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Subhas K. Sikdar · Debalina Sengupta
Rajib Mukherjee

Measuring
Progress
Towards
Sustainability
A Treatise for Engineers
Measuring Progress Towards Sustainability
Subhas K. Sikdar • Debalina Sengupta
Rajib Mukherjee

Measuring Progress Towards

Sustainability
A Treatise for Engineers
Subhas K. Sikdar Debalina Sengupta
Retired from Gas and Fuels Research Center
Risk Management Research Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
Laboratory College Station, TX, USA
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Cincinnati, OH, USA

Rajib Mukherjee
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-42717-1 ISBN 978-3-319-42719-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42719-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955807

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my sister, Ratna, and to my daughter,
Manjori, whose early deaths are a constant
pain, and to my children, Ronjan and Reena,
and grandson, Damon, for being a constant
delight
Subhas K. Sikdar
To our son, Trigya, and to the empowerment
of his generation for attaining a sustainable
future
Debalina Sengupta and Rajib Mukherjee
Preface

John Browne, the former Chief Executive Officer of BP, in his book, Seven
Elements That Changed the World, quoted the Indian industrialist, Sir Jamshedji
Tata: “We do not claim to be more unselfish, more generous or more philanthropic
than other people. But we think we started on sound and straightforward business
principles, considering the interests of the shareholders our own, and the health and
welfare of the employees, the sure foundation of success.” This is a good articula-
tion of industrial sustainability. This statement dates back to the early twentieth
century, long before the ravages of industrial pollution were clearly noticed and
environmental protection became an important function of political governance. In
today’s world, where sustainability is a familiar word in political, industrial,
commercial and academic circles, Mr. Tata would surely oppose adding adverse
health impacts to the surroundings of his many manufacturing facilities and to
anyone who might come in contact with his products. This is well and good, but in
engineering an idea is only good as long as it can be tested and validated.
We have learned to accept in recent times that ideas and actions have conse-
quences, some intended and some unintended. Only when these consequences are
understood can we make an overall estimate of the usefulness of these actions. The
human mind often reasons linearly. A is done and B is observed; therefore A causes
B. Often we ignore other effects that A may have caused some may be clear but
ignored, while others may not be obvious and might even show up later. These are
the so-called known unknowns and unknown unknowns that Donald Rumsfeld
made famous. Only when we gather the information by repeating the actions and
measuring the causes and effects can we have a retrospective assessment of the
benefits and costs of an action. This is the essence of complexity. In manufacturing
we start with laboratory experiments under controlled conditions. But we still
undertake piloting and gather data on more causative variables that might affect
production, and we find variables that may become more important at larger scales
than at smaller ones before designing a manufacturing plant. For example, we
gather kinetic and mass transfer information on reactions conducted in tiny appa-
ratuses in the laboratory with larger surface to volume ratio than can be expected at

vii
viii Preface

large scales. Heat transfer information thus needs to be corrected upon scale up
because surface areas on which heat transfer depends do not scale equally with
volume. Designing processes for large-scale operations are largely based on retro-
spective design information collected at smaller scales, but design activity can be
prospective due to a lack of adequate information on some variables. This is where
modeling comes in to capture interactions among various process units. These
interactions embody complexity.
Sustainability is complex in its very nature. Three dimensions, environment,
society, and the economy have many variables that control sustainability. We have
to first accept the fact that sustainability is a comparative concept. On this basis, we
must quantitatively express the values of these variables, called indicators in this
book, in a system for which we are interested in determining relative sustainability
in reference to a known system of the same type. A fair comparison of the values of
these indicators will tell us if we have a better or worse status of the system in
sustainability terms. The basis of this book is to argue in favor of a representative
aggregating scheme for the indicators so that the comparison can be done with
single numbers versus a before and after comparison. The book was written for
engineers and scientists engaged in technology development, assessment, and
verification.
There are nine chapters in the book. Chapter 1 covers the emergence and
eventual popularization of the concept of sustainability and its relevance to tech-
nologies. Chapter 2 is about innovation as a driver of sustainable outcome of
technologies. In Chapter 3, we elaborate on the need for standards and measurement
science that provides the foundation of credibility for technologies that claim to
deliver sustainable outcomes. In Chapter 4, we present a systematic framework for
thinking about sustainability from a scientific and engineering viewpoint. Chapter 5
involves sustainability measurement for technology and business systems. We
discuss the use of currently available quantitative measurements of sustainability
for business and technology systems. In Chapter 6, we examine the simulation-
based approaches to process design and how these approaches can be used to make
definitive inferences on the comparative sustainability of processes or products.
Here we review extant approaches popular with researchers in process integration
approaches. We introduce the indicator aggregation based on Euclidean distance
and describe the features of this aggregation, called sustainability footprint. We
provide the theoretical basis for the idea of a statistical distance as a reliable
measurement for sustainability. Chapter 7 discusses quantitative decision making
based on indicator data by various statistical methods for aggregation. We consider
one example of a process system with indicator data and show how various
aggregation schemes work for helping us make assertions on comparative sustain-
ability. In this chapter, we consider published cases from global to technology
scales for delineating the utility of the statistical approach for uniquely choosing the
preferred solution among many options and provide ideas for further research. We
also offer research results that lead to ranking the indicators in terms of their
influence on sustainability footprints. Chapter 8 offers several case studies for
applying the competing aggregation methods with special emphasis on the
Preface ix

Euclidean distance method. Some problem sets have also been provided with data
for students to work on following the prescribed method of steps. The algorithms
for conducting the statistical analyses are made available on a Springer web page.
Chapter 9 is a treatise on a special topic of interest: the nexus of energy sustain-
ability, water sustainability, and energy water. This chapter is a commentary on the
complexity of the sustainability question in terms of the interdependence between
water and energy.
Special thanks are due to Ms. Sherestha Saini of Springer for encouraging the
writing of the book. The authors are also indebted to Prof. Humberto Brandi of
INMETRO, Brazil, for diligently and promptly reading all the chapters and pro-
viding valuable suggestions for each. We are particularly thankful for his help on
Chapter 3 (Engineering Sustainability, Needs for Metrology and Standards). We are
grateful to Prof. Yoram Krozer of the University of Twente in Enschede, the
Netherlands, for reading Chapter 2 on Innovation and for providing valuable
suggestions. Professor Santanu Bandyopdhayay of the Indian Institute of Technol-
ogy, Mumbai, deserves special credit for reading several chapters in the formative
stages and giving us advice on how to make the chapters student-friendly.
This book was designed to be an introductory course on sustainability for
engineers. Researchers working on engineering sustainability are likely to get
ideas for further research in quantifying sustainability for industrial systems. As
all three authors are chemical engineers, most of our examples are from chemical
enterprises but we believe that the methodologies are equally applicable to any
system for which quantitative data for indicators are available, and the choice of the
set of indicators of sustainability is comprehensive.

Subhas K. Sikdar
Debalina Sengupta
Rajib Mukherjee
Contents

1 Scientific Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Environmental Protection in the USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Sustainable Development in the USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4 Sustainability from an Engineering Viewpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.5 Sustainability in Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2 Sustainability and Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2 Motivators of Sustainable Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3 Drivers of Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.1 Human Curiosity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.2 Government Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.3.3 Environmental Regulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3.4 Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.4 Innovation Is Not Always Benign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.5 Sustainable Products and Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.5.1 Maintaining Reputation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.5.2 Economic Opportunities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.5.3 Demand Pull (Customer Choice) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.5.4 New Technology Opportunity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.6 Process of Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3 Engineering Sustainability, Needs for Metrology
and Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.2 Providers of Standards and Methods of Development . . . . . . . . . . 47

xi
xii Contents

3.3 Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.4 A Conceptual Standard Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.5 Corporate Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4 Systems, Indicators, and Sustainability Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.2 Sustainability Concept for Science and Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.3 Defining Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.4 Classifying Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.5 Determination of Indicator Dimensionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.6 Selection of Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.6.1 Regional Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.6.2 Selecting Indicators for Sustainability for
Business and Technology Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.7 Sustainability Assessment: A Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.8 Fraudulent Sustainability Claims and Green Washing . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5 Sustainability Measurement for Technology and
Business Systems: Use of Currently Available Tools
for Quantification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.2 What Are Indicators and Metrics? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.3 Methods for Measurement of Environmental Impacts,
and Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.3.1 Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.3.2 Life Cycle Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.4 Sustainability of Technological Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.4.1 AIChE Sustainability Metrics/BRIDGES
to Sustainability Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.4.2 Institution of Chemical Engineers (UK): IChemE
Sustainable Development Process Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.5 Sustainability of Business Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.5.1 The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI):
The Sustainability Reporting Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.5.2 The Dow Jones Sustainability Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.5.3 American Institute of Chemical Engineers:
AIChE Sustainability Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Contents xiii

6 Engineering Methods for Decision Making on Relative

Sustainability: Process Simulation Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.2 Process Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6.2.1 What Is Process Simulation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6.2.2 The Concept of Process Synthesis and
Process Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6.3 Process Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
6.3.1 Heat Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
6.3.2 Mass Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.4 Process Intensification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
6.4.1 Process Intensification Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
6.4.2 Indicators That May Be Used to Quantify
Process Intensification Options for Sustainability . . . . . . . 148
6.5 Tools for Process Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
6.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
7 Statistical Algorithms for Sustainability Measurement
and Decision Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.2 Aggregate Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
7.2.1 Why Aggregation Is Important . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
7.2.2 Engineering Views on Indicator Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . 157
7.2.3 Basic Rules for Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
7.2.4 The “Footprint Family” of Indicators
and Its Relation to Aggregate Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
7.3 Sustainability Footprint, De . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
7.3.1 Assumptions in De Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
7.3.2 Steps in De Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
7.4 Other Methods for Aggregate Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7.4.1 Geometric Mean Method (D) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7.4.2 Vector Space Theory (De Is a Special Case of This) . . . . . 167
7.4.3 Canberra and zCanberra Distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
7.4.4 Mahalanobis Distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
7.5 Sustainability for Making Inferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
7.5.1 Data Consistency Check for Indicator Quality . . . . . . . . . . 176
7.5.2 Principal Component Analysis
for Indicator Redundancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
7.5.3 Partial Least Squares-Variable Importance
in Projection (PLS-VIP) for Indicator Ranking . . . . . . . . . 179
7.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
xiv Contents

