Introduction

In Italy, atrazine has been used extensively in maize cultivation since the early 1960s. One of the advantages of using atrazine in maize cultivation is flexibility in the timing of the application. Unfortunately, however, its chemical properties make it a likely source of groundwater contamination, especially in areas with permeable soils. In some areas of the Po Valley in northern Italy, where maize cultivation is extensive and groundwater the dominant source of drinking water, chemical monitoring in the 1980s revealed that concentrations of atrazine exceeded 0.1 μg/l i.e. the maximum admissible concentration set by the Directive on Drinking Water Quality of 15 July 1980 (see Vighi and Zanin, 1994, for examples of monitoring results). Following the implementation of local restrictions in 1986, a nationwide ban on the sale and use of atrazine was introduced in 1990.

An earlier pilot study was conducted to address the question of whether the EC standard, with specific reference to atrazine in Italy, could be justified in terms of social efficiency; that is, is 0.1 μg/l a socially efficient contamination level (Bergman and Pugh, 1997)? Broadly speaking, this question can be answered in the affirmative if 0.1 μg/l is the concentration of atrazine in drinking water for which the marginal cost of reducing the concentration is equal to the marginal benefit of a reduced concentration (see Söderqvist et al., 1995, for a basic introduction to these issues). We confine ourselves here to noting that reduction costs may, inter alia, be due to farmers having to turn to more costly weed eradication methods, and that reduced health risks may be one important constituent of reduction benefits.

Introduction

Chapter 7 showed that market failure (the presence of externalities and imperfect competition in product markets) may give rise to agricultural chemicals which will accumulate in the environment to a socially excessive level. It is the role of governments to intervene to construct institutions to counteract the market failure. Yet all too often, government intervention serves only to exacerbate the original problem by supplying an inappropriate or ineffective institution; such an event is termed a ‘regulatory failure’. In this chapter, various sources of regulatory failure are examined.

In many cases, governments have banned particular chemicals deemed to have accumulated to excessive levels in natural resources. Rölike (1996) reported that by 1993, 78 countries had used this type of regulation. In Germany, 300 of the (approximately) 1000 pesticides registered have been banned individually. Many European countries have responded to a European Commission Directive on drinking water by banning the sale and use of particular chemicals (see p. 218). The objective of this form of regulation is to reduce chemical accumulation by two means: firstly, by removing from use chemicals already present at high concentrations; and, secondly, by providing a signal of society's disapproval of excessive accumulation. It also has the advantage of a degree of certainty (although even this is mitigated by the persistence and continued accumulation of products for several years after the imposition of a ban).

This chapter assesses the combination of maximum acceptable concentrations (MACs) and product-specific bans (PSBs) used by regulators.

Purpose

The primary purpose of this book is to interest the reader in technology. Interest leads to curiosity and further study. The secondary purpose is to deepen the reader's understanding of technology and of the dual role of technology as a source and remedy of global (environmental) change. At the end of the book's “technology journey” it is hoped that readers in general, and students, researchers, and practitioners in particular, can more fully incorporate technology issues in their reflection, conceptualization, analysis, modeling, and ultimately policy formulation when addressing global change.

My personal motivation for writing this book was dissatisfaction with the treatment of technology in studies, scenarios, models, and textbooks about global change. At worst, technology is entirely ignored, or treated as an “externality” that falls from heaven rather than evolving from within our societies and economies. At best, technology issues are included as an afterthought in a “pro forma” chapter or as an ex post model sensitivity analysis. Technology relates to all major drivers of global change such as population growth, economic development, and resource use. Technology is also central in monitoring environmental impacts and implementing response strategies. There are no textbooks on technology and global change, and technology's treatment in global change models is also rather poor. These are gaps this book hopes to start to fill.

Synopsis

The Appendix briefly presents data sources and descriptions for representative data sets presented in the preceding chapters that may be useful in coursework and modeling of technological change. After presenting data sources, a description, and formats, instructions are given on how to obtain the data sets in electronic form through internet access.

Data Sets: Sources, Description, and Electronic Access

Overview

This Appendix contains a brief description of the sources, definitions, and comments on a number of data sets presented throughout the book. Their order of presentation follows their chronological order as they appear in the text. For each data set the following information is given: title, figure numbers (as appearing in the preceding chapters), file name, time period covered, unit, and description of data items and sources. For those interested in obtaining more historical data sets, we draw attention to the recently released CD-ROM edition (Carter et al, 1997) of the US Historical Statistics (US DOC, 1975).

Data format

All data sets are stored in two file types: spreadsheet (denoted with the respective file extension .wkl) and in plain, comma-delimited, ascii, UNIX-readable format (denoted with the file extension .csv). Thus, altogether the data sets are stored in 10 files with two formats each, yielding 20 files in the directory set up for internet access/downloading. The spreadsheet format chosen is Lotus-123, assuring maximum compatibility with higher version releases of this or similar spreadsheet programs (e.g., Excel).

