The environmental engineering and science paradox: can we solve big problems with small investments?

摘要

The scientific and environmental challenges of the 21st century are grand and loom on the horizon like a threatening storm that could impact our quality of life and even life on earth as we know it. Renewable energy, climate change and global warming, the water crisis, urbanization and infrastructure, food safety, biodiversity, epidemics and disease, disasters, and security are all "talked about". These are global problems, and they are big ones. What's ironic is that I have found the intellectual and scientific capacity as well as the enthusiasm, innovation, and vigor to answer the questions, solve the problems, and further the global scientific leadership in our universities' programs in environmental engineering and sciences. Yet, the budgets for science, math, and engineering to address environmental problems under the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. EPA, and the National Institutes of Health are notrncommensurate with the enormity of the issues.