Two sides of the same coin

Two important articles yesterday from two very different newspapers.  The first article was written by Keslie Kaufman and Kate Zernike of the New York Times.  The article, Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot, explores the Tea Party's opposition to sustainability and green projects.  From the Maine Tea-Party backed governor canceling a project to ease congestion along Route 1 corridor (the Tea Party claimed it was part of a U.N. plot) to opposition to a high-speed train line in Florida - - opposition to sustainability (or progress for that matter) reduces to a rather simple equation.  Sustainability = socialism and if you are part of a transit planning organization and you have your national conference in San Francisco on May 1, that = Communism.

The article highlighted the plight of the Roanoke County Va. Board of Supervisors as they voted down $1,200 in dues to a nonprofit that consults on sustainability issues.  As one of the supervisors observed in the article - -

"The Tea Party people say they want nonpolluted air and clean water and everything we promote and support, but they also say it's a communist movement," said Charlotte Moore, a supervisor who voted yes, "I really don't understand what they want."

The second article is by David Owen in the Wall Street Journal - - It's Too Easy Being Green.  Owen is also the author of The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse.  The issue boils down to this - - if next week we can all drive cars that get a 100 MPG, what will we do with those apparent savings?  A portion of the population will consume their efficiency savings - - either drive more, buy an additional car, and/or buy a bigger house farther from work (I covered this issue previously in The Jevons Principle). 

Owen writes the following - -

"Even if you think that climate change is a left-wing crock, this ought to be a matter of gnawing concern.  Global energy use is growing faster than population.  It's expected to double by midcentury, and most of the growth will be fossil fuel.  Disasters like the BP oil spill attract world-wide attention, but the main environmental, economic, and geopolitical challenge with petroleum isn't the oil that goes into the ocean; it is the oil we continue to use as we intend.

Many people assume that we'll conquer our addiction through technological innovation.  But engineering breakthroughs  not only enable machines to do more work with less fuel; they also make it possible to manufacture new and desirable products, swelling our contentment as consumers and further increasing our dependence."

In the middle of this two sided coin, one side representing the politics of sustainability and the other side the economic realities of sustainability, rests engineering.  The two sides represent the social and technical dimensions of a huge and complex global issue.  The key thing is that neither technical or social measures alone will suffice in effectively tackling the problem.  Just the word "engineering" alone seems very inadequate in this century.  Our collective success depends on the concept of "sociotechnical engineering" being recognized widely in the profession and the people we serve.  The sociotechnical issues emerging in cities and countries will need novel combinations of sophisticated technology coupled with intelligently novel social policy and incentive approaches.