Inventing for the Environment

Edited by Arthur Molella and Joyce Bedi
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
In Association with The Lemelson Center
Smithsonian Institution
Washington D.C

Reviewed by: Marja Saab

"Inventing for the Environment" consists of a collection of essays written by specialists in a wide variety of fields; they include environmental, science technology and business historians as well as engineers, scientists, architects and town planners.

Together the authors explore the complex relationship among invention, innovation and the environment in a historical context and look at ways to use technical innovations in helping solve the many threats to the global environment in the future.

Contrary to many existing books on environmental studies this book does not deal with a single issue but crosses specialists' boundaries.
Each chapter focuses on a single environmental issue and consists of two essays: one by a historian and the other by a practitioner followed by a portrait of an individual whose invention has made significant improvements for the environment.

Mixing historians and practitioners is very important as the very concept of the environment is deeply embedded in time and change.
Topics range from urban landscapes, city planning, architecture and public health to alternative energy sources and industrial ecology. The essays in this book are meant to try to create a new definition of environmentalism.

The role of invention in environmental history is still relatively unexplored; with this book the authors hope to put the past to use for the common good and to see environmentalism as a paradigm change.

In the chapter on Innovations in Urban Landscapes a historian analyzes the 'nature of Nature' in Washington D.C., the evolution of the city's landscape and the way construction and biology were balanced over time; a former Zoo director explains why bio parks are now needed more than ever to educate new generations about biodiversity and to instil a respect for nature.

The chapter on Innovations in city planning talks about utopian efforts in the 30's to create techno-cities: as examples of "high modernism" they reflected the sign of that time with of an unwavering faith in science, technology, and control over nature.

The fact that those experiments eventually failed shows us that the chain of historical and ecological interconnections can never be fully controlled.
Another essay on urban planning is about the architect Paolo Soleri and the revolutionary artist/architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser; both visionaries have explicit ideas about less traditional ways of building in order to reduce human impact on the planet.

Building with straw bales is discussed in another chapter; this revival of an old technique is described from environmental and historical perspectives.
An example of a successful construction with straw bales is described in the next chapter.
The portrait of innovation is about a design firm that successfully recycles post-consumer products into customized surfacing materials.
The relation between public health, technological innovations and the environment is addressed in a next chapter.

A historian traces the history of sanitary services in the US and in England and how belief systems, technology and health were connected.
The portrait of innovation is on an Indian physicist who designed a simple, energy efficient and portable device to disinfect drinking water in poor communities.
We read about the effects of alternative energy sources on the environment in Southern California and the important role of the government in implementing emission-control policies.
The biggest challenge however remains the ever-growing number of cars on the roads in the future according to the author.

A physicist in a next chapter argues that reducing emissions alone won't be sufficient. He presents new ways of alternative energy use and describes the Hypercar, a prototype of an automobile that is extremely energy efficient.

He points out that we need to get out of the state of unnatural capitalism and move in the direction of a natural capitalism.
Capitalists have long valued physical and financial capital but they have not enough valued human and natural capital which is bigger, more valuable, more important and less substitutable.

Economics tells us to economize on our scarcest resources so it is not more than logic to make the natural resources more productive through many cost barriers. The author is optimistic this can be done, not just at reasonable cost but profitable; at the end it will be much cheaper to save fuel than to buy it or burn it.

In a chapter on industrial ecology, a business historian traces the history of the inadequate early industrial waste management to the point we have reached now and she underlines the need to connect business with the natural world as they are not two separate entities.

The role of historians of business, according to the author is to try to analyze and to explain how business got to the point it is today in its management of its environmental impacts. Businesses should come to see themselves as part of a broad socio-environmental system and find ways to making the transition to new, more effective ways of alleviating industrial's harmful environmental impacts. In this context it is good to mention that big companies such as BP and Shell redefine themselves as energy companies rather than fossil-fuel companies and are setting up environmentally sensitive practices as one author remarks.

A practitioner stresses on the importance of linking technology, human culture and economics in their effects on the environment.
The essence of industrial ecology goes beyond a system of merely developing more knowledge about specific subsystems; it demands a holistic understanding of a complex of human and natural systems and can be described as "the science of sustainability".

This book provides its readers with new and unusual perspectives that will affect the way they think about technology and the environment, now and in the future.
As one author puts it: "Inventing for the environment sometimes means looking at a problem from another angle, in other cases it means rediscovering old ways, using very modern technology or linking economics in new ways.
It must include the best of the old, the best of the new and the ability to learn from what we do: in short we have to respond with creativity to challenges".