Sustainability science suggests that effective environmental protection requires an integrated systems approach.
It has been 40 years since the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA; signed into law January 1, 1970), which established a broad environmental policy for the United States, and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency's 40th birthday on December 2, 2010 provides an opportunity to take stock of its past successes and future challenges.
Since 1970, important advances in environmental protection, product design, and occupational safety have been prompted by problem-, media-, and chemical-specific legislation. Our air and water are now cleaner, less pollution is being produced, and many waste sites are being restored. Yet despite such significant progress, it has become clear that the new century's problems are more complex and involve multiple environmental media and stressors: they therefore require new kinds of interdisciplinary thinking and systems solutions.
Today, the resilience of both human society and the natural environment are being tested on a global level by pressures of population and economic growth, which have in turn led to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, declining biodiversity, and other threats to such vital natural resources as fresh water, soil, forests, and wetlands. The threats were clearly delineated in the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which determined that 15 of 24 global ecosystem services are being degraded or used unsustainably (1).
It is also becoming clear that the forces influencing human and ecological health are systemic and interdependent. The scientific and regulatory communities are struggling to deal with impacts of changes in climate, land use, and ecosystems; faster technological change and emergence of biotechnology and nanotechnology; cumulative and possibly synergistic effects from exposure to multiple compounds; and concerns about bioaccumulative toxicants and nonpoint pollution sources.
All of these stressors suggest that it is time to launch a new dialogue on science and the environment. How can science best address these problems, and what critical next steps are needed to move environmental science into the 21st century? History shows an early recognition of multiple stressors acting on the environment and the need to address them in an integrated manner. It is urgent today to investigate and determine how best to address this need.
Evolution of Environmental Science and Policy
At the beginning of the 20th century, the first environmental movement in the U.S. was led by a diverse coalition of conservationists and business leaders seeking to preserve and manage land resources for their most valuable uses. Both groups saw the need for the government to intervene in the market with new laws and regulations, especially on government-owned lands. The legislation that set aside land for the first national park at Yellowstone called for the Department of Interior to preserve in their natural conditions the park's timber, mineral deposits, and natural wonders (2).
The early environmental movement was also advanced by scientific research on health, occupational hazards, and air pollution. The research in turn generated attention and political debate on the respective roles of government and the private sector. Subsequent events highlighted the linkage of economic activities to health and safety. For example, in 1948, a temperature inversion trapped toxic gases from zinc and steel plants in Donora, Pennsylvania; 20 people died and approximately half of the town's 14,000 residents became ill (3). In 1969 the Cuyahoga River oil-slick fire drew national attention to environmental problems in the Great Lakes region and elsewhere in the U.S.
Events like these prompted the launch of a second environmental movement that focused less on conservation and more on short-term risks faced by humans in their everyday lives. U.S. environmental policy advanced the concept of risk management as a basis for policy actions. Social and urban justice movements concerned with public health played a critical role in shaping the 20th century environmental movement and subsequent passage of federal and state environmental laws (4). At the same time, environmental stressors such as population growth, urban development, and industrial pollution motivated the enactment of NEPA, the creation of EPA, and the first international environmental conference in Stockholm in 1972.
Electric Mobility: coordination of policy measures and cooperation between policy actors will pave the way towards an electric driven, integrated transport system of the future.
In the
years 2008 and 2009, one could observe a rapidly growing interest by industry
and the public in the electrification of transportation. Public discussions
about crude oil independency, greenhouse gases, climate change, and energy
efficiency have put pressure on public administrations for more responsible,
more sustainable, and system-integrated transport solutions. Electric mobility
is seen by many as a very promising problem-solving technology for emission
challenges or congestion problems in urban areas as well as the bridging
technology towards the hydrogen age in transport. The latest driving factors
for policy makers were influenced by improvements in battery technology and the
first market introductions of hybrid technologies like mild-hybrid vehicles
with start-stop generators or regenerative brakes, and the success of
full-hybrid vehicles from various car manufacturers like Toyota/Lexus, Honda,
Ford, GM/Opel, VW, BMW, and Mercedes. Those vehicles improved the consumers'
acceptance and expectations for future vehicle technologies. For example, consumers
were willing to be wait-listed for up to six months to receive their cars by
early 2009, when the US
market made up more than 500.000 of the 1.2 million Priuses sold worldwide. Furthermore,
press and media are publishing news in the field of electric mobility and
electric-drive trains on a nearly daily basis. This shapes public opinion and
raises pressure on car manufacturers to present and implement new electric
transport solutions and infrastructure.
