Man and His Environment

PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING

This manuscript, drafted as one part of the "environmental" contents of this issue, is based on Environmental Studies 1 and is written so as to provide the reader with a working syllabus. It is my hope that in addition to providing a description of a current development on campus, the article will help the readers organize their own study in this area.

1. THE INTERDISCIPLINARY SETTING

Environmental Studies 1 is the first of a four-course sequence which constitutes the basic Environmental Studies Program.* This, in essence, permits a student to minor in environmental studies while completing his major. The other three courses treat earth science and ecology, institutional arrangements, and policy formulation, in that order. In E.S. 1 we attempted to present a holistic, or systems, treatment of the relationship between man and his environment. There was an attempt to develop many of the facts involved in these relationships, from beauty through economics and technology.

As a result, the course, and indeed the entire program, is regarded as interdisciplinary. All courses are being taught by three or more faculty members. Last fall E.S. 1 was taught by Larry Dingman (Earth Science), Paul Sheppard (Visiting Professor—Ecolo-gy), and myself (Engineering).

The academic departments at Dartmouth are grouped into three divisions - Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities. Each student is required to take at least four courses from each division in order to obtain a minimum distribution of his studies. This requirement tends quite strongly to cause the faculty to insure that courses are indeed representative of that branch of knowledge for which the division is responsible. It is a matter of both integrity and control of duplication.

We felt strongly that the material in E.S. 1 should not be bound by such constraints, and it was classified as a "College Course"—outside the divisions. Hence, ironically because of its distributive nature, it could not be used by students to satisfy their distributive requirement.

In addition to this organization aspect of interdisciplinary studies, there is a more fundamental difference in that such courses are focused on problems rather than being merely a collection of topics from two or more departments. In Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger has Franny speak from the depths of a college student breakdown (she's come home unable to go on after 3½ of the 4 required years) as follows: "... I got the idea in my head—and I could not get it out—that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed life exactly the same thing to me, if yOD take off the wrapping—and it still does Sometimes I think that when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway—is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly." Nervously, and without any real need whatever, Franny pushed back her hair with one hand. "I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while—just once in a while—there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!"

Our universities indeed have a tradition of seeking knowledge rather than wisdom and with good reason. How else does one escape slipping from instruction into indoctrination? How else does one stay open to new discoveries, new thoughts? And yet, as G.B. Shaw has reminded us, a purely open mind is incapable of a decision - of an act, and life continuously poses the action Question: What to do next.

Reflection on the effects and likely consequences of present acts, such as how we discharge wastes to the environment, may give us some prudent insights. Furthermore, this can be done in an objective manner, although certainly many exceptions can be noted. Careful examination of alternative choices increases the likelihood of a wise act. Here again, this can be done without indoctrination. In addition, the student can be asked to justify policy and acts that he recommends. They can be encouraged to work out their own position, and to examine that position.

Real problems have a general structure:

One seeks: goal or objective

By recognizing possible alternatives and implementing one

Subject to constraints:

(a) natural

(b) man made

The topics to the right of the line show the relation of this problem structure to capabilities and knowledge. Integrating such knowledge in the synthesis of the resolution of problems is a much needed response to Franny's indictment.

2. AN APPRECIATION

Ultimately the uses that man makes, or doesn't make, of nature depends on intangible values—wildness, recreation, beauty, etc. For this reason, the course began with a consideration of man's perception of nature.

The first and most popular reading was Aldo Leopold's Sand CountyAlmanac[1]. Leopold was both a hunter and conservationist, and as such acknowledged his place in, and extended his concept of ethics to include a system of life which required death to support life. He lamented that to many, food came from the store and heat from the furnace. He was full of a sense of wonder for the mysteries and happenings of the ecosystem in which he found himself. He used his considerable knowledge of that system to increase his perception rather than to Pretend to dominate it by knowing names for each part. He spoke of a muskrat's eye-level view of the marsh, and wondered at the holistic workings of it all.

He reflected on the conservation of atomic identity and where the atoms, now residing in his body temporarily, last resided—in what plant, what animal, what other man, what rock, what far-off cold, blue star. He spoke of freedom and risk; of two boys on a last canoe trip before induction in the army (1940) eating what they caught.

He recognized his membership in the ecosystem, and reminded us of our own.

