Redefining Efficiency

by Gorman, Hugh S.

• ISBN13: 9781884836756
• ISBN10: 1884836755
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Akron Pr

Summary

Today, pollution control regulations define how complex technological systems interact with natural ecosystems and competing human uses of the environment. Redefining Efficiency examines the evolution of this industrial ecology in the United States by tracing numerous pollution concerns associated with the production, transportation, and refining of petroleum over the course of the twentieth century. In doing so, this book demonstrates that a pollution control ethic based on the efficient use of resources emerged early in the century and met with enough success to undermine the first calls for strict government-enforced regulations. Redefining Efficiency also chronicles the failure of this efficiency-based pollution control ethic and its replacement by another. This second ethic required society first to define its environmental objectives and then to institute policies to achieve those objectives. The resulting regulations, by restructuring the economics of pollution control, have since redefined the notion of industrial efficiency.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
List of Tables	xi
Preface	xiii
Introduction	1	(12)
PART I. EARLY POLLUTION CONCERNS AND THE DIRECTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE
Pollution Concerns Articulated	13	(21)
Concerns in the Oil Fields	34	(29)
Keeping Oil in the Pipelines	63	(26)
Refineries, Pollution Concerns, and Technological Change	89	(29)
What to Do with Tankers?	118	(19)
PART II. FIGHTING POLLUTION UNDER AN EFFICIENCY ETHIC
Validating a Guiding Ethic	137	(32)
Success and Failure in the Oil Fields	169	(26)
Eliminating Corrosion and Monitoring Flows	195	(20)
Creating a Pollution Control Manual	215	(32)
The Ocean Ignored As Tankers Grow	247	(22)
PART III. REGULATING INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY TO MAINTAIN ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
Crude Awakening	269	(32)
Redefining Efficiency	301	(22)
Environmental Objectives and the Evolution of Tankers	323	(18)
Closing the Loop	341	(16)
Conclusion	357	(8)
Notes	365	(54)
Bibliography	419