April 29, 1990

NOW THAT the media hype of Earth Day is past, it’s time for the real work to begin. Finding renewable energy sources and cleaning up our garbage are enormous challenges, and I can’t think of anyone better at solving these problems than the nation’s brilliant engineering community.

The problem is that engineers have never been particularly socially conscious. Most electrical and electronic engineers (more than 90 percent of the members of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, for example) don’t profess any interest at all in social issues.

Focusing on such issues doesn’t make technology companies tingle any more than it did in the 1960s, when ecology, conservation and the cry against toxics first started making headlines. There’s just not a lot of big money to be made yet by conserving instead of consuming.

But high-tech companies may not be able to waffle much longer. Environmentalists are no longer considered killjoys who want to cramp our style by asking us to shut off our water once in a while and recycle our beer bottles. And communism has nearly ceased being the belching monster in the closet that’s kept the Defense Department funding anti-monster machines for the past 40 or so years.

These companies will have to shift their focus to the commercial sector — a process called “economic conversion” — or risk adding greatly to U.S. unemployment by throwing out on their ears great multitudes of skilled engineers who are already being laid off by defense cutbacks.

Because of the direct threat to their wallets, “there’s lots of interest in conversion” in the engineering community, says Cindi Anderson, chairwoman of the Palo Alto-based chapter of the Society on the Social Implications of Technology (SSIT), a special interest group within the venerable trade organization IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers).

“People are starting to ask, “What will we do if we aren’t working for the defense industry?’ But we have millions of things to work on — the infrastructure, education, environment, energy,” she says. “The problem is, how do you get (executives) used to the fact that they have to change?”

Maybe you start shoving some facts and figures under their noses. In the latest issue of the Utne Reader, Worldwatch Institute’s Michael Renner writes that “arms production is steadily becoming more capital-intensive as it becomes more and more dependent on expensive high-tech projects, thus reducing the number of jobs generated per military dollar.”

He adds that civilian spending creates far more jobs per dollar invested. In the U.S., spending $1 billion (1981 dollars) on guided missile production creates about 9,000 jobs. The same amount spent on local mass transit would yield 21,500 jobs; on education, 63,000; on air, water and solid waste pollution control, 16,500 jobs.

Anderson says the issues of ecology and energy management are particular favorites for members of SSIT, and they’re looking for ways to help.

A recent meeting featured Ted Smith, director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Anderson says members will help Smith evaluate the many technical proposals he gets regularly for toxic cleanup, as well as help their employers evaluate nontoxic production alternatives. “We work at all these companies,” says Anderson. “Who is better than us to evaluate these things?”

Michael Closson, executive director of the Center for Economic Conversion in Mountain View, says engineers are “the key thing” to effective conversion, though the electronics industry is a tough nut to crack. “They’re suspicious of us because we’re part of the peace movement,” he says. “But what we’re finding behind the scenes is that a lot of technology companies are exploring alternatives.”

High-tech conversion can center around various kinds of renewable energy development, pollution cleanup (already starting to be a profitable venture), new and efficient mass transit and environmental restoration.

“I’m excited about that because the environment is the one issue that has the potential of capturing the imagination of the public the way the fear of the Soviets did in the early ’80s when Reagan was elected,” says Closson. “We’re trying to make it more than a fear issue. There is legitimate cause for great concern, but let’s talk about it as an opportunity, too. My motto is, We’ve lost an enemy and gained an opportunity.”

(To contact the SSIT in Palo Alto, call (415) 327-6622. The non-profit Center for Economic Conversion is at (415) 968-8798.)