Dear all.

My backgrounds in electrical engineering research, novel writing, and song writing, were all thrown together during COP26.

This was triggered when the return of the space station crew coincided with the end of COP26.

The point I found distressing was the contrast between the magnificent photos of our planet taken from space, and the struggles under way down here on the surface, to preserve it.

This led me to compose a song I called COP60 - 2055.

My aim was to help boost awareness amongst the engineers and scientists of tomorrow, as to the challenges which await them.

If the truth be told, I have little faith in the capacity of the present generation to significantly alter the fate towards which we are headed.

On the other hand, the upcoming generation may be able to devise unexpected and innovative ways of mending the damage done.

So, my song, COP60, is dedicated to these engineers and scientists of tomorrow.

I wonder if there are any good singers out there in the IET, who would like to contribute their voices to make this song more attractive to aspiring engineers.

If so, I will happily build a collaborative IET version of the song.

This will be my tiny contribution to the environnement.

COP60, can be found on YouTube here : COP60 on Youtube

And also, on my website here: English Songs (stephen-william-rowe.com)

Or here below..

.

PDF

Best wishes to all.

Dr. Stephen William ROWE PhD CEng FIET FSEE

We can't allow Engineering to be framed as 'apolitical'. What gets engineered and what doesn't, and how engineering is approached and practiced, has huge implication for world we pass on to future generations. This is political by nature. It is a political choice which direction we take our careers, and how we approach the engineering projects we are engaged in.

The IET, and many of us as Engineers can be seen as trusted and influential actors on Climate Change, so the stance we take, and narrative we use affect wider societies approach and understanding. For instance, the IET's Nigel Fine recently published this piece, which states:

"2021 was a landmark year for climate action with the United Nation’s COP26 climate conference being held in Glasgow. Since then, the world has picked up its pace in the race to tackle climate change and finding sustainable solutions, presents some of the most difficult and important engineering challenges of our time."

This to me seems contradictory to IPCC report which came out of Monday this week which was summaries by the BBC as:

• Things are way worse than we thought
• Loss and damage gets scientific backing
• Technology is not a silver bullet
• Cities offer hope
• The small window is closing fast.

I struggle to reconcile the "it's worse than we thought" & "the small window for action is closing fast" with "the world has picked up its pace in the race to tackle climate change". Either our current action/pace of change are sufficient, or they are not. And "We, as engineers and technicians, need to think long-term" seems at odds with the 'opportunity for action will only last for the rest of this decade,' which is reinforced by last sentence of the latest IPCC report:

"Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future."

The question states: "We all need to play our part and even at the IET, we are still learning about how we can become more sustainable and finding innovative ways to provide solutions." --- It would seem to me that the 'learning' part needs to happen at pace if it going to lead to sufficient action in the next 8 years. I was born in 1993 just after Rio summit when UNFCCC was setup. The Engineering Community has had almost 30 years to do the learning. The science is saying if we don't translate that learning into action in the next 8 years we're going to have miss our opportunity. That isn't to say that the learning must stop, just that action must be priority (and if it isn't too bold to say it, priority beyond shareholder profits for the next 8 years), and further learning must be a bonus which fits in along side that action.

As for "finding innovative ways to provide solutions", it would seem to me that majority of that space for innovation isn't technical any more, but human. In terms of technology, the next 8 years must be about deployment primarily, and the space of innovation is around human, behaviour and social change (i.e. the way we use technology). That space for innovation is still one in which Engineers must lead. Whether is rethinking material and energy demand or assessing practical ways to significantly reduce emissions in the next few year without impacting on Quality of Life, it is Engineers, who understand the physical limits and what is possible with existing technology and infrastructure, that are best places to suggest interventions. We must collaboration with other disciplines to do this, but we must not shy away from this acutely political challange. 

We as engineers must appreciate our significance, but be humble enough to recognise our weaknesses. We must resolve to identify the critical questions, and ask them relentlessly. As the UKFIRE team have made quite clear, we must not allow ourselves to get distracted by technologies, that might play a role long term, but that can't be rolled out immediately. We have to sole the problem presented with the tools we have today.

Most crucially we must not loss sight of why we practice engineering, and why engineering is critical to the society we practice it for. We as engineers, must not only 'do no harm', but critical prioritise the good we do to ensure that improving wellbeing, and quality of life, for the many not the few comes first. It is too easy to get distracted by goals and indicators that are means to deliver ends, rather than ends in themselves. . . 

I read the summary of the IPCC report and like you, feel the time for action is rapidly running out if we are to avoid temperature rises above 1.5degC Indeed it may be more truthful to accept we are handing on a truly horrible future to our children and grandchildren and all we can hope for is to mitigate the impacts not avoid them.

