector and the state governments. These discussions led to a second document, Bridge to a Sustainable Future, which lays out the key elements of a national environmental technology strategy. As President Clinton and Vice President Gore jointly state in the preface of the strategy report: "Now the time has come for creative action and bold steps. Let us pledge to use technologies wisely for they are the bridge to a sustainable future. Our foresight will define the structure of that bridge. Our creativity will allow us to build it. And our commitment will determine how quickly we cross it."
There is a critical need to continue the process of technological transformation of U.S. industry by putting policies in place that foster innovation and competition. At the same time, we must encourage and aid developing nations in making a similar transformation to help them achieve long-term economic growth, resource protection, and continued improvement in quality of life. If we are successful, new ideas, new products, and new services will be deployed both in the domestic marketplace and throughout the world—and we will be squarely on the path to a sustainable future.
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