Policy makers worldwide now have to
reset and realign the organizational, logistic, and R&D framework of
national transport systems to stimulate the integration of new energy and
transport technologies to reflect public interests. This is a challenge that
requires combined efforts of the energy and the automotive sectors - two
sectors that have not been connected that strongly in the past will be looking
to an effective and efficient transport system of the future.
Vehicles, infrastructure, and users are the key elements for the integration of electric mobility into the transport system.
Public authorities now work out
policy priorities and instruments (programs, plans, etc.) to prepare necessary
changes of:
the transport
infrastructure,
the vehicles,
and
the transport
participants (user behavior and awareness)
caused by the expected
diversification of transport fuels and propulsion technologies.
Deriving from those plans, most
governments are formulating mid- and long-term policy measures in order to:
stimulate the research, development, and demonstration
(R&D&D) of new technologies
incorporate new technologies into existing transport
systems, and
adapt the regulative framework.
The following descriptions provide a
brief overview of the latest national policy activities in the US and Europe.
Under the motto "better policy, better science", mostly young and highly motivated scientists organized - for the first time - a Canadian Science Policy Conference from October 28 - 30, 2009, in Toronto. The conference aimed at establishing a (missing) link between the scientific community with policymakers and other enablers of research and to take a first step towards building a science policy network in Canada.
The conference assembled a distinguished crowd of more then 60 speakers and approximately 400 participants from government agencies, universities, and (though to a lesser extent) from industry. The discussion focused on the role of scientific judgments in (Canadian) policymaking, how to link science with policy and society and how to establish a culture of innovation in Canada.
Bruce Alberts, Editor-in-Chief, Science Magazine
"To spread science, you must spread scientists", as Bruce Alberts, Editor-in-Chief of Science , put it in his keynote address.
For the second time, the ASciNA (acronym for Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America) Award was awarded to young Austrian scientists for their excellent research conducted at North American research institutions. The ASciNA Award, established in 2008 through the initiative of former ASciNA President Dr. Eva Schernhammer, was awarded last year for the first time by Austrian Federal Minister for Science and Research Dr. Johannes Hahn during the prestigious Wittgenstein Prize Award Ceremony in Vienna, Austria (click here for more information on last year's ceremony).
Philipp Marxgut welcomes the ASciNA Awards 2009 ceremony participants.
This year, the Office of Science and Technology (OST) at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC, hosted the award ceremony. During a festive award ceremony at the Embassy, Philipp Marxgut, OST director and Austrian science attaché to the United States and Canada, welcomed around 60 attendees, many of them Austrian scientists from all parts of the US and Canada, who joined the awardees for their special evening. Attendees also included Dr. Günther Bischof, director of the Center for Austrian Culture and Commerce, University
Prof. Gary Cohen and Ambassador Christian Prosl.
of New Orleans, and Prof. Gary Cohen, director of the Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota, who was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art 1st Class that evening by Austrian Ambassador to the United States Dr. Christian Prosl.
The theater bill of "Verrechnet" - layer upon layer
Carl Djerassi and Isabella Gregor are well aware how daring their
new venture is: "Mathematics and theatre should only cross paths when it comes
to accounting," states one of the protagonists firmly in their new play. How to
rise to the challenge and put mathematics on stage? The paradox solution is
self-reflection - or writing a play about writing a play on how to stage a
notorious mathematical dispute. This is
"Verrechnet!" a comedy that had its world premiere this November in Vienna's stadtTheater walfischgasse.
Alas, the complex play is not completely new. It is based on
"Calculus," one of Djerassi's first stage plays, to which the playwright and
director Isabella Gregor added a third main character, Polly Sterling, to make
things more entertaining and a bit more complicated. The main agenda, though,
is still the same: a reckoning with Isaac Newton, one of the most eminent
scientists and mathematicians of all time, but a rather mean person with quite
some moral weaknesses.
Under the motto "better policy, better science", mostly young and highly motivated scientists organized - for the first time - a Canadian Science Policy Conference from October 28 - 30, 2009, in Toronto. The conference aimed at establishing a (missing) link between the scientific community with policymakers and other enablers of research and to take a first step towards building a science policy network in Canada. 
For the second time, the ASciNA (acronym for Austrian Scientists and Scholars in North America) Award was awarded to young Austrian scientists for their excellent research conducted at North American research institutions. The ASciNA Award, established in 2008 through the initiative of former ASciNA President Dr. Eva Schernhammer, was awarded last year for the first time by Austrian Federal Minister for Science and Research Dr. Johannes Hahn during the prestigious Wittgenstein Prize Award Ceremony in Vienna, Austria (
