An Inconvenient Truth

Al gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” brings out the truth about global warming to the masses. It showed convincingly that the very place all humans being called home are in imminent danger of being destroyed. The things we do everyday have a profound impact on earth, and most of us are, unfortunately, blissfully ignorant about it. Every little things we do everyday have an impact on the earth, the very fact that the human population is huge, would act to compound the effect.

Global warming brings with it the issue of morality. The release of carbon that result in the effect of global wide warming that we experience today is from countries that have been industrialized decades ago, and hence we able to enjoy the fruits that come with modernization, namely material wealth. With wealth, often result in excess. People in developed nation can afford to consume more than their counterpart in third world country. While people are dying every day from malnourishment in country such as Haiti, restaurant in Singapore throw any food that is left over. Mind you, the food thrown away is estimated to be about 30% [2]. Imagine, if this food can somehow be evenly distributed, not only can we reduce carbon emission, lives can also be saved. The inequality unfortunately do not end with just food, people in developed nation often have more material possession than they really need (e.g. cloth and electronic gadgets). Productions of these good require energy and hence result in carbon emission.

With global warming, it is the moral responsibility of everyone especially those in the developed nation to consume less. The era of spending on excess amount of goods and services need to come to an end as it is the responsibility of everyone living in planet earth to make sure that the next generations have a place to call home. Environmental and special group should work towards the goal of fostering sense of responsibility in the public. As mentioned early, human consumption of goods and services have a compounding effect due to the sheer number of human population, on the other hand if everyone was to work together in combating global warming, the effect would be significant as well.

For a better tomorrow for all, we should try our best to consume less.



1. From Defra report: "Environmental Impacts of Food Production and Consumption", December 2006, page 93 http://www.defra.gov.uk/science/project_data/DocumentLibrary/EV02007/EV02007_4601_FRP.pdf
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1460183,00.html

The Expanding World of Engineers

According to US department of Labor, bureau of Labor statistics, an engineer is engaged in solving commercial problem with the use of scientific principle under certain technical constraints. As mentioned in the article, globalization created a need to process more information and use the information to make decision at a faster pace. This is exactly what engineers are trained to do. The engineering discipline focuses on solving complex problems. Problems that often highly intertwined where satisfying the requirement of one often come at the expense of the other. Given the complexity of the problems that are faced by companies or institute, the challenge is then not only to make a decision fast based on the given information, but also to make the best decision. The human mind has a limited capacity in handling complex information, hence decision made intuitively without the use of “tools”, is often not the best. That is why engineering skills is often favored in different sectors. The use of engineering skills and mathematical tools can often help by putting things into perspective and the formulation of a solution or help in decision making. Apart from that, real world problems also come with constraints which limit the number of solutions one can deploy. Take for example the issue of drinking water in Singapore. As an island nation with limited land-used, Singapore has been facing the problem of drinking water shortage for many years; the existing reservoirs are not enough for supplying drinking water to the people, in addition, the 100-year water supply contract with its neighbor country will expire in a few years time, hence Singapore is going to have its greater crisis in recent year. Fortunately, engineers have come up with a brilliant solution, the Marina Barrage Project together with the Newater and Desalination of sea water to solve this drinking water crisis. By tackling the problem from a multi-faceted approach, engineers has come up with a solution for the problem that has been haunting Singapore since its founding.