Environmental Pollution Control

Technical, Economic and Legal Aspects

Allan D. McKnight, Pauline K. Marstrand, T. Craig Sinclair

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000692747
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Warming & Climate Change
• Index: Biological Sciences

Originally published in 1974 this volume brings together contributions from lawyers, a nuclear physicist, a landscape architect, biologist, engineers and a former Inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It covers technical and legal information on air, water, sea, land and noise pollution and provides a comprehensive guide, summary and introduction to the journal literature in separate but relevant disciplines. All of the contributors have specialised in studies in pollution control and contributed to the debate on use and management of the environment.

Chapter 1

Technology and Pollution: A Case for Assessment

by CRAIG SINCLAIR

Head of the Faculty in the Department of Innovation Management, International Institute for Management of Technology, Milan

Introduction

This introductory chapter attempts to discuss the background considerations applicable to the individual chapter discussions of particular pollutants and particular situations. In contrasting, as has been done in this book, the technological and the legal aspects of pollution, a balance is being demonstrated on an axis running from factual to arbitrary, between the impact of man on environment and his control of that impact. The impact arises from man’s technology, that is the utilisation of scientific knowledge to control nature. This impact can be given some factual or statistical basis. The legal aspect introduces the notion of arbitration and is that of controlling man’s nature itself.

That technology, in its adoption by industry for the increase of outputs, becomes a source of pollution seems to be a fact of industrial life. By the substitution of non-human energy sources for labour the load on the environment is increased. The increase in the scale of man’s activities and the increase in his numbers pose seemingly major threats to the biosphere and even to human existence itself. The crucial question is whether this increased ability of man to manipulate his environment and to increase his production of material goods leads inevitably to a corresponding or greater increase in pollution levels [1]. For example, technological change can often bring with it an inadvertent improvement of a particular environmental ill. The substitution of nuclear power undoubtedly places less load on the air per unit of output. However, environmental policies must plan to make such amelioration purposely. This will require the involvement of disciplines other than those of technologists alone. In particular, unless the economic basis of pollution is demonstrated the acceptance of a purely environmentalist or conservationist argument will simply prevent any economic growth.

The debate about growth has been acrimonious, confused and remains unresolved. It has, for reasons to be proffered below, centred largely upon the recent experience of the United States, where impacts and reaction have been strongest. The concern is now world wide. Many shades of opinion and special interests are apparent, pessimistic ecologist [2] and optimistic technocrat [3], middle class preservers [4] of the status quo and Marxist defenders [5] of technological progress; each has debated with growth exponents from developing countries [6] and zero population growth zealots [7] from the industrialised West. For Paul Erhlich [8] the root of the trouble is the rapid growth in world population in the past few decades and the unavoidable increases over the next few decades. To Barry Commoner [9] the essential cause lies with technological practice itself and with the exploitation of technology for private gain. In these latter two the argument, as in almost all subsequent discussion, has been extended to include the entire Earth.

Taxonomies of world crises have been extensively elaborated [10, 11]. These have ranged from biological warfare to the destruction of civilisation by the motor car and the annihilation of entire ecological chains by chemicals and so on. The ultimate, and in a sense logical, outcome has been the attempt to build a mathematical ‘model’ of the world by Forrester and Meadows supported by the Club of Rome [12]. Among the ways in which the model predicted disaster for the world was a pollution crisis. In this model the level of pollution rose inexorably with increasing production and the persistent pollutants affected both crop yields, lowering food production, and acted directly on life spans to reduce these drastically. With existing knowledge such extrapolation, while having some admonitory effect, borders on the foolhardy. The model also implicitly denied the possibility of useful social control being introduced in time. The shortcomings both of the model and the data it used in the pollution sector (as well as other fields) have been pointed out at length by the team at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex [13]. It is not the intention of this chapter, or this book for that matter, to review the arguments about potential global catastrophes in all their complexity, though it is hoped the volume will contribute to the debate. The aim is rather to describe, in particular detail, the mechanisms of the technologies involved and the legal procedures appropriate to their present and future control. The wider debate is mentioned here in order to make some linkage between the discussions of the individual chapters and to allow some comparative scaling of the problems.

The Scale of the Problem

The problems of pollution and environmental degradation are in a sense as large or as small as society chooses to make them. A neighbour’s noisy car or the threatened destruction of a local beauty spot can be dealt with on a local ad hoc basis or as part of the larger, more universal, problem. Recently the idea of a general attack from technology upon the quality of everyday life [14] has had a widespread and almost spontaneous impact upon society. This has arisen because of man’s comparatively powerful abilities (though patchily localised) to master and use nature and its forces for the satisfaction of his primary needs for food and shelter; Though achieved with strikingly varying degrees of success in different technological areas, this success has been sufficient in the past fifty to one hundred years to change the picture from a more or less delicately balanced and strenuously achieved utilisation of nature, to one where over-abundance and consumption distinguish certain large groups and societies today.