An excerpt from a Guardian article today:

The suffering outlined in the report is a “damning indictment of failed climate leadership”, according to António Guterres, secretary general of the UN. It is also a harrowing tale of rank injustice.

At this moment 3.5 billion people, almost half of the world’s population, live in countries highly vulnerable to climate impacts, the IPCC found. These countries are generally poorer nations that have done little to contribute toward global heating and yet are bearing its brunt.

The report skewers a popular belief that we should simply adjust to the warming that will come our way, pointing out that the changes risk becoming so great, no sea wall or technological fix will save us. Governments may be fast at imposing sanctions on rogue states or shutting down people’s movement to curb a virus, but they’ve been slow to deal with a crisis that, despite being on the back burner for now, dwarfs any challenge humanity has ever faced.

Ditching fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy will save millions of lives, negate a cause of conflict and help bridge the horrifying inequities sketched out by the IPCC. But dealing with this root cause of suffering is a timed challenge and we have left ourselves just a small window of time to act. “This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC, put it. “Half measures are no longer an option.”

"Governments may be fast at imposing sanctions on rogue states or shutting down people’s movement to curb a virus, but they’ve been slow to deal with a crisis that, despite being on the back burner for now, dwarfs any challenge humanity has ever faced."

To often the public comms on Climate Change, in general, but also from the engineering community, and engineering companies, is back patting and 'we should embrace this opportunity' / 'look how much we are doing'. There is something powerful about honesty. We, as Engineers who can appreciate the gulf between current action and sufficient action must be honest with the public, our employers, and within our community, about how insufficent the current response is. Otherwise we are deceiving ourselves and the public and politicians that trust us. Climate Change is not 'in hand'. If we allow ourselves and others to believe it is, then those 8 years will tick by and the current trajectory of emissions will continue. 

For the future to be different to the past we, in our profession not just as citizens, must make different decision. Tomorrow must be fundamentally different to today. This is challenging. Neither humanity or the engineering community has had to rise to a challenge this fundamental. We can't know until afterwards what collective steps we as individual engineers must take for sufficient action to prevail. So what choice do we have but to review all our assumption, rethink our priorities, goals, careers. Many of us might have to reconsider the boundaries of our disciplines. We might have to apply our skills to different challenges. This might all make us difficult employees, but rapid change rarely comes from everyone doing what they are expected to do.

For many of us, this will not be a challenge we have chosen. It may well have been easier, or more interesting to have been an engineer at a different point in history. But we are the engineers today, so perhaps we just have to accept, however hard that maybe, that the direction we'd hoped for our careers is know longer the right one.

Both the pandemic lockdown and Russia's invasion of Ukraine give us recent examples of what rapid change in response to external stimulus looks like. A week before the first lockdown is was inconceivable that office and factory would be shut, and government would garantee 80% of everyone wages. A month ago most business had no plans to close operation in Russia, write off investment in Russian companies. We know what a step change in response looks like, the challenge is we've got to create the stimulus. There will be no external event big enough to trigger the changes require in the next 8 year (I hope). But we've got to act like that event happen on Monday this week. How can we, as engineers, in our current roles, ensure next week is the tipping point. What do we need to do? Who do we need to talk to? Who do we need to confront? (because climate change can't just be left at it's current place in the todo list) What do we individual need to read/research? 

It sounds like futile hard work when you put it like that, but how else can we ensure that tomorrow isn't just more of the same insufficient action on climate change. . . 

The most important thing is to find the solution to climate change.  We must engineer a way to capture CO2 and secrete it back underground. Renewable energy is the way forward using solar and wind to produce all our electricity but transport will still need hydrocarbons as the most versatile way of storing energy at normal room temperatures.  60 million years age possibly someone like us managed to do it by compressing CO2 into carbolic acid and then into chalk beds which were in the bottom of the ocean.   We engineers need to investigate how to 

Peter Sims I really like the theme of your last paragraph above - the idea that we need to do more good, not just no harm, and the idea that engineering can be a force for good just so long as we focus on our impact: the beneficial outcomes that are a consequence of the direct output of our deeds.

Your later post in this thread points out the examples we have all seen recently of our powerful human response to immediate "external events", and poses the question of how to catalyse similar action for the climate crisis.

My own reflection is that "net zero" requires a cultural change in business similar to those that "world class" companies have previously embraced: zero accidents, zero defects, zero waste and so on. To sustain our efforts over the next 8 years and more we need to integrate climate action as part of "what we do", not treat it as a transient initiative to fall by the wayside like so many other change initiatives. Change needs leaders, and engineers are well-placed to lead this change.

On #EarthDay, it's well worth experimenting with the FT Climate Game to understand some of the choices we face for people, planet and profit.

#Manufacturing #Sustainable Development#environment