介绍的内容都写在前言里了，这里把它罗列一下：
Every year the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) hosts a public
symposium as a part of its annual meeting to encourage discussion among NAE
members and the public on topics crucial to the nation’s technological welfare.
The topic for the symposium at the 2000 Annual Meeting was Earth systems
engineering (ESE)—the focus of the NAE’s activities on technology and the
environment.
ESE is an emerging multidisciplinary area based on a holistic view of the
interactions between natural and human systems. ESE addresses global, complex,
multiscale, multicycle phenomena, such as climate change, as well as problems
of global importance, such as urban design. The goal of ESE is to improve our
understanding of these complex systems and develop tools to support technically
sound, ethical decisions. ESE attempts to frame problems in a way that maintains
important connections yet enables the development of effective solutions.
The twentieth century was marked by unparalleled advances in technology
and the development of world resources, as well as unparalleled growth in the
human population. Human activities have left their mark everywhere on Earth,
and in many places humanity has significantly reshaped natural systems. Our
ability to effect changes through technology has grown faster than our understanding
of the technical, social, and ethical implications of those changes. Thus
“success” has sometimes come at a cost—often unexpected—to the environment,
biodiversity, and human society.
The human population has grown to the point that the Earth can no longer
absorb and compensate for changes caused by human activities. As our impact on
the planet increases, engineers and policy makers must become more aware of the multiple time scales and diversity of environments and populations affected by
their actions. As the human population approaches nine billion, we must carefully
weigh the costs and benefits (including the social and ethical costs and benefits)
of our actions.
With our technical expertise, we can now exert considerable control over
natural cycles and systems. However, this control can also perturb these cycles
and systems, leading to unintended consequences. These costs can often be reduced
if we take into consideration the broader community when we weigh the
options for meeting local needs. We must also consider possible “emergent”
properties of human and natural systems (properties that were not anticipated in
the specifications of the systems) when planning and implementing projects and
policies.
With technological advances, especially in sensing, systems management,
communication, and information processing, we can now more accurately predict
and manage the impact of our activities. As these technologies continue to improve
and our experience in applying them to natural systems increases, we will
be able to act more proactively in managing the interfaces between the human
and natural worlds.
Our challenge for the twenty-first century is to improve the global human
condition without mortgaging the heritage of future generations. ESE offers us an
opportunity to develop the tools we will need to meet this challenge. This volume
is intended to illuminate and frame this debate.