8 Case Studies in Sustainability Decision Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
8.2 Case Study 1: Sustainability Footprint Comparison
for Green Polymers Design and the Role
of Aggregation Method in Decision Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
8.3 Case Study 2: Methanol Process Synthesis
and Analysis Using Sustainability Footprint Method . . . . . . . . . . 192
8.3.1 Chemical Process Flowsheet Synthesis and Design:
Methanol Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
8.3.2 Conventional Methanol Process (Hertwig 2004) . . . . . . . . 193
8.3.3 Methanol from CO2 Hydrogenation Over Cu(100)
Catalyst (Nerlov and Chorkendorff 1999) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
8.3.4 Methanol from CO2 Hydrogenation Over Cu-Zr
Catalyst (Toyir et al. 1998) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
8.3.5 Methanol from CO2 Hydrogenation Over Cu/ZnO/
ZrO2/Al2O3/Ga2O3 Catalyst (Ushikoshi et al. 1998) . . . . . . 195
8.3.6 Methanol from Hydrogenation Over Cu/ZnO/Cr2O3
and CuNaY Zeolite Catalyst (Jun et al. 1998) . . . . . . . . . . 196
8.3.7 Methanol from Hydrogenation Over Pd/SiO2
Catalyst (Bonivardi et al. 1998) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
8.3.8 Calculation of Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
8.3.9 Calculation of the Sustainability Footprint . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
8.4 Case Study 3: The Combination of Sustainability Footprint
and Mathematical Optimization Techniques for Selecting a
Sustainable Sulfuric Acid Production Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
8.4.1 Sulfuric Acid Production by the Contact Process . . . . . . . . 203
8.4.2 Model Formulation for Chemical Process Synthesis
and Sustainability Footprint (De) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
8.4.3 Results from Optimization of the Sulfuric Acid
Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
8.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
LINGO CODE for Optimization Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Solution to the Optimization Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Problem 1: Time Series/Temporal Data Analysis
and Sustainability Footprint Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Task 1: Ensure Availability of Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Task 2: Perform Sustainability Footprint Calculations . . . . . . . . . 218
Problem 2: Missing Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Task 1: Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Task 2: Unidirectional Indicator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Task 3: Sustainability Footprint Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Contents xv

9 Energy Sustainability, Water Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

9.1 Energy Sustainability: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
9.2 Energy Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
9.3 Overall Energy Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
9.3.1 Is There an Energy Shortage Globally? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
9.3.2 Primary Energy Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
9.3.3 Global Energy Distribution and Sustainability
Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
9.4 Energy Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
9.4.1 Global Energy Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
9.4.2 What Is Being Done About Global Energy
Sustainability? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
9.5 Energy Sustainability for Nations and Communities . . . . . . . . . . . 244
9.6 Energy Sustainability of Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
9.6.1 Energy Sustainability of Biofuels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
9.7 Water Sustainability: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
9.7.1 What Are the Problems? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
9.7.2 Water Footprint as a Sustainability Indicator . . . . . . . . . . . 259
9.8 Energy–Water Nexus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
9.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Chapter 1
Scientific Sustainability

“It is better to be kind than right.”

— Ratan Tata, industrialist and benefactor

1.1 Introduction

The political idea of sustainable development grew in popularity in the late twen-
tieth century Europe, and thanks to the United Nations’ imprimatur, quickly
achieved global influence. The case for global sustainable development was
enshrined in the report, Our Common Future (1987)—a report of the World
Commission of Environment and Development (WCED) sponsored by the United
Nations and spearheaded by Gro Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway.
The report is usually referred to as the Brundtland Commission report. Sustainable
development derives its origin from the notion that accelerated depletion of natural
resources, the resultant widespread environmental degradation, and the creation of
ever wider economic gap between rich and poor resulted from industrial develop-
ment. Empirical evidence in support of this notion appeared to come from the
developing world where indeed vast masses of people were surviving with very
little. The living conditions, especially in urban areas, were unhealthy. The air in the
cities was foul, polluted by oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, ozone, carbon monoxide,
and particulates. The source waters in most countries were polluted by human
wastes and toxic industrial wastes containing simple and complex organic com-
pounds, and heavy metals. Soils in places, contaminated by both legal and illegal
dumping of toxic materials from industry, became blighted eyesores and sources of
pollution for groundwater. Unregulated mining activities created dangerous health
hazards for workers and left large swaths of landscapes scarred, destroyed biodi-
versity, and created soil and river pollution. As industrialization was spreading
across the globe, wealth generation, particularly its distribution, was perceived as
creating social inequities and unfairness, intragenerationally. Since natural
resources are finite—no more than what the Earth presently contains—industrial
development depletes these resources at a faster rate with increase of population
and the with the desire of all people to acquire better living conditions. This
resource depletion is also seen as sowing the seed for intergenerational inequities,

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 1

S.K. Sikdar et al., Measuring Progress towards Sustainability,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42719-5_1
2 1 Scientific Sustainability

i.e., leaving less for the future generation to satisfy their material needs and
comforts. Thus the Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as
“meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the future
generations to meet their own needs.” Sustainable development thus is develop-
ment that would strike a delicate balance among the three dimensions of sustain-
ability: protection of the environment, economic development, and creating societal
benefit. This balance, it is believed, can only be achieved by a combination of
1. Improving resource use efficiency.
2. Drastically reducing anthropogenic pollution.
3. Finding renewable materials for nonrenewable materials as far as practicable so
as to preserve natural resources for the future generations.
4. Curbing significantly the excessive and unnecessary consumption by the devel-
oped nations, among other policy measures.
An important landmark event, United Nations Commission on Sustainable
Development (UNCED), commonly referred to as the Earth Summit, occurred in
June, 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to promote sustainable development. A large
majority of the heads of states of the member nations were present to show support
for the idea and the creation of roadmaps for achieving sustainable development
goals. Three important documents were produced at that conference, all
non-binding.
First, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, adopted 27 prin-
ciples which endorsed the rights of nations to pursue development and protection of
the environment according the their own choices, use of the Precautionary Principle
(UNEP 1992)1 in environmental protection, reduction of wasteful production and
consumption, creation of statutes for environmental protection, prevention of
dumping hazardous wastes, reduction of poverty, protection of ecosystems, pres-
ervation of the rights of indigenous people, and public participation in development
decisions.
Second, a guidance document, Agenda 21 (1992) was released. Agenda 212
encouraged member nations to reduce poverty and income gap among citizens,
improve health conditions, protect natural resources and the environment by effi-
cient manufacture and consumption, protect forest resources and biodiversity,
empower under-represented groups such as women, children, and native
populations, and assist developing nations in improving their economic, social and

1
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development adopted its 15th principle as follows: “In
order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States
according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of
full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to
prevent environmental degradation.” The Precautionary Principle allows measures that would
seem to prevent damage to human health and the environment when the causality between a
stressor and the impacts is plausible even in the absence of confirmed scientific evidence.
2
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf
1.1 Introduction 3

environmental conditions by technology transfer and financial assistance. Agenda

21 was endorsed by the majority of the nations, and has been amended over time.
Third, Forest Principles encouraged preservation of global forest resources for
all mankind.
Aside from these non-binding guidance documents, three path-breaking multi-
lateral treaty documents were presented at the Rio Earth Summit.
One agreement on preserving the Earth’s biodiversity is rather important. This
agreement, ultimately signed by most nations, is a pledge to work collaboratively to
preserve the complex biodiversity by protecting sensitive ecosystems and forestry
and pledging to share the genetic resources of the earth equitably among all nations.
The second is the treaty on environmental convention on climate change, which
culminated in 1997 as the Kyoto Protocol (1997).
The third is the UN Convention to Combat Desertification has been in effect since
1996, and is a call to the member nations to fight desertification, particularly in Africa.
These agreements were signed in good faith, but as later developments revealed,
good intentions do not necessarily solve problems. Nations’ self-interests can be,
and usually are, significant barriers to altruistic designs. Particularly, the Kyoto
Protocol set out particular greenhouse gas reduction targets for nations, but to date
the implementation has fallen far short of the lofty goals set out in Kyoto. Recent
follow-up meetings on climate change in Copenhagen in 2009, Durban in 2011, and
Doha in 2012, among others, ended up in more agreements to convene more
meetings but not in agreements to accept binding greenhouse emission goals in
support of the Kyoto protocol. However, the meeting in Chile in 2014 was more
successful in the sense that commitments were made by countries to reduce GHG
emission. The most recent conference in Paris, COP 21 in 2016 appeared to reach
for binding CO2 reduction, but because of resistance from several developing
nations ended up in goal setting. These goals are also non-binding.
Another global initiative, relevant to this discussion, is the UN sponsored
Millennium Development Goals (MDG) adopted in 2000 with only eight priorities
(MGD 2000).3 While most of the eight goals are focused on poverty, education, and
health, Goal 7 is focused on Environmental Sustainability. The MDG project set out
to specify indicators for measuring conditions specific to each goal for all nations.
Such data sets exist for the last 20 years, and the indicator values show the progress,
or lack thereof, in any particular indicator area. Goal 7 has 11 indicators, and is
heavily tilted towards measuring greenhouse gas emissions.
The UN has introduced Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to supersede
MDGs. Many of these goals are socioeconomic, such as poverty, hunger, health,
education, and gender equality. Some are technical such as safe water, energy,
marine conservation, and climate change. The SDG report published in February

