Materials and the Environment: Eco-Informed Material Choice
Growing awareness and legislative response
Table 5.1 lists nine documents that have had profound influence on current thinking about the effects of human activity on the environment. The publications span a little less than 50 years. Over this period the approach to pollution and environmental law has evolved through a number of phases,[16] best summarized in the following way:
■ Ignore it: pretend it isn't there
■ Dilute it: make the smokestack taller or pump it further out to sea
■ Fix it where it is a problem: the "end-of-pipe" approach
■ Prevent it in the first place: the first appearance of design for the environment
■ Sustainable development: life in equilibrium with the environment— the phase we are in now
Current thinking has stimulated national legislation and international protocols and agreements. The international agreements tend to be broad statements of intent. The national legislation, by contrast, tends to be specific and detailed.
Historically, environmental legislation has targeted individual, obvious problems—dumping of toxic waste, lead in petrol, water pollution, ozone depletion—taking a command and control approach: "Thou shalt not" cast in modern terms. There is a growing recognition that this approach can lead to perverse effects, where action to fix one isolated problem simply
International treaties, protocols, and conventions 87
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Table 5.1 Required reading: landmark publications |
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Date, author, and title |
Subject |
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1962: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring |
Meticulous examination of the consequences of the use of the pesticide DDT and of the impact of technology on the environment. |
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1972: Club of Rome, Limits to Growth |
The report that triggered the first of a sequence of debates in the 20th century on the ultimate limits imposed by resource depletion. |
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1972: The Earth Summit in Stockholm |
The first conference convened by the United Nations to discuss the impact of technology on the environment. |
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1987: The UN World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), Our common future |
Known as the Brundtland Report, it defined the principle of sustainability as "Development that meets the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." |
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1987: Montreal Protocol |
The International Protocol to phase out the use of chemicals that deplete ozone in the stratosphere. |
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1992: Rio Declaration |
An international statement of the principles of sustainability, building on those of the 1972 Stockholm Earth Summit. |
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1998: Kyoto Protocol |
An international treaty to reduce the emissions of gases that, through the greenhouse effect, cause climate change. |
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2001: Stockholm Convention |
The first of ongoing meetings to agree on an agenda for the control and phaseout of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). |
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2007: IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Basis |
This Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) establishes beyond any reasonable doubt the correlation between carbon in the atmosphere and climate change. |
shifts the burden elsewhere and may even increase it. For this reason there has been a shift from command and control legislation toward the use of economic instruments—green taxes, subsidies, trading schemes—that seek to use market forces to encourage the efficient use of materials and energy. We have already seen that some activities create environmental burdens that have costs that are not paid for by the provider or user. These are called external costs, or externalities. A more effective approach is to transfer the costs back to the activity creating it, thereby internalizing them.
