Said differently, wood weighs in heavily at ten effective Cs for each H. Combining the pure carbon of cellulose and the 0.5 ratio of lignin, wood with 20% lignin effectively has an H:C ratio of 0.1. Lignin has a complex benzenic structure with an H:C ratio of about 0.5. Heated cellulose leaves charcoal, almost pure carbon. Wood is made of much cellulose and some lignin. In fact, the truly desirable element in these fuels for energy generation is not their carbon (C) but their hydrogen (H). Carbon enters the energy economy in the hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil, and gas, as well as wood. Raw carbon blackens miners’ lungs and escapes from containers to form spills and slicks. But burnt carbon in local places can cause smog and in very large amounts can change the global climate. DecarbonizationĬarbon matters because it burns combustion releases energy. Let me now focus on two cardinal directions for technique, for engineering, decarbonization of energy and landless agriculture. During the past two centuries we have become more systematic and aggressive about it, through the diffusion of research & development and the institutions that perform them, including corporations and universities. Since ever, homo faber has been trying to make things better and to make better things. Sales of new “anti-depressants,” mostly tinkering with serotonin in the brain, are about $10 billion in 1999, having penetrated only perhaps 10% of their global market.īecause, it seems to me, these forms of social control are unreliable, we should emphasis our greatest success, bettering technique. Pharmacology also tries, with increasing success. Law and religion both try, though the snake brain keeps reasserting itself, in crime and in punishment. Of course, innovations may occur that control individual and social behavior. They will not change on time scales considered for “sustainable development.” Our brains and thus our basic instincts and behaviors have remained unchanged for a million years or more. The snake brain controls courtship, patrolling of territory (including our daily 75-minute travel budget), displays of dominance and submission, and flocking. Thus, we share primal patterns of behavior with other animals, just as they share those brain structures. But economical evolution did not replace the reptilian brain, it added. This neomammalian brain enabled language, visualization, and symbolic skills. In humans came the most recent evolutionary structure, the hugely expanded neocortex. In mammals another brain appeared, the paleomammalian, with new particular behavior, for example, care of the young and mutual grooming. The earliest, found in reptiles, MacLean calls the snake brain. In a remarkable 1990 book, The Triune Brain in Evolution , neuroscientist Paul MacLean explained that humans have three brains, each developed during a stage of evolution. Then I will exemplify technical change in energy and agriculture in the cardinal directions it must go. įirst I will explain what I mean by the unchanging human brain.
Thus, the chance for improving Earth’s environment hinges on engineers, and therefore their social context and technical vision. Engineers, receiving feedback from the market and regulated wisely in the public interest, do much of the improving. That is, technology must change, must improve, to accommodate billions more people and to lift the standard of living. My message is my title: Because the Human Brain Does Not Change, Technology Must. (Note: The figures are at the end of this document for easier online reading.) The paper is based on a talk Jesse gave at the UN Commission on Sustainable Development meetings in New York in April 1999. It was republished in: IEEE Aerospace and Electronic SYSTEMS 14(10):3-6, October 1999. This paper was originally published by the American Association of Engineering Societies (Washington D.C.), in a report “Production Efficiencies: The Engineers’ Report,” pp. Keywords: Human behavior, decarbonization, agricultural land useĪreas of Research: Technology & Human Environment
Republished in: IEEE Aerospace and Electronic SYSTEMS 14(10):3-6, October 1999.
Citation: Production Efficiencies: The Engineers' Report, American Association of Engineering Societies, Washington, D.C.
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