Synopsis

The chapter provides an overview of diverse conceptualizations and terminologies that have been introduced to describe technology and how it evolves. First, technology is defined as consisting of both hardware and Software (the knowledge required to produce and use technological hardware). Second, the essential feature of technology – its dynamic nature – is outlined. Technologies change all the time individually, and in their aggregate, typically in a sequence of replacements of older by newer technologies. Finally, the chapter emphasizes the multitude of linkages and cross-enhancing interdependencies between technologies giving rise to successive technology “clusters”, which are the focus of the subsequent historical analysis chapters. The most essential terminology distinguishes between invention (discovery), innovation (first commercial application) and diffusion (widespread replication and growth) of technologies. As a simple conceptual model the technology life cycle is introduced. In this model, new technologies evolve from a highly uncertain embryonic stage with frequent rejection of proposed solutions. In the case of acceptance, technology diffusion follows and technologies continue to be improved, widen their possible applications, and interact with other existing technologies and infrastructures. Ultimately, improvement potentials become exhausted, negative externalities apparent, and diffusion eventually saturates, providing an opportunity window for the introduction of alternative solutions. Technology diffusion is at the core of the historical technological changes of importance for global (environmental) change. This is why the main emphasis in this book is on technology diffusion, which also provides the central metric to measure technological change.

Synopsis

For the Service sector the most important impacts of technological change are changes in how individuals use their time – their “time budgets” – and changes in consumer expenditures. Longer life expectancies, shorter working hours, and vastly rising incomes have changed time budgets and expenditure patterns in ways that have significant environmental impacts. A principal example is increased personal mobility – a consumer demand that appears far from satiated. Increased demands for ever more personal mobility have been largely met by motorized vehicles. Thus emissions from transportation, along with a whole variety of other environmental impacts, have grown substantially. Fortunately, projecting future transportation growth from historical innovation diffusion patterns indicates lower environmental impacts than are suggested by traditional linear extrapolations, assuming business-as-usual. Yet, the growth of the Service economy and the consumer society is such that these could soon rival agriculture and industry as major sources of global change. Thus individual lifestyle decisions, particularly decisions about which artifacts are used and how, become ever more important in determining the type and scale of environmental impacts. One important example described in more detail is that of food. With rising incomes food demands become increasingly saturated. In the industrialized countries, further agricultural productivity increases from biological and mechanical innovations can then be translated into actual absolute reductions in agricultural land use, even while production and exports continue to increase.

Synopsis

An overview of agricultural Output and productivity growth is outlined. Three broad historical periods are distinguished. In the first, agriculture improves primarily through biological innovations in the form of new crops and new agricultural practices. In the second, new transport technologies enable agricultural production and trade to expand to a continental and then a global scale. In the third, mechanization, synthetic factor inputs, and new crops, all developed through systematic R&D, push agricultural output and productivity to unprecedented scales. Throughout all three periods labor productivity rises, requiring ever fewer farmers to feed growing populations both at home and abroad. The reduced demand for farmers precedes a related migration from rural to urban areas, labeled urbanization. Progress in agricultural technologies and techniques also progressively decouples the expansion of arable land from population growth and food consumption growth. Initially, this decoupling simply slows down the expansion of agricultural land. Subsequently, international trade effectively transfers the expansion of agricultural land to other countries, limiting further expansion in the industrialized countries. Finally, agricultural productivity increases to such an extent that agricultural land in the industrialized countries can be reconverted to other uses. Thus technological change, combined with saturating demands for food, translates into absolute reductions in agricultural land requirements. Technology begins to spare nature. In contrast with its decreasing land requirements, the overall expansion of agricultural production has more problematic impacts on global water use and global nutrient and geochemical cycles.

Synopsis

The chapter starts with a brief quantitative overview of global industrial expansion and the disparities that remain between centers of industrialization and those regions that are catching up. Overall expansion has been enormous. It has been possible only through successive replacements of manufacturing technologies, materials, and energy sources, and through continuing improvements in the organization of industrial production. These changes have yielded enormous productivity gains in labor, materials, and energy use per unit of production. Such productivity gains have sustained increasing levels of industrial Output, increased work force incomes, and reduced working time. Productivity gains have also eased the demands on natural resources and reduced traditional environmental impacts such as indoor and urban air pollution. At the same time, however, new environmental concerns have emerged at the global level. Synthetic substances are depleting the ozone layer, and increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, mostly from fossil energy combustion, are causing global warming. Historically, environmental productivity gains have been outpaced by output growth. Only in the last two decades have gradually saturating demands in bulk materials combined with continued productivity increases resulted in near stabilization of materials and energy use in the most advanced industrial countries. The history of energy and carbon use illustrates the predominant pattern. Energy use per unit of economic output has declined by 1% per year, and carbon emissions per unit of energy use has declined by 0.3% per year. This is a combined carbon productivity increase of 1.3% per year.

Synopsis

The postscript briefly reviews useful theoretical formulations and empirical data that are available for building improved models of technological change. Elements of a stylized model are outlined, emphasizing uncertainty, mechanisms of continual technological improvement, and their influence on technology diffusion and Substitution. Uncertainty introduces stochasticity in model formulations. Technological improvement through R&D and learning by doing introduces nonconvexities due to increasing returns. A number of models with these essential features are presented. The chapter concludes with a simplified model that integrates uncertainty, R&D, and technological learning as sources of technological change. The model demonstrates the feasibility of dealing simultaneously with stochasticity and nonconvexity arising from uncertainty and increasing returns from R&D and learning by doing. The postscript concludes with the optimistic outlook that modeling approaches do exist that can improve the traditional treatment of technological change as an “externality” to the economy and society at large.

Introduction

Why a postscript?

This book has described the evolution of technology and its relationship to global change largely without recourse to formal models. There are two reasons for this. First, models treating technological change as a process endogenous to the economy and society have been generally disappointing.