Friday, May 02, 2008

Vote now for the most important engineering challenge

6 comments:

Greybishop said...

While I am all for making solar energy efficient and affordable, it bothers me that providing access to clean water is a distant third in the voting.

Nobody ever died because they had to pay too much for solar energy...

Sawsee said...

Hey GB!

I think some people's priorities get mixed up when they don't see the big picture and thus we see water in third place. I remember one of my teachers in college told me that war actually had positive ramifications as the biggest advances in technology occur during wars... Choke choke...

I could not believe he said this but he was totally sincere!

Greybishop said...

Yeah, I remember my parents and their friends looking at the economy in the 70s (these were people who served during WW II and should have known better) saying stuff like "we need a good war to get us out of this recession".

Seriously.

Now, I'm all for improving the economic punch of the nation, but I'd hope their are better ways to do it than by sanctioning the deaths of thousands.

Wars are sometimes inevitable, sometimes even necessary, but for some reason that escapes me many people think that they are to be celebrated.

As for the survey of engineering challenges, when we can honestly say that we've managed to secure clean water and enough food for each person on the planet, then something like solar energy makes sense as a priority.

Naturally, advances in the engineering for one discipline may dovetail neatly into another, so I'm not suggesting we stop working on solar energy, but it worries me that so many people DON'T see clean water as our first priority.

Lady-in-Gray said...

I'm guessing that, since most of us already enjoy available clean water, we take it for granted and don't even consider that it could be a problem for others or even for ourselves some day.....

Greybishop said...

I'll admit, I never thought much about it until recently. Not long before Sawsee posted about the filtration bicycle it came to my attention just how bad the lack of water is in the third world and how dire the situation could become right here in the water rich west.

It's not good. Lack of sanitary water is one of, if not the leading cause of death among children under 5 in much of the "undevloped" world. It's a situation that is not insurmountable, but will require creativity and forethought to resolve, neither of which are always in abundance in governments...

I'm personally not in any situation to be more than a cheerleader, but when I do get past the financial hurdles of start-up costs etc, water and water resource charities will be the first place I put donations.

Sawsee said...

Very admirable GB!

I think Lady is right; we don't think of water when most of North America has plenty of it. Although, in many cases hydroelectricity is tied into our water sources. The less water we use the more electricity we have and this reduces the need to continue building infrastructure to generate power.