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Discussion around limiting climate change primarily focusses on whether the best results can be gained by individuals changing how they act, or governments introducing new legislation.
Now though, University of Leeds academics Dr Rob Lawlor and Dr Helen Morley from the Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre suggest engineering professionals could also play a pivotal role, and could provide a co-ordinated response helping to mitigate climate change.
Writing in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics, they say engineering professional institutions could take a stand in tackling climate change by developing a declaration imposing restrictions and requirements on members.
"A strong and coordinated action by the engineering profession could itself make a significant difference in how we respond to climate change," they said.
"We know many engineers and firms make great efforts to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and research is carried out and supported by the sector to help reduce its impact on the world. We're suggesting that concerted action could improve this process further."
Quoting 2014 research by Richard Heede from the Climate Accountability Institute, they say nearly two-thirds of historic carbon dioxide and methane emissions could be attributed to crude oil and natural gas producers, coal extractors, and cement producers. These are industries typically enabled by the engineering profession.
They're looking at you, VW engineers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:35PM
Right. At least get the shit straight. Or you'll start BSing about Ozone too.
Economy is NOT going to get decarbonized anytime soon. CO2 emissions will continue going up past 2050, easily. Most optimistically, they rate will not increase - almost doubled since 1990. The "green" lobby kind of guarantees failure to decarbonize by protesting every CO2-free nuclear power source, the only real base load power we have. But whatever, if I slap 200W of cells on roof of my car, then that will make it drive forever, right?
There are deniers that Global Warming is even real (just see idiots in the thread). Then there are "green" idiots that have same grasp of this problem as the deniers, just on the other side of the spectrum. And then there is reality. So wake the fuck up and smell all the carbon we are burning.
http://www.worldcoal.org/file_validate.php?file=Coal%20Facts%202015.pdf [worldcoal.org]
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/world-natural-gas-production.html [enerdata.net]
There is no silver bullet. No magic solution. +10C is where we are heading with our current policies.