Skip to main content

Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals (1996) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:

F Summary of Breakout-Group Discussions
Pages 497-500

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 497...
... GROUP I Group I enjoyed the breakout session portion of the meeting and felt that this portion should be expanded in future years to provide more time for discussion. As to issues that were addressed in the forum, Group I felt that the following issues were not sufficiently discussed during the forum: • Energy • Water • Transportation • Population • Land use Its overall recommendation was that science and technology could help society by developing an infrastructure for a systems approach to monitoring that would provide an early warning system for such emerging areas as biotechnology; a decentralized monitoring system for data collected by local governments; and a centralized adaptive management approach to federal government activities such as that at the Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institutes of Health.
Read the entire page →
From page 498...
... Other issues that need to be addressed are the level to which the public is engaged in risk-assessment and why the environmental effort at the federal level is separated into so many agencies, as opposed to a single institution. Issues that Group II felt should be addressed were these: • Monitoring of biological, physical, and chemical changes • Development of a source of available, inexpensive, renewable, noncarbon energy, while keeping in mind that conservation is still the least expensive source of energy • Understanding of complex ecological, human, and other dynamic systems • Development of negentropic technologies for mixing and separating products Such diverse subjects could be linked by a high-quality robust federal research and development system that focuses on the environment and is capable of coupling societal goals to science and technology.
Read the entire page →
From page 499...
... in protecting the environment; • economic science -- how to balance benefits and costs, the cost of environmental compliance, the willingness of the current generation to sacrifice for the future, and the appropriate role of government in fostering environmental science and technology particularly with respect to incentives to companies to invest in such technologies; • materials science in high-strength fibers, composites, chemicals, and electronic chemicals; and • institutional impediments in the ecological system, transportation, biotechnology, and industrial progress.
Read the entire page →

Key Terms

  • evaluate progress
  • ocean pollution
  • information base
  • engineering community
  • balance benefits

  • decentralized monitoring
  • societal goals
  • current generation
  • setting priorities
  • diverse subjects

  • technology particularly
  • takes action
  • fostering environmental
  • damage occurs
  • social context

  • environmental science
  • centralized adaptive
  • robust federal
  • environmental effort
  • session portion

  • breakout session
  • management approach
  • lack thereof
  • single institution
  • current dilemmas

  • teach environmental
  • engineering schools
  • scientific activities
  • appropriate role
  • coupling societal


    • This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
    More information on Chapter Skim is available.