3
Eight Millennium Development Goals are (1) eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, (2) achieve
universal primary education, (3) promote gender equality, (4) reduce child mortality, (5) improve
maternal health, (6) combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, (7) ensure environmental
sustainability, and (8) develop a global partnership for development).
4 1 Scientific Sustainability

Fig. 1.1 Planetary Boundaries Interpretation of sustainability of earth systems (Science,

13 February 2015, vol. 347, issue 6223, p.736) (courtesy of Science)

2015 identifies 29 % of the targets as “well defined,” 54 % as “needing further

work” in tightening the measures, and 17 % as “weak and non-essential.”4
In 2009, a group of environmental scientists proposed a framework called
Planetary Boundaries to understand the planetary sustainability in terms of several
earth systems such as biosphere integrity, climate change, freshwater use, ocean
acidification, and the like. These earth systems have been responsible for continu-
ously maintaining planetary conditions conducive to human development for the
Holocene period dating back to 11,700 years ago. The state of the planetary support
system in this scheme is shown in Fig. 1.1 as the earth systems in segments of a
circle with color codes covering the segments from the origin outward. Near the
origin it is green, denoting safety for the earth systems. The circle describing the
green zone is surrounded by a yellow zone indicating zones of uncertainty, causing
concern for the earth systems thus described. Beyond the yellow circle is the red
zone. Any earth system in this zone indicates unsustainability with respect to that
earth system. In the latest report published in early 2015, genetic diversity
(or biosphere integrity), and nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients in the environment

4
Review of the Targets for the Sustainable Development Goals: The Science Perspective, http://
www.icsu.org/publications/reports-and-reviews/review-of-targets-for-the-sustainable-develop
ment-goals-the-science-perspective-2015/SDG-Report.pdf. Accessed 1 Jul 2015.
1.2 Environmental Protection in the USA 5

(of biochemical flows) clearly pose danger. Measures must therefore be taken to
reverse the conditions, according to this study. Figure 1.1 shows the latest deter-
mination of this research group.
The sustainable development activities sponsored by the United Nations are all
being played out at the international political level. The role of science and
engineering in this context is only advisory, since the solutions are to be sought
in political accommodations among nations. Except for a small number of global
issues, such as emission of GHG, the general assumptions of environmental deg-
radation and associated societal ills do not apply to many developed nations. It has
been argued by many that industrial development is both an enemy and friend of the
environment. In the beginning of development, for an undeveloped economy, the
condition of the environment does suffer as the per capita gross domestic product
goes up, but the degradation peaks at a certain GDP and then declines. This is
known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) (Stern 2001) (discussed in
Chap. 2). The rationale cited for this phenomenon is that as wealth of a nation
increases it can better afford to clean up its legacy problems, and prevent the
environmental ills of industrial, agricultural, and other anthropogenic activities.
Recent developments in both China and India show that this observation is true,
though these two countries have major further improvements to achieve. In what
follows, we examine the issues of sustainable development and sustainability for
the USA in the context of what has been achieved before and after the Environ-
mental Protection Agency was established in 1970.

1.2 Environmental Protection in the USA

A remarkable book, Silent Springs by Rachel Carson (1962), was published in 1962
in the USA and over time it would have a revolutionary impact on environmental
stewardship not just in the USA but indeed all over the world. The book has a
philosophical underpinning and goes into detailed discussion on environmental and
health impacts of the use of man-made chemicals, described as “elixirs of death.”
The list of principal scientific sources used in the book is rather long, although none
of the references are actually cited in appropriate places in the text or footnoted. In
the first chapter, Carson described an idyllic countryside and then provided a
potential scenario of what could happen if these elixirs of death were not checked
or prevented from use. A part of the scenario is:
Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell
had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle
and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of
much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more
puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been several
sudden and unexpected deaths, not only among adults but even among children who would
be stricken suddenly while at play and die within a few hours.
6 1 Scientific Sustainability

Nothing remotely close to what is described here happened anywhere in the

world—in scale, severity, or speed. However, while it is impossible to disprove
what has not happened, the implication of such a scenario shocked the nation. It
would not be an exaggeration to state that Silent Spring triggered the really serious
and sustained efforts in the USA to protect the nation’s environment and human
health from pollution created by human activities. Then an incident in 1969 of a fire
from an oil slick over a continually polluted Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio
catalyzed the creation of a nationwide clamor for Government intervention. As
Rotman (1969) wrote, that incident when published as a cover story in Time
magazine with a picture of fire engulfing a ship—not from the 1969 fire but from
a previous fire on the same river—got the attention of the citizens. Congress passed
the landmark National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in the same year. Other
laws to protect air, water, drinking water, and land followed with the passage and
reauthorizations of Clean Air Act (AAA 1962), Clean Water Act (CWA 1972), Safe
Drinking water Act (SDWA 1974), Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
(RCRA 1976), Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Lia-
bility Act (CERCLA 1980), Toxics Substances Control Act (TSCA 1976) and many
others. Shortly after the Cuyahoga river fire, the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) was created by consolidating various environmental protection authorities
that were scattered in several federal departments. EPA enjoyed the broad mandate
from the citizens to take regulatory actions to enforce environmental policies on
industry and municipalities for cleaning up ambient air, waterways, and land
resources. As we see below, EPA has been remarkably successful in improving
the state of the nation’s environment over the years following its creation. While it
is true that Carson provided the much needed impetus for eventual environmental
cleanup and continued protections, she has been criticized for over-blowing the
environmental and health impacts. For instance, on one of her primary claims of
what damage the pesticide DDT was causing, the thinning of raptor eggshells, she
all but ignored the enormous benefit DDT offered worldwide in preventing deaths
from malaria. DDT was banned in the USA, many other nations followed suit. As a
result, deaths from malaria significantly increased. World Health Organization
(WHO) soon had to allow reapplication of indoor spraying in many countries,
especially South Africa.
The US environmental statutes mentioned above had been focused on compli-
ance with and enforcement of these statutes. This policy approach was effective in
stimulating corrective actions on facilities, technologies, or devices that either
caused adverse environmental and health effects in the past, or were currently
causing them. A case in point is the phase out of the use of tetraethyl lead as an
octane booster, as evidence accumulated on lead’s health effects, especially on
children. Tetraethyl lead as a product performed its function as designed and led to
further automotive innovations. In retrospect, the unintended health effects of this
product were not anticipated at the time. The intended anti-knock property could
however be found in other compounds, and as a result, innovations in the automo-
bile industry were not affected at all in the years following the phase-out. Banning
the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline is a classic example of pollution prevention.
1.2 Environmental Protection in the USA 7

Consciously preventing pollution by designing technologies was encouraged by the

Pollution Prevention Act (PPA 1990). PPA proposed a hierarchy of pollution
management. First, eliminating the use of known toxic substances in a facility to
prevent emission or discharge is the most favorable. The second most desirable
approach is to recover pollutants and reuse them in the same facility. The third
priority is treatment of the emission and discharge streams to make them harmless
by control technologies, and failing all three, filling pollutants and harmful wastes
in a secure landfill with appropriate safeguard against spills, discharge, and
leaching to underground or to surface water. A companion act called Toxic Sub-
stances Control Act or TSCA required industrial facilities to publicly disclose use
and emissions of toxic compounds and follow them year over year. This require-
ment created an accountability that was helpful to operators who would actively
work on finding newer and newer ways of preventing emissions.
US EPA as an agency also encouraged pollution prevention at the source by
several evolving programs at the agency which took the task of demonstrating by
developing tools and methods on how waste creation can be minimized. Waste
minimization, design for the environment, and green chemistry and engineering are
several foci of this effort. As one would expect, there is significant overlap among
these programs in intent of outcome; all can be described effectively by the original
program of waste minimization. The idea of industrial ecology, not an EPA
program, was introduced By Frosch and Gallapoulos (1989). Expanded by several
authors, industrial ecology took a broader view of manufacturing process by
focusing on inputs to a manufacturing site and outputs from it. Material and energy
flows through a manufacturing system on the one hand and resource extraction, raw
material production, useful product manufacturing and waste handling on the other
hand are intimately correlated. The concept of industrial ecology encourages
attempts for reusing by-products and waste products for further use as inputs to
some other manufacturing activity or beneficial uses. An impressive demonstration
of the idea is at the Kalundborg facility in Denmark, shown in Fig. 1.2. A Statoil
refinery provides the fuel for a power plant, whose waste fly ash is used by a cement
production facility, gypsum from the scrubber slurry, used by a wallboard
manufacturing, waste heat, used by a fish farm and greenhouses, steam used by a
pharmaceutical plant. Sulfur waste from the refinery is used to make sulfuric acid.
Thus waste utilization is integrated strategically into a multi-plant site.
The idea of industrial ecology, albeit interesting, is difficult to implement
because of the complexity of siting the required manufacturing units in one location
while satisfying features of market needs, ownership, control, and other factors. An
integrated system is inherently more complex and the consequence of market
disruption and failure of one product or unit could make other manufacturing
units vulnerable. This idea is still evolving but except for large corporations,
which can practice it in a limited form, smaller firms will find adoption of industrial
ecology daunting, except perhaps in a co-located eco-industrial park. Nevertheless,
industrial ecology as a concept implicitly endorses using the concept of life cycle
assessment, which is a kind of cradle-to-grave accounting methodology for
8 1 Scientific Sustainability