We almost used Eliot Porter's InWildness Is the Preservation of Man.[2] It is a collection of beautiful New England nature photographs juxtaposed with appropriate selections from Thoreau—highly recommended to the

Philosophy, economics and humanistic studies

Creativity

Power

Scientific knowledge

Laws and customs

reader. Paul Sheppard, using Kenneth Clark's Landscape into Art[3] traced man's developing perception of nature in his art. From an art in which nature was walled out and icons were sought for protection, he showed the gradual rescinding of the walls and the natural scenes, well lighted and full of relics. (How many of your favorite nature scenes include dramatic lighting and a ragged tree or rock?) He then turned, tracing man's relationship to living systems through evolution. Through A. W. Watt's Nature, Man and Woman, he brought out the intuitive side of man's intelligence, and wondered about the relationship of man's nature and the system by which he provided for himself. He spoke of hunting and gathering and made me question whether the "Fall" didn't really lie in the development of agriculture and domesticated animals. A goat, he pointed out, was an ecological menace. He ended on a note of the possibility that modern technology might free man from the dependence on land-based agriculture, and allow a much wilder use of land, as has happened in northern New England in the past century.

3. POPULATION

Population is an obvious factor in the demand for raw materials and the corresponding generation of waste. Furthermore, the rate of increase tends to increase with the total number. This generates the characteristic exponential growth curves. Ehrlich and Ehrlich present considerable data on this matter and are fully convinced that present populations have reached crisis levels. They point to considerable starvation in underdeveloped portions of the world, and to pollution and urban crowding in developed regions.

It is useful to reflect on the fact that if goods and services were to be distributed equally, then theoretically all would perish if the population exceeded that which could be supported. One can draw two conclusions from this: (1) non-equal distribution will tend to avoid such extinction, and (2) equal distribution requires conscious limitation of population for a given technology.

As is well known, population growth tends to be slower in industrially developed countries. This gives some the hope of population limitation through industrial development. (Along a somewhat different line of thought, Gofman and Tamplin have recently published a book, Population ControlThrough Nuclear Pollution.[6].) There is a worry, however, that populations exceed the number which could be adequately supported even with a developed technology, or poisoned by technology's wastes.

With a fixed technology and our finite earth, human population would obviously be limited, by virtue or misery, to use Malthus' terminology[7]. However, technology has not been fixed, particularly in recent years, and there has grown up a faith in the ability of science to provide. An extreme statement of this faith is given by Barnett and Morse[8]: "Advances in fundamental science have made it possible to take advantage of the uniformity of energy/matter—a uniformity which makes it feasible, without preassignable limit, to escape the quan titative constraints imposed by the character of the earth's crust." Such faith is obviously not universally held (there is a good deal of "let George do it" in the above quote from two resource economists) and in many ways it is this same increased ability to transform the earth's crust that concerns one. It may be possible to support more people than is desirable. But this is a subjective matter; it depends on how much one values the non-human element, the wildness. (Personally, I feel no need for more people.)

As with all pollution problems, there is a lack of direct connection between ultimate effect and individual action (see Hardin [9]). This makes it a matter of widely held ethics and/or public policy.

4. ENERGY

In a warm climate, the minimum per capita consumption of energy is that required in food, about 2000 kilocalories. The U. S. per capita figure is one hundred times that value (about 10 KW) and is increasing by some 2.5% per yearllol. The per capita growth rate of electricity is 6 to 7 % per year in the Northeast [11]. For the past five years, the overall growth rate in Vermont has been above 10% per year.t12!

One of the principal causes of growth in demand for electricity in the past decade was the increased use of air conditioning. In the next decade, some heating is expected to be a major factor. If this expectation is met, it will tend to decrease the demand for fuels for domestic space heating since the heating has to be done in any event. Overall, the demand for fuel would be increased, however, since by the very nature of fossil and nuclear steam power plants, about two-thirds of the energy in the fuel is wasted in the generation of electricity. The central power plant can use fuels such as Uranium which are not suitable for individual home heaters, however. Furthermore, it would be more feasible to use a more complicated technology to reduce pollution. Assessment and evaluation of this trend is indeed complicated, especially when one begins to wonder how much the demand for space heating could be reduced if more insulation and solar heating were used.

Possible energy sources are depicted in detail by M. King Hubbert[13]. Briefly, he points out that the amount of solar radiation is much more than present needs but that large areas of expensive equipment would be required for collection. See Daniels for more detail [14]. Water power potential is about four times present generation capacity but is not well distributed. Tidal power potential is estimated to be 1 % of water power. No estimate is given for wind. Geothermal power potential is estimated to be less than 20% of present generating capacity. Hubbert concludes that if we continue to use fossil fuels to supply the bulk of the world's energy supplies, in a century we will have exhausted the middle 80% of the ultimate resources of the petroleum family—crude oil, natural gas, tar-sand oil, and shale oil, and three to four centuries for coal.

