Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Even mechanical engineers, whom we may at first blush think of as being
concerned mainly about nonliving things, are embracing sustainable design in
a large way. In fact, in many ways the mechanical engineering profession is
out in front on sustainable design. For example, the ASME Web site draws a
systematic example from ecology: “To an engineer, a sustainable system is one
that is in equilibrium or changing at a tolerably slow rate. In the food chain, for
example, plants are fed by sunlight, moisture and nutrients, and then become food
themselves for insects and herbivores, which in turn act as food for larger animals.
The waste from these animals replenishes the soil, which nourishes plants, and
the cycle begins again.” 20
Sustainability is, therefore, a systematic phenomenon, so it is not surprising
that engineers have embraced the concept of sustainable design. At the largest
scale, manufacturing, transportation, commerce, and other human activities that
promote high consumption and wastefulness of finite resources cannot be sus-
tained. At the individual designer scale, the buildings, products and processes that
engineers design must be considered for their entire useful lifetimes and beyond.
The Tragedy of the Commons
Since sustainability requires knowing what is important, it requires a sense of
what is valued by the client, who is ultimately the public. In addition, such
thinking requires some forecast of what will be valued in the future, which
means that we need a way to divvy up the values among the disparate groups
that comprise the present and future stakeholders. Garrett Hardin (1915-2003)
postulated a means of doing this. Hardin was a biologist by training and an ethicist
by reputation. In 1968 he wrote a hugely influential article entitled “The Tragedy
of the Commons,” which has become a “must-read” in every ecology course and
increasingly in ethics courses. In this article Hardin imagines an English village
with a common area where everyone's cow may graze. The common is able to
sustain the cows, and village life is stable until one of the villagers figures out that
if he gets two cows instead of one, the cost of the extra cow will be shared by
everyone while the profit will be his alone. So he gets two cows and prospers,
but others see this and similarly want two cows. If two, why not three—and so
on—until the village common is no longer able to support the large number of
cows, and everyone suffers. 21
A similar argument can be made for the use of nonrenewable resources. If
we treat diminishing resources such as oil and minerals as capital gains, we will
soon find ourselves in the “common” difficulty of having an insufficient support
system.
Hardin's parable, however, does demonstrate that even though the individual
sees the utility of preservation (no new cows) in a collective sense, the ethical
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