Kemira Sulfuric
Statoil Refinery
Acid Plant Sulfur Waste Heat
Greenhouses

Waste Utility
Cooling &

Water
at
He

Ste

s
Ga
te
as

am

el
W
District Heating

Fu
t
te Hea
Was

Lake Tisso Fresh Water Asnaes Power

Station
Scrubber Gyproc
Slu dge
Wallboard Plant

Wa
ste
H eat

Steam
Fish Farms
Fl y
As
h

Novo Nordisk
Neighboring Cement and
Treated Sludge Fertilizer Pharmaceutical
Farms Road
Plant
Aggregate

Fig. 1.2 Kalundborg Eco-industrial Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalundborg_Eco-indus

trial_Park)

environmental impacts. It also focuses on supply chain management, and comes

closer to sustainability than does design for environment and other prior ideas.
The record of the USA since the founding of the Environmental Protection
Agency has been remarkably successful, year after year, in reducing threats to
human health and to ecological health from what are called criteria air pollutants,
for example SOx, NOx, CO, mercury, particulates, and ozone, as shown in Fig. 1.3.
When viewed in the context of the increase of population in 2012 of 38 % compared
to 1980, the increase of gross domestic product of 133 % coupled with 67 %
reduction of aggregate emissions of the pollutants of Fig. 1.3, and a CO2 emission
reduction of 19 % would commonly be judged as commendable.
On the issue of clean water for domestic purposes, the USA has enjoyed safe
water from public utilities for a long time. The health record has been good except
for some unforeseen circumstances occurring in the recent past. For instance the
Milwaukee cryptosporidium outbreak (MacKenzie et al. 1994) witnessed break-
through of the pathogen in the drinking water making more than a million people
sick, and killing about 100 people. In 2004, the drinking water in the nation’s
capital was found to have as much as 83 times permitted level of lead after the
utility switched from chlorine as the disinfecting agent to chloramine. Chloramine
reacted with leaded pipe to release lead in the distribution system. Though no
fatalities occurred, this incident was thought to have posed a long term risk to the
residents, especially young children. The change to chloramine from chlorine
originated from the fear of adverse human health impact from disinfection
by-products created in drinking water by the reaction of chlorine in the process of
1.2 Environmental Protection in the USA 9

Fig. 1.3 USA’s accomplishment in environmental progress (source: US EPA, http://www.epa.

gov/airtrends/aqtrends.html#comparison. Accessed 20 Jun 2015)

disinfecting pathogens. In 2015, the city of Toledo drinking water was found to be
contaminated by algal toxin originating in the Great Lakes, and for several days
delivery of drinking water to the inhabitants of the city was suspended, and bottled
water was provided. No one suffered health problems, and the problem simply went
away. The most recent crisis took place in early 2015 in Flint, Michigan where a
switch of source water to the polluted Flint River released dangerous levels of lead
from the pipes. The delivered water was visually muddy. The city of Flint switched
from the Detroit city water to save money. Here also bottled water was provided to
the citizens and the intake was switched back to Detroit after citizen outrage.
Human error at several levels caused this problem.
For the nation’s waterways the general standards of safety had long been fishable
and swimmable. For some time since the waterways started getting monitored, a
large fraction of rivers and lakes were judged unhealthy. This happened because of
unregulated sewer and industrial discharges into rivers and lakes. Cuyahoga River
and Lake Erie may have been extreme examples, but generally much remedial work
needed to be done all over the nation. Much progress to date has taken place as a
result of the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting
process that requires wastewater treatment facilities of public or private kind to
achieve compliance with discharge regulation.5 Despite this progress, more needs
to be done to assure that the citizens can participate in recreational activities in the
nation’s waterways. In contrast to the situation in the USA, Australia, Singapore,

5
NPDES: National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. http://enviroscienceinc.com/services/
environmental-compliance-services/. Accessed 27 Sept 2015.
10 1 Scientific Sustainability

Israel, Japan, and some European countries, much advancement still needs to be
done in the rest of world in installing treatment facilities to treat the wastewaters to
compliance levels, and in enforcing regulations.
Land pollution in the USA has been largely of industrial origin emanating from
dumping of hazardous wastes that adversely affect public health. The Love Canal
incident, revealed in the late seventies of the last century (Beck 1979), highlights
the gravity of land pollution. The Love Canal story can most generously be
described as a tragedy of errors. This was an abandoned canal used for legally
dumping wastes, initially by the city of Niagara Falls, the US Army, and a chemical
company called Hooker Chemical, and later exclusively by Hooker Chemical when
the dumpsite was owned by the company. Thousands of tons of toxic wastes from
chemical manufacturing in 55 gal drums were dumped in this site lined with clay
layers to a depth of about 25 ft. The covered site was then sold for $1 to the Niagara
Falls School District when there was a boom in manufacturing in the area, and
population grew. Hooker at first refused to sell this site, but later agreed to sell but
clearly warned the buyer of the nature of the site and inserted a caveat in the deed
that the seller would not be legally responsible for any negative outcomes. Despite
the warning, schools and homes were built on the site in the mid-1950s and soon
thereafter chemicals from the leaking drums started appearing in the backyards and
basements of homes, and in children’s playgrounds. Over time, people started to get
sick and babies were born with birth defects. In the 1970s, when Love Canal
became a national scandal, Hooker Chemical was owned by Occidental Petroleum
Company of Los Angeles. Though Occidental was not at fault, EPA sued the
company and extracted compensation for damage. The schools were removed and
hundreds of houses were bought by the Federal Government. As a result of this
scandal, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compen-
sation and Liability Act in 1980, simply known as the Superfund legislation.
According to Superfund, pollution in abandoned sites is the responsibility of the
polluter (polluter pays principle). Even if the original polluter company is not
currently in operation, they have to pay for the site cleanup, and other damages,
if any. In instances, when no company in existence can be found to pay for
damages, Superfund program under the US EPA would take care of the cleanup.
The fund was created by taxing all corporations a fee to cover the expenses.
Superfund program maintains a list of superfund sites in the nations, called National
Priority List (NPL) and US EPA started aggressively supervising the cleaning up
operations in these listed sites. As of this writing, out of more than 1300 listed sites,
less than 400 have been cleaned up and hence de-listed. The process for cleanup is
long, legally onerous, and expensive. Though neither Hooker nor Occidental in this
landmark case of Love Canal can be said to have acted in bad faith, there have been
instances of other companies that practiced “drive by night dumping” in public
land, creating superfund problems.
1.3 Sustainable Development in the USA 11

1.3 Sustainable Development in the USA

Our Common Future is a remarkable document of consensus. Gro Brundtland

herself acknowledged that there were many disagreements among the members
on the details but on the overall issue of the survival of humans there was none. The
document emphasized the need for careful economic development that protect the
environment and support the interests of all people. Population, according to this
document, needs to be commensurate with the ability of the earth’s ecological
resources to sustain it with food, shelter, and other necessities. This approach
constituted, in the opinion of the writers, a strategic shift in development plans to
make the world more prosperous, more just, and more secure. But the achievement
of this goal of sustainable development requires decisive political will and action.6
But Our Common Future also proposed central planning for development in
each nation but with citizen participation. For developing countries the report
proposed income redistribution to the poor to alleviate poverty, debt forgiveness
from foreign lenders, fair price for commodities, etc. Also, in her Chairman’s
Foreword, Brundtland says:
We became convinced that major changes were needed, both in attitudes and in the way our
societies are organized.

The prescription of attitude change to include the needs of the environment and
society is obviously helpful to future development. However, the need to make
major changes in societal structure is difficult to grasp.
It was mentioned earlier that the USA passed the landmark National Environ-
mental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA’s vision statement is:
National Environmental Policy requires the federal government to use all practicable
means to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in produc-
tive harmony (NEPA 1970).

This statement essentially captured the basic environmental intent of the

Brundtland report, published later. Since its enactment, all major industrial and
public works projects were required to submit an environmental impact assessment.
This act also established the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) whose job it
is to supervise NEPA activities.
In the 1990s, the White House established the President’s Council for Sustain-
able Development (PCSD). The purpose of the Council was to issue a report
analyzing the current sustainability status of the country with various indicators

6
The uncertainty of sustainable development was expressed by Hales and Prescott-Allen in this
fashion: “Making progress toward sustainability is like going to a destination we have never before
visited, equipped with a sense of geography and the principles of navigation, but without a map or
compass.”
– Hales D and Prescott-Allen R (2002) Flying blind: assessing progress toward sustainability.
In: Esty DC, Ivanova MH (eds) Global environmental governance: options and opportunities. Yale
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. New Haven, pp 31–52).
12 1 Scientific Sustainability

and to recommend measures that should be taken to chart a trajectory towards

sustainability. The report was issued in 1999 (PCSD 1999) with recommendations
to improve both urban and rural life and address climate change.
That same year, the National Research Council (NRC) of the US National
Academies published a report entitled, Our Common Journey: a transition towards
sustainability (1999). Unlike the PCSD report this was not a Government funded
report. The subtitle is significant; it is a transition, not the transition, implying that
there may be other paths to the sustainability of a nation. The experts focused on the
next two generations and deliberated on one pathway about which they could make
reasonable predictions. The NRC report defined sustainability in very much the
same way as Brundtland defined sustainable development. Clift (2000) stated that
“sustainable development is the process of moving human activities away from our
present profligacy towards that ideal” (i.e., sustainability). In this view, sustainabil-
ity, in an ever-changing world, is a harmonious state where natural resources and
services are continually renewable for the population, which can satisfy their needs
without conflicts. The NRC report however emphasized that the knowledge
required to manage the transition needs to be developed so that the politicians
can summon the will to make vital changes for attaining the goals of sustainability.
These goals are human fertility reduction, improving energy and materials use
efficiency, restoring degraded ecosystems, reducing climate changing emissions,
reducing poverty, etc. Research into various aspects of sustainability is critical for
increasing our fund of knowledge on the interrelationships between developments
and their impacts. Thus the NRC report concluded:
—the political impetus that carried the idea of sustainable development so far and so
quickly in public forums has also increasing distanced it from its scientific and technolog-
ical base. As a result, even when the political will necessary for sustainable development
has been present, the knowledge and know-how to make headway often have not.

