by Dr. Braden Allenby, AT&T EH&S Vice President

Last month’s column raised the question of how the Internet and its postmodernist pastiche of time and place is liable to change social perceptions and mental models of environmental issues, firmly rooted in times and places. It hinted at another insight complicating environmental analysis and policy: technologies complex enough to have real environmental benefits are far too complicated to be understood – or even perceived – as a „green technology.”

This realization is yet another illustration of the poorly understood evolution of environmental concerns from „overhead” to „strategic.” Environmental issues have gone from being treated only after the fact as remediation and compliance problems, to being integrated into core activities of individuals, firms, and society. In doing so, however, they inevitably lose their „privileged” status; they become only one dimension of an activity — and frequently not the most important one. For example, if I build a green accounting system for a firm, it does not mean that suddenly environmental costs and benefits outweigh all other data. Rather, it means that information on environmental costs becomes another input to the decision process – and, depending on competing issues, may not be relevant or even addressed.

Turn now to „green technology.” While this is frequently defined broadly („any technology that has environmental benefits”), in practice it tends to be end-of-pipe compliance and remediation technology. Important, especially at a local level, for maintaining air and water quality? Sure. But meaningful in the context of an earth? Not really. And the concept hides an important dilemma: for a number of reasons, environmental professionals and environmentalists are poorly positioned to be able to understand, much less work with, technology as a discipline.

To understand this, consider recent important „environmental” technologies. The problem: a high level of silver, an aquatic toxicant, in San Francisco Bay (and other aquatic environments). Research uncovers the source – photographic operations, including dentist and doctor offices. One possible solution, not very feasible, is to try to regulate all photographic activities and products. The real environmental solution? Digital photography.

Or consider the environmental and social dimensions of e-commerce. A critical technology for making business-to-consumer e-commerce more environmentally preferable are more efficient algorithms for solving the so-called „traveling salesman” problem – that is, how to visit a number of points in the most efficient manner. Is it „environmental”? Sure – but it’s also a lot more than that. In fact, the link between efficient routing algorithms and the environment is intuitive neither for those who developed them, nor environmentalists.

Similarly, the introduction of automobiles probably saved U.S. forests, which were being decimated by the need for land to grow oats to support a fast-growing horse population. Telework may have significant environmental benefits, but it is used because it engenders improvements in business efficiency while enhancing quality of life for employees and their families. Its impacts could be far more profound, however: it offers freedom for the mobility challenged, including a rapidly expanding senior demographic, enabling them to continue to participate in the economy.

These examples hint at several truths. First, a technology capable of producing significant environmental benefits may have no obvious environmental dimensions, especially when viewed through increasingly archaic environmental mental models. Second, any such technology will be sufficiently complex in its technical, economic, cultural, social, ethical, and environmental dimensions so that interpretation through any single lens, especially environmentalism, will be dysfunctional. Finally, it is yet another indication that those who seriously want to engage with environmental issues in the future are best advised to study „non-environmental” disciplines, bringing to that study their environmental consciousness.