Faces of Safety and Environmental Engineering

Rachel Louise Carson (1907-1964) 

• first modern “eco-feminist” who sparked the environmentalmovement in the United States
• American biologist who wrote Silent Spring (1962);  book’s title suggested a time when birdpopulations are greatly reduced as a result of pesticides bio-accumulation andcould no longer be heard singing in the Spring.
• Principle of ‘bio-magnification’ - the process by which apollutant becomes increasingly concentrated as it moves up the food chain andbuilds up in the human body over an individual’s lifetime.
• Carson’s advocacies led to the formation of US EnvironmentalProtection Agency (USEPA) in 1970, the Environmental Impact Assessment System,the Council of Environmental Quality; the Environmental Defense 
• Fund wascreated in 1967 with money from her estate (first ENGO)testified before the US Congress and campaigned againstpesticide DDT -DichloroDiphenylTrichloroethane –– that weakens the eggshells ofraptors; results in bioaccumulation of toxic chemicals in the food chain
• Ironically Carson died of cancer in 1964 before she saw thefruit of her labor:
• In 1992, a panel of distinguished Americans declared RachelCarson's Silent Spring as one of the most influential books ofthe last century.
• She was a superwoman who almost single-handedly alertedAmericans to the dark side of industrial technology. 

Aldo Leopold (1898-1948)

• Father of wildlife ecology – contributed to environmentalethics.
• A Sand County Almanac (1948)
• Leopold’s Personal Land Ethic
• each person must become a steward of the land.
• humans need to integrate themselves into the pyramid oflife, rather than attempt to control it, and personal ethics should extend tothe natural world. This is necessary for the healthy existence of both humansand the natural world
• “That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology,but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”
• “A land ethic changes the role of homo sapiens fromconqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it…it impliesrespect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”
• Environmental Ethics and Philosophy of stewardship and“adaptive management” in ENR conservation was of profound importance to theenvironmental movement
• “Leopold’s matrix”

Dr. Eugene Pleasants Odum (1913-2002)

• Father of Systematic Ecology
• Coined the word ‘ecosystem’
• Holistic approach in the study of the environment –interrelating biology, geology, geography, hydrology, climatology, etc.
• Suggested a hard-nosed scientific approach to regionalplanning
• The first Earth Day in 1970 adopted his concept of the‘Living Earth’ as a global set of interlaced ecosystems

Dr. Garret Hardin (1915-2003)

• Redefined ‘Malthusian K’ as ‘Carrying capacity’ referring“the maximum population of a given species that can be supported indefinitelyin a defined habitat without permanently impairing the productivity of thathabitat.”
• “Tragedy of the Commons (Science, 1968)
• When environmental resources have poorly defined propertyrights, individuals enjoy free unlimited access and the right to use withoutexclusion, each individual is motivated to maximize his or her own benefitsfrom exploiting the resource, to the point that uncontrolled demand acceleratesthe depletion of the resource. When no individual has adequate incentive toconserve the environment, there arises free-rider problem.
• Hardin’s parable illustrates how free access anduncontrolled demand for a finite resource ultimately leads to over-exploitationof that resource
• The costs of exploitation are distributed between all thoseto whom the resource is available as well as third parties – such as pollution(externalities)

Dr. Barry Commoner (1917- )

• Ecologist and educator who studied effects of radiation onliving tissue and their chemical and biological damage to the biosphere.
• Among those who called for end to nuclear bomb tests asearly as 1953
• Formulated the Four Laws of Ecology (National Geographic,1970)
• “Nature knows best.”
• “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”
• “Everything is connected to everything else” “We cannever do merely one thing”
• “Everything goes somewhere.” “There's no away to throwto”
• an outspoken, sometimes radical motivator of change on suchenvironmental issues as energy conservation, pesticide use, waste managementand control of toxic chemicals, Commoner founded the Center for the Biology ofNatural Systems (CBNS).