An enormous literature on potential actions that might be helpful has been

created even before NRC undertook this study. Most of these policy measures, if
enacted in the USA by the Congress, will be enforceable by the courts with
mandates and/or fines. Some of these environmental issues fall in the realm of
what Hardin (1968) called “the tragedy of the commons.” It is commonly under-
stood that natural capital that is accessible to all suffers degradation but personal or
group property does not. Hence Governments of the world need to promulgate rules
of behavior to protect these common properties by imposing taxes on marketable
entities, create a market for trading the offending pollution under a “cap and trade”
regime to achieve such protection. Achieving this protection of course is easier said
than done because the “willingness to pay” by the citizens depends on many issues,
some quantifiable, others not. However, from the viewpoint of technology advance-
ment, knowledge needed to achieve environmental protection has increased signif-
icantly. The examples of such actions are usually installation of control
technologies to eliminate emission of pollutants, incorporating energy and material
use efficiencies, use innovations to make the pollution event disappear altogether by
practicing alternative chemistries or material science, using advanced sensing and
1.3 Sustainable Development in the USA 13

monitoring technologies, and by applying process integration to achieve multi-

objective optimization. This being a book about engineering opportunities, we
focus on technological aspects to achieve sustainability and to verify sustainability
claims by measurement, and not indulge in policy and macroeconomic discussions.
Cairncross (1992) has extensively dealt with policy measures, their successes and
failings. Interested readers are encouraged to consult this book.
Two other issues of sustainability that are part of this knowledge gathering
exercise are: sustainability of what and for how long? Sustainability pertains to a
defined system with a known boundary and system characteristics. The definition is
important because if the system boundary under question is flexible, we can get
nonstandard answers, and consequently the impact of a system on the surrounding
cannot be accurately assessed. This point will be dealt with in more detail in
Chap. 4. Time element of sustainability is a difficult question to answer. Brundtland
Commission had targets for 2100, but the NRC report expressly restricted it to two
generations, i.e., about 50 years. Clearly, both reports expected humanity to exist
beyond their action horizon. The tasks at hand had been to begin the journey and
steer forward by trial and error (learning by doing).
Sustainability systems are complex and multivariate, i.e., many variables char-
acterize the state of such a system. Multivariate systems are inherently complex and
a change, however small, in one variable can cause outcomes that are often difficult
to predict, and can sometimes cause “black swans,” i.e., rare but catastrophic,
impacts (Taleb 2012). Sustainability as we envision it in global terms is uncharac-
teristically complex, hence impossible to predict by standard deterministic model-
ing techniques. In economics, Ormerod (1998) has demonstrated that economic
predictions almost never materialize because the usual mathematical models that
are used treat economics as a mechanical machine. In reality human interactions are
never amenable to simple mathematical formulations, because what he called “the
principle of interacting agents” determines the economic outcomes in ways that
principles of microeconomics cannot capture. Humans as independent agents are
influenced in decision making more by human interactions than by rational eco-
nomic thinking. We see this day in and day out in the behavior of the stock market
and the fate of products and services that are introduced in the marketplace. The
outcomes often end up differently than the planners planned for.
On behalf of the US Government, the US EPA is obligated to provide the
Congress of the USA a periodic Report on the Environment (ROE 2014). In the
report, the current conditions of the environment are documented with values of
several indicators that are measured. Specifically, the chosen indicators are sup-
posed to provide a sense of the conditions of air, water, land, ecology, and human
exposure to pollutants and the estimated health impacts. In the latest report (ROE
2014), a total of four sustainability indicators were included to show sustainability
achievements. These measures are: energy use intensity, water use intensity,
municipal solid waste generation intensity, and greenhouse gas emissions, all
normalized to either a unit of gross domestic product (GDP) or to per capita
usage. The data for the first three indicators for years since 1960–2010 are shown
in Figs. 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6. For energy use intensity, the total energy use has indeed
14 1 Scientific Sustainability

Fig. 1.4 Energy intensity trend for the USA

Fig. 1.5 Trend of intensity of fresh water withdrawal in the USA. Based on real (inflation-
adjusted) GDP. Data are plotted at 5-year intervals. Information on the statistical significance of
the trends in this exhibit is not currently available. For more information about uncertainty,
variability, and statistical analysis. view the technical documentation for this indicator. Data
source: USGS, 2014; Census Bureau, 2000, 2001, 2014; BEA, 2014

gone up by 200 % over the duration while the population increased by 72 % from
179 million.7 But per capita energy use has barely increased since about 1970, and
the energy use per unit GDP has actually declined by more than 50 % since 1960. It
has to be acknowledged that the USA, and the world for that matter, has been the
beneficiary of tremendous technological innovations and consequent higher standard
of living in that time duration. The energy use number per unit of GDP is a good
indicator of how energy efficient the economy has become over these last 50 years.
For fresh water withdrawal, the story is even better. Total fresh water withdrawal has

7
Report on the Environment (2014), http://cfpub.epa.gov/roe/indicator.cfm?i
1.3 Sustainable Development in the USA 15

Fig. 1.6 US Municipal solid waste trend. Based on real (inflation-adjusted) GDP. Information on
the statistical significance of the trends in this is not presented here. For more information about
uncertainty, variability, and statistical analysis, view the technical documentation for this indica-
tor. Data source: US EPA, 2014; Census Bureau, 2000, 2001, 2011, 2014, BEA, 2014

Fig. 1.7 Cumulative GHG emissions from the USA compared to 1990 (US EPA, http://www.epa.
gov/climatechange/Downloads/ghgemissions/US-GHG-Inventory-2014-Chapter-2-Trends.pdf.
Accessed 25 Jun 2015. In teragram equivalent

not increased since 1980, while both water withdrawal per capita and per unit of GDP
have gone down, the latter by more than 50 %—again signifying more water efficient
economy. The municipal solid waste, a surrogate for material utilization, overall has
increased by close to 200 %, but the per capita waste has remained steady since 1990,
but the per GDP number has decreased by more than 40 % since 1960. The progress
in all these fronts has been remarkable. Still, the US material utilization per capita is
among the highest in the world. The greenhouse gas emission story is also good,
especially in the last 17 years or so during which the total GHG emission from the
USA has declined. This is shown in Fig. 1.7.
16 1 Scientific Sustainability

1.4 Sustainability from an Engineering Viewpoint

Since this is a book for engineers, we need to narrow the discussion of sustainable
development and sustainability from global- and national sociopolitical objectives
down to how engineers can help in achieving sustainability goals by technical
means. These sustainability goals would have to be described in concrete terms,
i.e., they can be achieved in a prescribed time frame. We have to acknowledge that
engineering is the discipline of applying established scientific facts and principles
to produce machines, processes, products, and devices to solve problems. Engi-
neering will play its part in support of policy devised by international and national
authorities, as well as businesses and local regulatory authorities. Sustainable
development, as we have seen from Brundtland and the NRC report, is a political
idea which has a tremendous societal appeal, and over time will have significant
impact on the practice of science and engineering. The Brundtland idea of merging
environmental concerns with economic decision making translates to the design
and engineering of environmentally preferable technologies that are also socially
beneficial. The idea of “producing more with less” also is appealing from the
viewpoints of waste reduction and resource use (energy, material, water) optimi-
zation. Similarly the NRC report’s call for action of “Accelerate improvements in
the use of energy and materials” translates to dematerialization—material use
reduction to satisfy the same need or doing more with less, and decarbonizat-
ion—moving away from dependence on fossil carbon feedstocks for power gener-
ation, fuels, and consumer goods. We know that what is not measured does not get
managed. The NRC report puts great emphasis on the development of indicators
(or metrics) that will measure various important features of sustainability. In simple
engineering terms, when a system is well defined by known and measurable vari-
ables that can determine its behavior completely, engineers can devise mathemat-
ical models to predict the system behavior under conditions at which observed data
are not available. However, validation of the models is still necessary by purposeful
collection of such data. When the validation fails, it typically means some variables
have been either ignored or insufficiently approximated. Such a situation requires
reexamination and reformulation of the system understanding. Adequate confi-
dence in the predictive abilities of our models requires thorough knowledge of
the physics, chemistry, biology, material science governing such systems, and
computational power for accuracy. High-stake successful examples of such systems
are sending a man to the moon, intercepting a missile in air by another missile, deep
sea drilling of oil, and hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas from shale deposits deep
under the earth’s crust. By creating and operating prototypes or pilot plants,
engineers gather experience and confidence in predicting behaviors of systems at
larger scales of space and time. Further validation takes place at the operating scale
during plant start-up, or sending a dog in space before sending a man, or running
trials of hydraulic fracturing. Despite all these precautions, failures do take place,
such as Exxon Valdez, BP offshore drilling rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the
Challenger disaster, refinery blowout in Texas, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, or
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 At this time Mr. Hay had become very proficient in Arabic, and his
family have still in their possession some examples of Arabic writing,
then beautifully executed by him in the highest style of Oriental
manuscript; and a friend, writing from London to his mother, Mrs.
Drummond Hay, says, ‘I met the other evening Mr. Burchardt Barker,
the Oriental translator to the Foreign Office; he told me that a letter
from the Sultan of Morocco had been sent home by your son, Mr.
John Hay, and that he had never seen anything more beautifully
translated by any Orientalist.’
It was either during this stay at Seville, or on a subsequent
occasion, that Mr. Hay visited the Alcazar, then in course of
restoration.
The architect was employed in reconstructing the beautiful
arabesque stucco-work on the walls, by taking moulds of the injured
portions, and, after remodelling the defaced parts, casting from these
moulds fresh plaques to replace those injured or missing.
After gazing for some time on these restorations, and vainly
endeavouring to puzzle out the Arabic inscriptions which enter so
largely into arabesque decorations, Mr. Hay asked for the architect
and inquired of him whether he was aware that he had reversed all
the inscriptions!
The poor man was horrified. He declared he would undo and
rectify his work, begging Mr. Hay, for pity’s sake, not to betray to any
one his discovery: as, if it were made known, he would be a ruined
man, and he and his children would starve. Mr. Hay having shown
him exactly what his error had been, left Seville without betraying the
architect.
In the summer of 1838 Mr. Hay made an expedition into the
interior of Morocco, of which he wrote an account entitled Western
Barbary. This little book, written with all the vigour and freshness
inspired by youth, and with a thorough knowledge of the wild people
amongst whom he travelled and whose sport he shared, was
published by Mr. Murray and attracted much attention and praise
from the press at the time.
During a visit to England in 1838, Mr. Hay made an application to
Lord Palmerston for a diplomatic appointment in the East, and in this
connection relates the following incident, which occurred after his
return to Tangier in the next year.