The concurrent advances of medical science have permitted a rapid population growth which presses hard upon available resources. The end, then, of a Tree fall’ with regard to man’s use of natural resources may have arrived.

Figures to illustrate the trends are not difficult to find. Man’s increasing control of nature and use of its resources can be looked at first from the standpoint of his increasing use of extra-human energy and, second, of his increasing demand on the Earth for food. Each of these pollutes or degrades the biosphere to some extent, depending upon the rationale and techniques employed. Increasing demands can mean increased environmental disturbance. It will be convenient, since we have chosen to deal only with pollution, to dispose of the principal element of the latter first.

This facet of the problem is that of the population increase and its multiprong attack on land. The attack consists of a rising demand, in terms of actual numbers, on food resources and a concomitant pressure in the form of an increasing world-wide trend to urbanisation. Thus as industrialisation draws from the rural population, so increasing numbers put demands on agricultural production. For example, the urban population in the USSR doubled between 1950 and 1969, rising from 69 to 134 million. In this way agriculture vies with industrial production and urban consumption as a producer of harmful refuse. Modern agriculture involves the use of pesticides which find their way into ecological chains with results which are wide ranging. Chemical fertilisers which may rapidly leach from the soil to watercourses add to the problem (see Chapter 5).

The statistics of the population increase are simple enough. There are about 3,700 million people in the world today and each year 70 million more are added. By the year 2000 the population will have almost doubled. This rate has been reached mainly by spectacular declines in mortality rates in the developing countries, some of which have growth rates as high as 3·5 per cent per annum against Western Europe’s 1 per cent. This particular and basic cause of environmental disturbance is not dealt with in this volume. Not because the problem is not severe, but because the solution is simple—not simple in sociological terms or in political terms perhaps, but simple in statement. The answer to overpopulation is clearly the control of fertility. Thus discussion of pollution arising from growth would become nugatory if no population limits were reached. For example, the birth rate in England and Wales in 1870 if continued would have resulted in the population in 1970 being 140 million instead of 46 million. The discussion in this volume is carried out in the belief that this aspect of the problem has a separate existence and solution.

Turning now to the first theme, demand for increased energy supplies, which has been rising steadily at 3 to 5 per cent per annum, can be used as a source of illustration. Presently, 98 per cent of the work done in the world is provided by the combustion of fossil fuel and by hydro-electric power, with a small but growing contribution from nuclear power; while 100 years ago all but 5 per cent derived from muscle power [15]. If electricity power consumption is examined, the growth rate has always been about twice that for energy as a whole and runs at about 8 per cent per annum. The United Nations [16] predict that, given a world average population growth of 2 per cent per annum and a real per capita income growth of 3·5 per cent per annum, the demand rate will increase at the above value until 1980.

On these assumptions the global consumption of electrical energy may look like

1970	4,900 × 10^9 kWh(e)
1988	10,500 × 10^9“
2000	33,600 × 10^9“

with total energy consumption rising at about half the electrical energy rate.

Such exponential rates of increase have two components relevant to consideration of the environmental effects. The first relates to the available resources and the effects of extracting them, and the second to the burden of residues and reject material involved in conversion. At present rates of increasing consumption the world’s known supply of mineable coal will be consumed before 2100, though with decreasing consumption it may last until 2300 or 2400 [17]. A comparable value for the recoverable petroleum stocks is 2025. The world potential for water power is largely untapped and estimates are that it could be increased tenfold to 3 × 10⁶ MWh(e). While there exist local possibilities for solar, geothermal and tidal power, the long-term prospect for power production must lie with nuclear power, hopefully fusion rather than fission, the potential energy of which is several orders of magnitude greater than the amount of chemical energy in fossil fuels. The growth of transportation will be a further contributor both to depletion of resources and to pollution. Chapter 3 considers the details of air pollution while the point to be made here is that the projected rates of increase of pollution from transport and other sources, in parallel with the growth figures above, demonstrates the extent to which the problem of pollution will grow if present programmes of control are not adaptable to future trends.

Definition of Impacts

An example from the Netherlands [18] is that of available water-cooling capacity for power production. Since the use of natural waters for this purpose imposes certain limits on allowable temperature rise (see Chapter 8) the total available to the Netherlands is roughly sufficient for 125,000 MW. By 2000 the demand will have reached 80,000 (at 7 per cent per annum increase) and pressure will be heavy o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Foreword by Lord Ashby
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Technology and Pollution: A Case for Assessment
• 2. Law and Administration
• 3. Technical Aspects of Air Pollution
• 4. The Law Relating to Air Pollution
• 5. Pollution of Inland Waters
• 6. The Law Relating to Pollution of Inland Waters
• 7. Land Dereliction: Technical and Administrative Aspects
• 8. Pollution of the Seas
• 9. The Law Relating to the Pollution of the Seas
• 10. Pollution by Noise: Social and Technical Aspects
• 11. The Law Relating to the Regulation of Noise
• 12. Conclusions
• Index