Popular Names in the field of EnEng

—Rachel Louise Carson (1907-1964)

·          —first modern “eco-feminist” who sparked the environmental movement in the United States

·         — American biologist who wrote Silent Spring (1962);  book’s title suggested a time when bird populations are greatly reduced as a result of pesticides bio-accumulation and could no longer be heard singing in the Spring.

·          —Principle of ‘bio-magnification’ - the process by which a pollutant becomes increasingly concentrated as it moves up the food chain and builds up in the human body over an individual’s lifetime.

·         — Carson’s advocacies led to the formation of US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in 1970, the Environmental Impact Assessment System, the Council of Environmental Quality; the Environmental Defense Fund was created in 1967 with money from her estate (first ENGO)

·         — testified before the US Congress and campaigned against pesticide DDT -DichloroDiphenylTrichloroethane –– that weakens the eggshells of raptors; results in bioaccumulation of toxic chemicals in the food chain

·          —Ironically Carson died of cancer in 1964 before she saw the fruit of her labor:

·          —In 1992, a panel of distinguished Americans declared Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as one of the most influential books of the last century.

·          —She was a superwoman who almost single-handedly alerted Americans to the dark side of industrial technology.

—Aldo Leopold (1898-1948)

·          —Father of wildlife ecology – contributed to environmental ethics.

·          —A Sand County Almanac (1948)

·          —Leopold’s Personal Land Ethic

·          —each person must become a steward of the land.

·          —humans need to integrate themselves into the pyramid of life, rather than attempt to control it, and personal ethics should extend to the natural world. This is necessary for the healthy existence of both humans and the natural world

—“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”

—“A land ethic changes the role of homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it…it implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”

·         — Environmental Ethics and Philosophy of stewardship and “adaptive management” in ENR conservation was of profound importance to the environmental movement

·          —“Leopold’s matrix”

—Dr. Eugene Pleasants Odum (1913-2002)

·          —Father of Systematic Ecology

·          —Coined the word ‘ecosystem’

·          —Holistic approach in the study of the environment – interrelating biology, geology, geography, hydrology, climatology, etc.

·         — Suggested a hard-nosed scientific approach to regional planning

·          —The first Earth Day in 1970 adopted his concept of the ‘Living Earth’ as a global set of interlaced ecosystems

—Dr. Garret Hardin (1915-2003)

·         — Redefined ‘Malthusian K’ as ‘Carrying capacity’ referring “the maximum population of a given species that can be supported indefinitely in a defined habitat without permanently impairing the productivity of that habitat.”

·          —“Tragedy of the Commons (Science, 1968)

·          When environmental resources have poorly defined property rights, individuals enjoy free unlimited access and the right to use without exclusion, each individual is motivated to maximize his or her own benefits from exploiting the resource, to the point that uncontrolled demand accelerates the depletion of the resource. When no individual has adequate incentive to conserve the environment, there arises free-rider problem.

·         — Hardin’s parable illustrates how free access and uncontrolled demand for a finite resource ultimately leads to over-exploitation of that resource

·          —The costs of exploitation are distributed between all those to whom the resource is available as well as third parties – such as pollution (externalities)

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—Dr. Barry Commoner (1917- )

·         — Ecologist and educator who studied effects of radiation on living tissue and their chemical and biological damage to the biosphere.

·          —Among those who called for end to nuclear bomb tests as early as 1953

·          —Formulated the Four Laws of Ecology (National Geographic, 1970)

—“Nature knows best.”

—“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

—“Everything is connected to everything else” “We can never do merely one thing”

—“Everything goes somewhere.” “There's no away to throw to”

·          —an outspoken, sometimes radical motivator of change on such environmental issues as energy conservation, pesticide use, waste management and control of toxic chemicals, Commoner founded the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems (CBNS),

—Dr. William Rees: Ecological Footprint

·          —Every individual, process, and activity has an impact on the earth via (1) resource use, (2) generation of waste and (3) use of service provided by nature. These inputs can be converted into biologically productive area, on a per hectare basis.

·          —Ecological footprint approximates the amount of productive land and water resources needed to sustain a population in producing all the goods we consume and to get rid of the wastes and pollution generated. It accounts the use of energy, food, water, building materials and all other consumables. Calculations are presented as a measure of land area in global hectares (gha) per capita. It is used as an indicator of environmental sustainability

·          —“How much land in various categories is required to support the region’s population indefinitely at a given material standard?” This varies depending on a region’s standard of living and is a per capita index which is an indication of the land area required (or consumed) to support a given population (Dr. William Rees & Wackernagel, Ecological Footprint on Appropriated Carrying  Capacity EF/ACC, 1992).

·          —Every major category of consumption of waste discharge requires the productive or absorptive capacity of a finite area of land or water (ecosystem). In accounting for this land, the total area becomes the ecological footprint or the carrying capacity ‘appropriated’ by that economy. The concept of the ecological footprint describes how much carrying capacity is appropriated by any region, based on its standard of living, through the importing of resources from around the globe. Ecological Footprint provides society with a tool which indicates resource consumption and can be used in ranking development options based on their ecological impact.

·          —Calculating your ecological footprint gives an estimate of how much “nature” is consumed from your everyday life choices and if the planet, given its limited resources, can actually sustain this lifestyle.

·         — Human population and average consumption are increasing while the total area of productive land and stocks of natural capital are fixed or in decline

·         — Human induced ecological stress is a function not only population but also of  per capita consumption

·          —Consumption is growing more rapidly than population

·          —Ecological Footprint is intended as a quantitative measure of sustainability. EF may be used by civic groups to measure how sustainability is exceeded

·          —It is summation of a land use/consumption matrix.

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