A respectable Moor, named Selam Lamarti, who was employed

by my father to attend as guard upon my younger brothers and
sisters, and who was very anxious about my future career, inquired
one day whether I should like to have my fortune told by one who
had never failed to predict correctly the life and fortune of any man or
woman whom she might have happened to see, and the chief events
of whose future life she felt intuitively that she could foretell. I replied,
‘As you say she, you refer, I suppose, to a woman, and probably to
an Arab gossip, who expects that I shall reward her handsomely for
telling me a parcel of lies about the happiness and good fortune
which are in store for me.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘she is not an Arab gipsy, but my first cousin, a
young Moorish maiden named Leila, with whom I have been brought
up from infancy as with a sister. If she tells your fortune she will not
take money, nor even a present, in return for her predictions. The
Most High God, who foresees and knows all things, has gifted her
with this incomprehensible power, for which she has attained great
fame; but it is not every one whose fortune can be told by her, only
those whom she occasionally selects, from feeling—as she
describes—a sudden innate inspiration which she cannot explain.
Last Friday,’ he continued, ‘she and her mother were seated, muffled
in their haiks, praying at the grave of a relative in the Mohammedan
cemetery. You, whom she knows by sight, were walking with a
companion on the high road through the cemetery, and you stopped
for some minutes near to the spot where Leila was seated, and she
had a good view of your features. After you had passed Leila told her
mother, and afterwards myself on her return home, that your future
life was seen by her clearly, as in a mirror.’
‘Is she fair? Is she pretty? Can I hear from her own lips my
future?’ I exclaimed, foolishly flattering myself that this maiden might
have fallen in love with me and sought an excuse for a meeting.
‘Hasha’ (God forbid), cried Selam, ‘that you or any man should
visit, or even speak to her, until she meet her bridegroom on her
wedding night, except it be her father, or I as her foster-brother, in
the presence of her mother. Yes, she is very fair and pretty, with a
sweet gentle voice and manner. If you wish to learn the chief events
of your future life, Leila says she must see you again and have a
long look at your features and expression. I will arrange to-night the
hour when you are to accompany me to stand below the lattice
window of her house, where she will be able to gaze at you, though,
as you know, her features will not thus be visible to you.’
This was agreed upon, and the next day Selam accompanied me
to the door of Leila’s house, where, leaving me standing in the street,
he entered, but shortly rejoined me, saying, ‘She is now at the
window.’ I could just see there was some one behind the lattice, so I
looked up and smiled, hoping she might show herself; but not a
glimpse had I of the fair Leila. After waiting a few minutes there was
a tap at the window, and Selam said,
‘That is the signal that you may leave. To-night I shall learn from
Leila, in presence of her mother, the chief events of your future life.
She is a clever girl, and, what is rare with our women, can read and
write Arabic.’
 The following day Selam related Leila’s predictions as follows:
‘John, whom I have so often seen as he passes through the
cemetery on Fridays, will in a few months return to London, and will
be appointed “Katseb” (secretary) to the English “Bashador”
(ambassador) at Stambul; he will rise in favour and become his
confidential secretary. He will be sent by the Bashador on missions
to several countries in the East and return to Stambul. After a few
years he will go back to England, and then on his intended return to
Stambul he will visit Tangier, where he will find his father in bad
health. His father will die and he will be appointed in his place. He
will be in great favour with the present and future Sultans, and will
attain to a much higher rank than his father now holds. There are two
maidens who will love him—one dark, the other fair. He will marry
the fair one, who lives in a distant land. He will have a long and
happy life, and when he is old he will retire to his own country with
high honours from his sovereign and from other sovereigns of
foreign countries. He will live to an advanced age.’
Leila declined an offer of money or a present, and I was never
allowed to see her fair face or hear her sweet voice. Without
narrating here the various events which have happened in my long
life I may say that Leila’s predictions, by an extraordinary
combination of circumstances or chances, have all been verified.
Though I never had an opportunity of letting Leila know that I had
fulfilled her expectations, I hope she may have continued to take an
interest in my career, whether she be in this or in the other world.
 CHAPTER III.

ALEXANDRIA. 1840.

Mr. Hay did not long remain without employment. In his Note
Book for 1840 he thus describes his entrance on the career of a
diplomatist.

