In a discussion with a non-technical and environmentally-minded friend about the engineering education program I run for high schoolers (BlueStamp Engineering) he asked,
“Do you really think that training more engineers is the solution to our problems? It seems that many of our problems today are a result of 'solutions' engineers found over the last 100 years. Pollution, global warming, long-distance wars, oil spills, etc... What is to say that the 'progress' your well-trained engineers achieve will only cause the next set of big problems?”
He didn't mean this as a slight at the engineering profession. It was a well-thought out question, and I have to agree that without engineering none of the problems he listed would be an issue. After all, if these problems are allowed to grow at their current pace, there exists a point in the future where the planet is so stricken by war waged with WMDs and/or life-hindering pollution that humanity would be better off if scientific progress never occurred.
I'm sure that this debate has raged on for many professions. Politics, medicine, and most recently, finance could all be analyzed against this 'absolute measure' where all costs and benefits of the industry in question are laid out on the table in an attempt to prove a net gain/loss in total value. It probably stems from the great debate of our childhood: “My Dad is smarter than your Dad!”
However I think that the debate over the engineering field has an interesting twist – we are seeing the development of a feedback loop that corrects the issues that the last generation of engineers created when solving problems of their day. When I talk to the young engineers of the future, not one student is interested in simply generating more power and more widgets. They inevitably name clean energy generation, pollution reduction, sustainability, and peacekeeping technologies as motivation for their technical interest. It is truly encouraging.
In the case of correcting the environmental mistakes, one has to remember that during the industrial revolution engineers had different design constraints. Building a system around an abundant fuel resource to power factories, jobs, and economic progress was a great idea! However today's engineers of all disciplines are working harder than ever to reap the power benefits without the nasty side effects of burning more fuel than can be handled by the environment. And it goes beyond just the engineers working in their cubicles. Society has succeeded in making environmentally-sound decisions sexy, changing market forces from the consumer's side. 'Cool' is no longer just about what your stuff can do, but also how sustainable it is. Want to be popular? Buy a Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf. A 'Vette will smoke these cars in a race not only because of staggering horsepower differences – the EV will probably be full of nubile young vixens distracting the driver!
His point about war, however, may be spot on. Training more American engineers to make bombs will entice other countries to train their engineers to make bombs, and bomb-making (and bomb-using) has the general goal of destruction. A means of closing the feedback loop in a system designed to destroy could be difficult. But even in this case, the current trend is no longer to simply destroy more by making larger nuclear bombs than those used in WWII. Instead, engineers focus on making bombs that are finely tuned to maximize military damage at minimal civilian damage. Certainly not as good as world peace, but again engineers are encouraged to correct the mistakes of previous generations.
So I'll put it to the community to see if the responses aren't too biased. Are engineers making the right shift in our career choices as well as in our designs? Will we make enough of a change before reaching the point of doing more harm than good?
