Industrial ecology embraces all industrial activity, including production and consumption, and ranges all spatial and temporal scales, from local to global and from shortterm environmental insult to longterm habitability. Industrial firms and industrial farms are key agents of change, as well as important units of analysis. Mass and energy flows over time and space are of particular interest. Industrial pollution can be emitted from particular locations to diffuse throughout the environment, or can be emitted by diffuse sources to accumulate at a point. The industrial ecology of each plant or industry is unique.
Various regions have characteristic industrial ecologies.
Materials and energy move through time and space, as do firms or technological innovations. And by definition, industrial ecology relates human industrial development to nature. Examples from the energyand materialsintensive socioeconomic system of the former Soviet bloc nations will illustrate these points and suggest the great potential of the industrial ecology paradigm for many geographic perspectives. David P. Angel, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, Worcester MA 01610. Significant advances in energy and environmental technologies are needed if the United States and other countries are to achieve a pattern of sustainable development and to meet commitments made under the terms of the Climate Convention and other international agreements.