Waiting with some anxiety to learn what might turn up and be my

fate, I stayed for some months in Town, and in May, as I was walking
down St. James’ Street towards the Foreign Office, I met Henry
Forster, brother of the late General Forster, then a senior clerk in the
Foreign Office, who said, ‘Hay, I have to congratulate you, for you
have just been marked with our chief’s initial letter.’
On my asking for an explanation, Forster informed me that my
name had been sent up by my kind friend Mr. Hammond (the late
Lord Hammond, then Senior Clerk) for the post of attaché at
Constantinople, and that Lord Palmerston, as usual when he
approved a note or a memorandum, had signed P. Before I received
this appointment, Lord Palmerston’s private secretary asked me
whether I was a Whig or a Tory, adding that his Lordship had
directed him to question me, as he had appointed so many members
of Tory families to foreign posts that it was his intention in future
before making an appointment to inquire of a candidate to which
party he belonged.
I replied that, as I hoped to obtain employment abroad, where it
would not be necessary for me to take part in politics as Whig or
Tory, my party would always be that which upheld the honour and
interests of my own country.
I was told that, when my reply was reported to Lord Palmerston,
he said, ‘Mr. Hay may be a Tory, but he will do for diplomacy.’
On my appointment I was directed, before proceeding to my post,
to attend for some weeks at the Foreign Office to learn the forms,
&c.
Before the present Foreign Office was built there was, at the back
of the old buildings, a street, the houses on the opposite side of
which were overlooked by the rooms occupied by some of the junior
clerks. In a window of one of these houses two elderly ladies used
sometimes to be seated, sewing, and a youthful clerk was wont to
amuse himself dazzling them by means of a looking-glass. The
ladies wrote a note to Lord Palmerston, complaining of this
annoyance; upon which his Lordship sent a memorandum to be
circulated amongst the clerks:
‘The gentlemen in the office are requested not to cast reflections
on ladies. P.’
After working for some weeks as an assistant clerk in the Foreign
Office I was ordered to proceed, in the first place, to Alexandria,
where I was to remain for some time to assist Colonel Hodges, then
our Agent and Consul-General in Egypt—as there was a press of
work in consequence of the question with Mehemet Ali—and was
told that Lord Palmerston desired to know when I should be ready to
start. I replied, ‘To-day.’ This pleased Lord Palmerston, but I was
given three days in which to prepare, and told that, if I had not a
carriage of my own, I was to buy one at Calais and post with all
speed through France to Marseilles in order to catch the mail-packet
thence to Alexandria. At the Foreign Office I was given £100 to pay
all expenses.
Posting down to Dover, I crossed to Calais, and there bought,
second-hand, a light britzska, in which I deposited the two huge bags
of dispatches, of which I was in charge for the admiral at Malta and
our agent in Egypt. As bearer of dispatches I had the preference
over other travellers for fresh horses, and travelled very rapidly, day
and night, arriving at Marseilles several hours before the packet left.
After selling the carriage I had bought at Calais, I took a bath and
had dinner at an hotel.
During dinner, I was waited on by two Maltese. Having finished, I
requested that my bill should be brought; upon which, one of the
waiters observed to the other sotto voce in Arabic, ‘We will not
present a bill; let us charge him fifteen francs, and we will divide the
five which remain over and above the charge for bath and dinner.’
Knowing Arabic, I understood the plot; so when they told me I had
fifteen francs to pay, I replied that I wished to see the landlord before
leaving. He was summoned and I then related to him what had
passed between these rogues of waiters. Upon which he demanded
very angrily what they meant, and one of them, very much flurried,
replied foolishly that they had not supposed the gentleman knew
Maltese! The landlord dismissed the two waiters from his service
then and there, and I paid him his bill of ten francs.
It is remarkable that though Malta has been occupied by a great
number of nations—Phœnicians, Romans, Arabs, Franks and
English—Arabic is still the language of the inhabitants.
Before arriving at Alexandria, I learnt that the plague was in
Egypt, and, having heard so many dread stories about this disease
and the dangers incurred from contagion, I landed with my hair
standing on end from terror, fearing I should be plague-stricken and
die—as I had heard might happen—after a few hours’ illness.
There was much contention at that time between medical men at
Alexandria regarding the contagion from plague. The chief Italian
doctor—whose name I have forgotten—who was said to be very
clever, mounted a donkey covered with oil-skin, the doctor wearing
also clothing of a supposed non-contagion-bearing texture. He
visited the plague patients, but carried an ivory wand with which he
touched their ‘buboes.’
The other chief medical man was Dr. Lorimer, an Englishman,
who did not believe in great danger from contagion but rather in the
risk of infection from visiting, or living in, unhealthy quarters of the
town where there were no sanitary arrangements.
These two doctors were on friendly terms, and when they met in
the streets during their visits to plague patients, some banter
generally passed. The Italian doctor was wont to salute Dr. Lorimer
with ‘Tu creparai’ (Thou wilt die), and the latter returned the gloomy
salutation with a ‘tu quoque.’ The Italian died of the plague whilst I
was at Alexandria, but Dr. Lorimer kept in good health and was
unremitting in his attendance on the sick, doing many acts of charity.
He told me, in support of his theory of infection rather than
contagion, that there were several houses in Alexandria of a better
class, but situated in an unhealthy part of the town, whose tenants,
even when observing the strictest quarantine, had caught the
plague, whilst there were whole streets in a healthy quarter where no
cases ever occurred.
Some years before, in Morocco, I had experience of the danger of
going into dwellings where there is disease.
 When the cholera morbus visited Tangier in 1836, Mr. Bell—at
that time Consul under my father, and who had been surgeon on
board Lord Yarborough’s yacht Falcon—devoted his spare time after
office hours to attending, gratis, upon cholera patients and had much
success: I sometimes accompanied him to interpret when he could
not find an assistant who spoke Arabic, and on one occasion he
requested me to aid him in giving directions to a poor Moor whose
son was attacked with cholera. I accompanied Dr. Bell without fear,
but when he requested me to lift the dying man, already looking like
a livid corpse, to enable him to pour some liquid down his throat, I
shuddered, and, trembling, held the man in my arms till the dose was
administered. The patient died shortly after.
I returned home feeling ill and shaken; and, whilst standing before
a fire trying to warm myself, was seized with terrible cramps and fell
in pain on the hearth-rug. I was put to bed with bottles of hot water
on my body. Dr. Bell was sent for, but was not to be found. Having
heard that sometimes oil relieved pain in cholera, I got a bottle of
good French oil and adding a few drops of laudanum to a full tumbler
of oil, drank it off. This relieved the intense pain. When the doctor
arrived, he approved of my remedy and said I had an attack of
cholera asiatica.
The danger from plague by contagion cannot, however, to my
mind be called in question. That dire disease was introduced into
Morocco about the year 1826 by an English frigate which our
Government had dispatched to Alexandria, where the plague was
then raging, to convey from that port to Tangier two sons of the
Sultan, returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca. No case of plague or
other illness had occurred on board the frigate during the voyage,
and the Sultan’s sons and other passengers were allowed to land at
Tangier.
 The Customs’ officers being suspicious that in the numerous
boxes, brought by pilgrims who had been permitted to embark with
the Moorish princes, contraband goods were being smuggled,
caused some of the cases to be opened. One contained Egyptian
wearing apparel, which the owner said he had bought second-hand,
and subsequently confessed had belonged to a person who had died
of the plague at Alexandria. The two Moorish officials who opened
the boxes were attacked with the plague that night and died in a few
hours. The disease spread rapidly throughout Morocco, carrying off
eighty per cent. of those who were attacked.
Shortly after my arrival at Alexandria, I was presented to Mehemet
Ali by Colonel Hodges. I need not give a description of this
remarkable man, of whom so much has been written, but I was much
struck by his keen eyes, like those of an eagle. The Colonel proved
to be no match for him in discussing the grave questions then at
issue regarding his desire to be independent of the Sultan’s sway,
whilst Mehemet Ali showed markedly his personal dislike to the Irish
colonel, who was hot-tempered and blurted out in very unguarded
language the views entertained by the British Government at that
time regarding Egypt.
On hearing that I was attached to the Embassy at Constantinople,
Mehemet Ali fixed on me his eagle eyes with no friendly expression,
and I could perceive, from words let drop then and afterwards, the
extreme hatred his Highness entertained towards any one connected
with our Ambassador, Lord Ponsonby, the persistent and successful
opponent of his ambitious views.
About this time a portion of the Mahmud Canal was being dug by
the unfortunate Egyptian fellahin, assisted by their wives and
children, according to the ‘corvée’ system. Men, women and children
dwelt in miserable hovels near the canal, and I have seen the
wretched people working by thousands. A platter of bean soup and
some coarse bread was all that each person received to keep body
and soul together. No pay was given—or if any were made, it was
retained by the overseers—and the greatest misery prevailed. I was
told that there were two young fellah girls, sisters, who possessed
only one garment between them; so whilst one worked the other
remained in her hovel until her turn came, and then she donned the
long blue shift and the weary one remained nude. Yet have I seen
this joyous race, after emptying the baskets of earth they carried,
filled with mud grubbed up by their hands, without aid of spade or
other implement, singing and clapping their hands as they returned
to the canal, balancing the empty baskets on their heads.
The Egyptians have been bondsmen for thousands of years, and
are a degenerate and cowardly race.
On one occasion, when the younger son of Mehemet Ali, Abbas
Pasha, a cruel tyrant, visited the canal, a wretched fellah, with hardly
a rag to his back, walked to a mound of earth above where the
Pasha stood and cried out to his fellow-workmen: ‘Slaves and
cowards! There stands the tyrant. Strike and destroy him, or—if you
have not the courage to strike—spit, and you will drown him!’ This
rash but brave fellah was seized and beaten until he lay a corpse.
To give another instance of the cruelty of this monster, Abbas
Pasha. It was the custom in Egypt for any one of position to be
accompanied, when on horseback, by a ‘sais,’ or footman, who ran
beside, or preceded, the rider; and it was astonishing how these men
could keep up for miles with a horse going at a fast amble or trot.
The ‘sais’ of Abbas Pasha, having run by the side of his master
during a long journey, became footsore and, his shoes being worn
out, begged that a new pair might be given him at the next village.
The Pasha replied, ‘Thy petition shall be granted.’ On arrival at the
village, Abbas Pasha ordered that a blacksmith should be sent for,
and when he came said, ‘Bind the sais, and nail on his feet two
horse-shoes; see that they are red hot before they are fastened on.’
This was done, and the tortured man was left writhing in agony,
whilst the Pasha returned to Alexandria.
One day, finding that I was not needed at the office, I went for a
ride. When I had gone about four miles beyond the town I met an
Arab, mounted on a ‘huri,’ or dromedary, riding at a great pace
towards Alexandria, his face muffled up, as is usual with these
people. He stopped his animal as I passed, and, showing me a little
object he had in his hand, said, ‘I hear you Franks care about these
things, and am going to Alexandria to find a purchaser.’
It appeared to be a very beautiful gem, apparently cut in agate, of
the head of Bacchus. On my asking where he had found it, he told
me in some ruins at a distant spot. I offered him a few piastres for
the gem: but he refused my offer, saying that he knew a similar
object found on the same site had been sold by a friend of his for a
sum equivalent in piastres to about £5.
Though not myself a collector of antiquities, my father was an
archaeologist, and possessed a beautiful collection of coins, &c., and
I decided on purchasing the gem as a gift to him: so, after some
wrangling, I became the owner on paying about £2. The Arab, on
receiving the money, turned back and rode off at a rapid pace.
Being very anxious to learn whether my acquisition was one of
great value, I returned to Alexandria and called on the Austrian
Consul-General, Monsieur Laurin, a collector of gems and other
antiquities, and a great connoisseur. On showing him the gem he
pronounced it to be a very beautiful work of art, and, if genuine, of
great value and worth ten times what I had given; but said he really
could not say without putting it to a test whether or no it were
counterfeit. He informed me that imitations of all kinds of antiquities
were imported from Italy and sold to travellers. When I related to him
the incident of my meeting with the Arab, when riding out in the
country, and the language and appearance of the man, he said there
were Europeans at Alexandria who sold these objects, who were
quite capable of hiring an Arab and his camel, and, on seeing that an
English stranger was about to take a ride, sending him to encounter
the traveller, in the hope of getting a good price.
With my permission, Monsieur Laurin used a penknife to scratch
the back of the gem, which he said was agate, but he still hesitated
in declaring, though he used a magnifying glass, whether the head of
Bacchus was also cut on the agate or was composition. He said
there was one way of solving the doubt, which would not injure a
gem, but that if it were a counterfeit it would disappear,—which was
to plunge it into hot water. He added that the head was so beautifully
executed, it deserved to be kept on its own merits and not to be put
under the test, as it would be greatly admired, he felt sure, by my
father. I insisted, however, on the test being applied, so hot water
was brought. Into this I dropped the gem, and in an instant Bacchus
disappeared and I found myself the possessor of a flat piece of
agate.
My father, as I have said, was an archaeologist. When he lived in
the neighbourhood of Valenciennes, in 1826, a French labourer
discovered, in the neighbourhood of that town, a beautiful bronze
statue of Hercules, about eighteen inches high, and, hearing that my
father bought coins and other antiques, brought it to him. The statue
was then in a perfect state: the club was of silver, in the left hand
were apples of gold; the lion’s skin over the shoulder was in silver,
and in the eyes were two small rubies. My father made the man an
offer, which he refused.
A few days afterwards he brought back the statue in a mutilated
state—the club, apples, lion’s skin, and ruby eyes were gone, having
been sold to a jeweller. My father gave the man 100 francs for the
statue, and this beautiful work of art became his idol; though offered
a large sum to part with it, he declined, and in his will bequeathed it
to the British Museum, where it can be seen amongst other gems of
ancient art. His collection of coins and other antiquities he left to the
Museum of the Antiquarian Society in Edinburgh, of which he was for
many years honorary secretary.
Dated June 27, 1840, Cairo, I find among my notes the following
entry:—
‘Heard a good story of the last of the Mamelukes, a fine old
Saracen, one of the very few who escaped the massacre at Cairo.
‘The old fellow had been invited to an evening party at the house
of the former Consul-General, Colonel Campbell, where there was
assembled a large party of ladies, to each individual of whom he
determined, in his politeness, to address what he imagined to be the
most flattering remark possible. Thus he made the tour of the fair
sex, saying to each, “I see you will soon make a child!”
accompanying his words with an expressive gesture. Married and
unmarried were greeted alike! and to a young widow, a flame of the
Colonel’s, notwithstanding her persistent denial and offended dignity,
he repeatedly asseverated she would “make a child!”’
 CHAPTER IV.

