Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
are advocating the deployment of certain technologies first in developing
areas of the world.
Socolow has been the editor of the
Annual Review of Energy and the Envi-
ronment
since 1993. With the help of an editorial committee, he selects
themes and solicits articles that bring research in the natural and social sci-
ences and in technology to the attention of a wide community of scientists,
engineers, and policy analysts in the academy, government, in industry, and
in non-governmental organizations. Socolow stepped down as director of
CEES in 1997, when he took a sabbatical that included travel in China and
India. He teaches innovative courses in environmental science, technology,
and policy based at the MAE Department and at Princeton's Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Socolow's most recent interest is industrial ecology. Industrial ecology
encompasses two lines of analysis. The first, introduced by Robert Frosch
and Nicholas Gallopoulos and developed by Braden Allenby, Thomas
Graedel, and Robert Laudise at AT&T, is concerned with material flows
within industry. It takes natural ecology as a model, particularly in looking
at waste products. In nature, one organism's wastes become another organ-
ism's food. These researchers seek opportunities for the waste products of
one industry to become the raw materials of another. The second line of
thinking, led by Robert Ayers at Carnegie Mellon University, traces the
flow of materials—arsenic, for example, or lead—through both the natural
and industrial environments, on a regional or a global scale.
Socolow became involved with industrial ecology when he was asked to
head a 1992 workshop on industrial ecology and global change at Snow-
mass, Colorado.“Industrial ecology gave my career a second wind,” he says.
“With industrial ecology, I'm able to return to the resource and environ-
mental issues and themes that first brought me into environmental work
and that motivated
Patient Earth.
” Socolow has been using the industrial
ecology approach to address the fate of three elements: carbon, lead, and
nitrogen.
The carbon problem that interests Socolow is called carbon sequestra-
tion. It is a way to slow down global warming, by reducing the rate of
increase of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. Socolow
explains that the version of carbon sequestration that interests him “involves
continuing to use fossil fuels, but preventing most of the carbon in these
fuels from reaching the atmosphere.” He continues:“For example, after cap-
turing the carbon at a power plant as carbon dioxide, one might send the