Present nuclear technology would appear to be severely constrained by fuel supplies within the next 50 years[15]. Weinberg and Hammond[16] have shown that breeder nuclear reactors (feasible but not yet commercial) would find enough fuel in the world's granites to supply 20 billion people with twice the U. S. per capita use for millions of years. The Conway granites would therefore provide nuclear fuel for the entire world for about 200 years. Professor Pytte (Physics Dept., Dartmouth) pointed out that fusion (conceived, but not yet shown feasible) could use fuel in ocean water to supply energy for billions of years, the expected duration of our solar system.

For some time now, we have escaped, through technical developments, the Malthusian conclusion that supplies will be exhausted. While there is considerable work yet to be done, it is conceivable that we can develop technologies to last for millions of years at levels of consumption above (but not much above?) present levels in developed countries.

However, a population can annihilate itself by poisoning itself with waste as well as by running out of supplies. Fission nuclear power results in long-lived radioactive wastes that must be stored for hundreds of years. Furthermore, the reactors contain appreciable concentrations of radioactive materials. While there is no danger of an explosion, there is the routine discharge of very small amounts of radioactive materials and the possibility (with very small likelihood) of the accidental release of larger amounts. It is very difficult to form judgments about the risks involved, since the losses are very great should an accident occur, but the probability of that accident very small.

Gofman and Tamplin have argued that routine discharges from nuclear plants should be decreased. They estimate the consequences of everyone receiving the maximum allowable dosage. The AEC has pointed out that this assumption is false, since the population does not live at the boundary of a nuclear power plant. Despite the substantive aspects of health and costs, this raises interesting philosophic aspects Are we to base our actions on the expected number of people affected or on the expected effect on the most unfortunate individual? Should power plants be located in areas of low population density? The rural resident points out that such a policy implies that on an individual basis he is more expendable than a city dweller. And yet if there were an accident, fewer people would be affected.

In a talk last November entitled "U. S. Energy Policies—The End of an Era," S. D. Freeman of the Office of Science and Technology pointed out the need to slow down the growth of per capita energy consumption, at least with present sources and technologies. I'll leave the reader with the question of how this might be done, and to what extent it should be done.

REFERENCES

1. Leopold, Aldo, Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, 1949, 1970.

2. Porter, Eliot, In Wildness Is the Preservation of Man, Sierra Club—Ballantine Books, N.Y.C., 1962, $3.95.

3. Clark, Kenneth, Landscape into Art, Beacon Press, Boston, $2.95. in paperback.

4. Watts, Alan W., Nature, Man and Woman, Vintage Books, Random House, N.Y.C., 1970, $1.65.

5. Ehrlich, Paul R. and Ehrlich, Anne H., Population—Resources—Environment, W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco, 1970.

6. Tamplin, A. R. and J. W. Gofman, Population Control Through NuclearPollution, Nelson Hall Co., Chicago, 1970.

7. Malthus, T. R., On the Principle of Population, Vol. 2, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1914.

8. Barnett, H. J. and C. Morse, Scarcityand Growth, The Economics of Natural Resource Availability, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1963 (For Resources for the Future).

9. Hardin, G., "The Tragedy of the Commons," as preprinted from Science in De Bell, G., The Environmental Handbook, Ballantine, N.Y.C., 1970.

10. Singer, S. Fred, "Human Energy Production as a Process in the Biosphere, Scientific American, 223, 3, September 1970, pp. 174-190.

11. Federal Power Commission National Power Survey, 1970.

12. Biennial Report of the Public Service Board, State of Vermont, July 1, 1968 - June 30, 1970.

13. Hubbert, M. King, "Energy Resources, Resources and Man, National Academy of Sciences, W. H. Freeman & Co., San Francisco, 1969.

14. Daniels, F., Direct Use of the Sun's Energy, Yale University Press, 1964.

15. U.S. Atomic Engery Commission, CivilianNuclear Power, 1967 supplement to the 1962 report to the President, Washington, D.C.

16. Weinberg, A. M. and R. P. Hammond. "Limits to the Use of Energy," ican Scientist, 58, 4, July-August 19" p. 412-418.

*A detailed discussion of the background of the Dartmouth Environmental Studies program is presented in "Undergraduate Education in Environmental Studies," edited by W. A. Reiners and F. Smallwood, available from the Dartmouth Public Affairs Center

Professor Converse (c) author of this article, with Prof. S. Lawrence Dingman '60(r), who also taught Environmental Studies I, and Prof. Frank Smallwood '51co-chairman of Dartmouth's Environmental Studies Program, which has just beenawarded a two-year grant of $200,000 by the National Science Foundation.