CONSTANTINOPLE AND LORD PONSONBY. 1840.

Colonel Hodges had been hospitable and very kindly disposed

towards me, but I hailed with pleasure the day when I embarked—in
an Austrian steamer, in consequence of relations being broken off
with Mehemet Ali—to proceed to Beyrout and thence to
Constantinople, to join the Embassy.
At Beyrout, where I spent a few hours, I went on board the flag-
ship of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, where I heard it was decided to
attack Acre, and that a battle was impending between the army of
Ibrahim Pasha, and the Turkish and British troops commanded by
General Smith.
On arrival at Constantinople, I presented myself to Lord
Ponsonby, who, after listening to the tidings I brought, directed me to
address him a dispatch reporting all I had related to his Excellency;
adding, that I must lose no time in preparing it, as he was about to
dispatch a messenger overland to England.
Never having written a dispatch in my life, though I had
corresponded privately on passing events in Egypt with members of
the Embassy at Constantinople and the Foreign Office, I felt very
nervous—especially as the report was required immediately by his
Excellency. Half-an-hour after my interview with Lord Ponsonby,
while I was still writing, the late Percy Doyle, then first attaché, came
in with a message from the Ambassador to request that my report
should be brought to his Excellency at once. I said the draft was not
quite finished, and that I wished to copy it out.
Doyle answered he must take it up at once to his Excellency, so,
after I had scribbled the few lines that remained, without allowing me
even to read it over, he carried it off. I waited for some time for his
return and then, to my dismay, he announced that Lord Ponsonby
had read my draft, and, as there was no time to have it copied, had
enclosed it, as it was, in a dispatch to Lord Palmerston. It was
published in the Blue Book, with other dispatches on Eastern affairs.
It was in this year, when a victory had been gained over the
Egyptian army in Syria by the combined British and Turkish forces,
that a number of trophies in flags, banners, &c., were sent by
General Smith and Admiral Sir Charles Napier, who commanded the
British forces, to the Ambassador to present to the Sultan.
A day having been fixed for the audience, Lord Ponsonby
prepared the speech he proposed to deliver, and directed Mr.
Frederick Pisani, Chief Dragoman of the Embassy, to write out a
translation into the Turkish language, and to learn it by heart. He was
instructed not to pay any attention to Lord Ponsonby’s utterances
during the audience, but, when requested by his Excellency, he was
to repeat the prepared speech, and subsequently the replies, which
had likewise been prepared in answer to the Sultan’s language, of
which his Excellency was able to guess the purport. Lord Ponsonby
gave these directions, as he knew that Mr. Pisani was a nervous
man, and might find it difficult on such an occasion to render the
Ambassador’s language adequately into eloquent and polite Turkish,
if not prepared beforehand.
The Ambassador and members of the Embassy in uniform, with
numerous kavasses, proceeded in the state kaik from Therapia to
the Sultan’s palace.
To each attaché a banner or flag was given, to carry for
presentation at the audience. To me was allotted a Turkish banner,
on a very long pole, with crescent and spear.
All the ministers and other dignitaries of the Porte were
assembled at the palace, and stood in two lines on each side of the
Sultan, as the Ambassador and suite entered the reception hall.
Keeping my eyes fixed upon the Sultan as I entered, I lowered
unwittingly the pole and banner, which were very heavy, and nearly
carried off on the spear the fez of one of the ministers. This
‘gaucherie’ produced a suppressed giggle from an attaché.
The scene that followed was very ludicrous, especially as Lord
Ponsonby had not warned the members of the Embassy of the
nature of the address he was about to deliver, or of the instructions
he had given to Mr. Pisani. Advancing with great dignity near to
where the Sultan stood, and putting out occasionally his hand as an
orator might do, Lord Ponsonby commenced with a very grave
expression of countenance, counting ‘one, two, three, four, five,’ &c.,
up to fifty, occasionally modulating his voice, as if he desired to make
an impression upon the minds of his hearers, putting emphasis upon
some numbers, and smiling with satisfaction and pleasure when he
reached the higher numbers of thirty up to forty. Of course his
Excellency knew that the Sultan, his ministers, and other officials at
the Court were not acquainted with the English language.
On concluding, he turned to the interpreter and motioned him to
speak. Mr. Pisani recited in very eloquent and flowery Turkish the
Ambassador’s prepared speech.
 When Lord Ponsonby commenced the enumeration, I hid my face
behind the banner, and pinched myself sharply, to check the outburst
of laughter which inwardly convulsed me.
The Sultan replied, expressing his sense of gratitude to the British
Government, his thanks to the British naval and military forces and
their Commanders, as also to the Ambassador. This Mr. Pisani
translated. Then Lord Ponsonby commenced again to count from
sixty upwards, pausing now and then as if dwelling upon particular
numbers, which by his voice and gesture it would appear he desired
especially to impress on H.I.M.’s mind.
Mr. Pisani again repeated the language which he had been
desired to prepare.
The trophies were handed over to Turkish officers appointed by
the Sultan to receive them, and the Ambassador and his suite
retired.
Not one of the Turkish officers present during the audience
appeared to have the slightest suspicion of what was taking place,
and even if they had subsequently learnt that the Ambassador had
counted instead of making a speech, they would have
comprehended that the desire of his Excellency was that his
prepared speech should be clearly and properly translated by the
interpreter on such an interesting occasion.
It was at this time that Bosco, famed for sleight of hand and magic
art, visited the Turkish capital; and Lord Ponsonby—who never went
out at night, not even to a dinner or reception at other Embassies—
being desirous of witnessing the performance of this renowned
magician, invited Bosco, who was a gentleman by birth, to dinner to
meet a large party, requesting that he would entertain the company
after dinner by his marvellous sleight of hand.
 Bosco arrived a little time before dinner was announced. The
room was crowded, and he was introduced and entered into
conversation with several of the guests. During dinner he was quiet
and unassuming, and did not take part in the general conversation;
but just as Lady Ponsonby was preparing to move, Bosco rose and,
turning to the Ambassador, said, ‘I beg your Excellency’s permission
to say a few words before the company leave the table. It has been a
high honour to have been invited by your Excellency to dine in
company with such distinguished men and noble ladies; but I feel
that it would be an act of ingratitude on my part were I to conceal
from your Excellency proceedings which have been passing both
before and during dinner, and which have come to my knowledge
through the extraordinary gift of vision I possess, and the faculty of
perception of the acts and movements of those around me. Humble
individual as I am, I have no hesitation in declaring that the very
unusual proceedings in which certain persons in this society have
taken part might reflect, in some degree, upon all present—even
upon myself, a poor conjurer, who has been thrown into their
company—should it be known that I have associated with gentlemen
and ladies, whose conduct might be stigmatised as criminal!’
He spoke thus with such a grave countenance that even Lord
Ponsonby seemed puzzled, and thought the man was demented.
Bosco continued, ‘Your Lordship cannot but admit that the grave
charge I have put forward is not without foundation, when I declare
that in the coat pockets, or the breasts of the waistcoats, of several
of the gentlemen there will be found some of your Lordship’s silver
spoons—and the selection has not been confined to the clean
alone.’
 The guests put their hands into their pockets, from which they
extracted spoons and forks still greasy from use, salt spoons, tops of
cruets, &c. Great merriment ensued, especially on the part of the
ladies at the expense of the unfortunate men who were thus proved
to be guilty.
Then Bosco, turning to some ladies who were on the opposite
side of the table, and with whom he had been holding a lively
conversation before dinner, said, ‘That noble lady,’ indicating one,
‘ought hardly to laugh at the disclosure I have made, since it will be
found that she has secreted in the bodice of her dress the bouquet of
one of the gentlemen, who has since been making a vain search for
it, having possibly received the pretty flowers from another fair hand.’
The lady flushed up angrily; but, in searching, found the lost
bouquet concealed in the folds of her dress.
Then turning to another, he said, ‘Madame, you cannot be justified
in speaking, as it appears to me I have heard you doing, regarding
the gentlemen who took possession of his Lordship’s spoons, when
you will find, concealed in your hair, an ornament which rightfully
belongs to that lady upon whose person sparkle so many beautiful
jewels.’
The ornament in question was found fixed in the hair of the
accused.
In the evening, Bosco explained the extraordinary gift he
possessed of sleight of hand and of his being able—while calling the
attention of the person, with whom he was conversing, to some
indifferent object or otherwise distracting attention—to abstract, by
an instantaneous and almost imperceptible movement, some
ornament from their person and again to be able to place, or cast it
with precision, wherever he desired. He also explained the trick