Ecology as Infrastructure
Did you know the Amazon Rain Forest was man-made?
Shocking, but true. At least according to these researchers, the Amazon Rainforest was actually engineered by the indigenous peoples of the area 8000 years ago. In fact, the soil of the Amazon is what is called terra preta, the result of indigenous slash-and-char forestry techniques and is still the subject of research. The thought goes that the biochar (biocharcoal from slash-and-char methods) could help sequester carbon dioxide and provide an insight into more sustainable agriculture. This supersoil enabled the growth and selection of birch nuts, rubber, and cocoa and probably allowed for the rise of a vast network of cities and towns.
Something like this I imagine
Indigenous peoples are often not given credit for their achievements. We tend to simplify our view of Native American tribes to be in line with Pocahontas. Did you know for example, that some researchers now believe that the plagues that ravaged north American Indians might have given rise to the mini Ice Age between 1500 and 1750? The thought is that the rolling plagues wiped out so many Native peoples who generally deforested for their own gain that the forests could grow without any control. The wildly growing forests sequestered so much carbon that it actually dropped global temperatures. Now, I should mention researchers also think this was a multifaceted phenomenon, but reforestation is considered a “certainly a first-order contributor.”
What fascinates me is the idea of viewing man’s control over its environment as a civil engineering project. I think that “tribal” or “primitive” peoples weren’t necessarily more environmentally conscious or one-with-nature types but I do think their view of society was shaped differently, what I would believe is a deeper and more nuanced view of their society. I think they viewed their environment, their ecologies specifically, as a form of infrastructure.
When we tend to think of infrastructure or when pundits refer to it, they usually mean the underlying basic structures that enable our society. Things like our sewers, natural gas, roads, bridges, the electrical grid, and maybe even (somewhat increasingly) the internet. These are public structures for everybody’s use and often falls within the domain of government. Generally, the public discussion is about how our infrastructure is falling apart. Most obvious example is how the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) has graded American infrastructure at a D+.
But think deeper. If infrastructure is the underlying structures that enable society, why shouldn’t air quality be part of our infrastructure? Why shouldn’t soil quality be part of our infrastructure? Global temperatures should equally be part of our structure if society can’t maintain itself if it gets too hot or cold, right? Clean water, pure air, strong biodiversity, and high soil quality are not only fundamental to a well-functioning society, they have the added benefits of higher public health, increased energy efficiency, and higher property values.
None of this is actually novel by the way. Viewing the environment as infrastructure is what is called green infrastructure or sometimes blue-green infrastructure (the blue is for water). And sometimes the study of systems of infrastructure, especially infrastructure that lends itself to production, is called industrial ecology. All I’m saying is that they are fundamentally related.
After all, man-made infrastructure is mostly at the whims of ecological forces. The most common causes of failure are often environmental — moisture rot, heavier than usual snows, flood damage, etc. Civil engineers know this, that’s why there is such a great emphasis on sustainable engineering within civil engineering but not so much in computer engineering. And those cause of failure are increasing because we aren’t maintaining our ecological infrastructure. Sure, Houston was flooding, but that infrastructure was never meant to see that sort of catastrophic load to begin with.
It is often a right-wing political talking point that American infrastructure (I’m American, in case any readers are from outside of the states) is crumbling. We face overcrowded, collapsing roads, bridges and airports. We also tend to talk about the growing insecurity of our electrical grids, aging IT centers, and most worryingly, our nuclear arsenal. It is also estimated that the losses in productivity and in American GDP over the next ten or so years will be roughly 4 trillion dollars.
Courtesy
of Forbes
But realize that these are literally the same arguments left-wing pundits make when talking about climate change. Our climate infrastructure is crumbling as pollution is worse, biodiversity is being crowded out by monocultures, and ecosystems are collapsing. We also talk about the need for resilience, security, of our cities and towns. The looming existential threat of a collapsing environment is just as pressing as economic or nuclear threats. And check it out — some social scientists decided it was worthwhile to calculate the worth of the entire environment and found that it was worth 142.7 trillion dollars. Now that’s of the environment in the entire world, but even the portion that directly contributes to America is a pretty penny.
It’s clear that addressing climate change in a doom-and-gloom way is not enough. It’s generally too depressing and doesn’t offer an actual solution, just another reason to mope about the end of the world. One proposed way to enable action is by essentially gamifying or bringing social competition in to the mix. Opower, a company discussed in the following video, does this by showing not only your energy use, but your neighbor’s energy use which is shown to activate the “keeping-up-with-the-Jones” part of your brain.
I think a variation of the same phenomenon happened but in reverse. Politically we assigned teams and decided to compete, but instead of playing the same game we decided to play on two separate fields. Now, right leaning members decry political climate action as government overreach, even saying environmental mandates prevent fixing failing infrastructure, but deny the problem of climate change at all. Left leaning members acknowledge the problem of climate change but do a poor job of showing how green-collar work increases jobs at home, offers opportunity for entrepreneurship and wealth, and can engage working-class Americans. Both are discussing the same issue, but from radically different points of view. The fundamental problem, I think, is a question of values.
The TED talk above discusses how speaking to each others values can be more persuasive that belligerently shouting talking points at each other. Robb Willer discusses how an essay that frames environmentalism in terms of purity and beauty was more effective in changing conservative minds on climate change, even though the essay had nothing to do climate change specifically. Speaking to the audience’s value is public communication 101. Now, I’m definitely not the guy to do this. For one thing, I cited a TED talk, which I might’ve well have done in between liberal latte sips and bites of elitist avocado toast. But framing the discussion of climate change in terms of infrastructure might be a starting point.
Evolution and natural selection dictate that the species that fit their environment most closely survive. This is also true for technology. And infrastructure. If the environment is changing — man-made or not, drastic or not — and it is changing outside of the adaptability or resilience of our infrastructure, our roads and bridges will collapse. That’s really my point about that Amazon rainforest — that curating the forest was mutually beneficial for the tribes as much as it was for the growth of the rainforest and those two things were never unconnected. Addressing climate change and addressing our failing infrastructure are also not unconnected.
Two
Netherlands engineers, 19 and 21, share a hug in a tragic moment. Courtesy of GineersNow.
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