<story><title>Engineers can disrupt climate change</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/engineers-you-can-disrupt-climate-change</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thescriptkiddie</author><text>This is a pattern I&amp;#x27;ve been noticing a lot lately. It is very tempting for an engineer who sees a problem to assume it is a technical problem, because then it has an engineering solution. Unfortunately most of the biggest problems are not technical problems, they are political problems for which there are only political solutions. It is extremely frustrating for an engineer - someone who solves problems for a living - to be confronted with a problem they are powerless to address, especially if the solution is &amp;quot;obvious&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The classic example of this how people are constantly trying to come up with revolutionary new public transportation systems [0], which inevitably turn out to be suspiciously similar to a train, only worse. They see the failures of public transportation in the US and assume it must be because there is some problem with the technology. But technology is never the problem, politics is.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cat-bus.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;gadgetbahn&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cat-bus.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;gadgetbahn&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Climate Change is first and foremost a political problem. I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; saying that innovation and engineering can&amp;#x27;t address the issue. But we actually have plenty of good tools to reduce our carbon footprint that our politics just will not allow us to implement. Can you imagine forcing construction of Nuclear Power Plants, restricting meat consumption, and policies that heavily disincentivize population growth? Absolutely not. But people are hoping Engineers find magic bullets so that our leaders don&amp;#x27;t have to take drastic action.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kanzure</author><text>You could just as easily say the opposite though?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a pattern I&amp;#x27;ve been noticing a lot lately. It is very tempting for a person who sees a problem to assume it is a political problem, because then it has a political solution. Unfortunately most of the biggest problems are not political problems, they are engineering problems for which there are only engineering solutions.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Geoengineering is not off the table. Reducing or blocking total sunlight by 1% can have dramatic changes to any global warming. Other techniques also exist.&lt;p&gt;I think people seriously underestimate what engineering can accomplish. They also over-estimate what politics can accomplish.... The climate change deals we were talking about were hundreds of billions of dollars, which can buy quite a lot of R&amp;amp;D.&lt;p&gt;Besides, if we have any chance of surviving as a multi-planetary species for billions of years, we need to know how to do terraforming.</text></comment>
<story><title>Engineers can disrupt climate change</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/engineers-you-can-disrupt-climate-change</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thescriptkiddie</author><text>This is a pattern I&amp;#x27;ve been noticing a lot lately. It is very tempting for an engineer who sees a problem to assume it is a technical problem, because then it has an engineering solution. Unfortunately most of the biggest problems are not technical problems, they are political problems for which there are only political solutions. It is extremely frustrating for an engineer - someone who solves problems for a living - to be confronted with a problem they are powerless to address, especially if the solution is &amp;quot;obvious&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The classic example of this how people are constantly trying to come up with revolutionary new public transportation systems [0], which inevitably turn out to be suspiciously similar to a train, only worse. They see the failures of public transportation in the US and assume it must be because there is some problem with the technology. But technology is never the problem, politics is.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cat-bus.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;gadgetbahn&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cat-bus.com&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;gadgetbahn&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Climate Change is first and foremost a political problem. I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; saying that innovation and engineering can&amp;#x27;t address the issue. But we actually have plenty of good tools to reduce our carbon footprint that our politics just will not allow us to implement. Can you imagine forcing construction of Nuclear Power Plants, restricting meat consumption, and policies that heavily disincentivize population growth? Absolutely not. But people are hoping Engineers find magic bullets so that our leaders don&amp;#x27;t have to take drastic action.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>meowkit</author><text>So the solution sounds like we need more engineers in political power, or to decentralize political power away from those who specialize in obtaining it?&lt;p&gt;To me, all problems are technical. You could probably fit most political problems in game theory.</text></comment>