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Research to Protect, Restore, and Manage the Environment
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We stand at a time when science and engineering have the tools to address environmental problems of enormous consequence to our social and economic well-being. But we are not using those tools most effectively. Rather, federal environmental research and policy are trying to cope with today's problems by using a system that was constructed when the problems perceived to be important were different. The purpose of this report, by the Committee on Environmental Research in the National Research Council's Commission on Life Sciences, is to suggest how the nation can organize its science and engineering resources and organize itself to address environmental problems of local, regional, national, and global scope. The activities of people in large numbers have been the major force in making our planet less able to meet the needs of people of coming generations. The daily activities of people have so affected the chemistry of the atmosphere that various trace gases–such as carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorine compounds–are present in increasing concentrations. People have injected an enormous variety and quantity of chemicals not only into the air, but also into water and soil. Some of those chemicals might endanger us or our children, and we must learn how to deal with them. People have altered the landscape of much of the earth. Lakes have been made, and the Aral Sea is drying up. Vast land areas have been devoted to agriculture, and vast new areas of desert have appeared. Those changes have made many areas more hospitable and have allowed greater numbers of people to be clothed and fed; but they have also disrupted ecological systems that benefit humans, and many thousands of species have become extinct.
Committee on Environmental Research, National Research Council - Organizational Body
0-309-58562-7
NONE
Management
English
1993
1-255
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