SENG National Newsletter - August 2020

Welcome to the August newsletter of the Sustainable Engineering Society (SENG). In this edition we are looking at mechanisms of change: what slows change down; what makes it inevitable; where it comes from; along with an example of what it looks like in progress.

Please get in touch if you have your own story of change to share, would like to contribute other content to future editions, or have any feedback. We look forward to hearing from you.

Alden Kirkpatrick, Editor

From the Chair

Sustainability Training is on Track

Steve Posselt

In March 2019 all SENG National Board members along with invitees from EA staff received training from Leith Sharp of Harvard University on pathways to implement change. A workshop immediately following the training decided that our goal would be to introduce sustainability training to all engineers. An action plan was developed and a group was formed to implement it, including developing content. The Sustainability Training Committee is chaired by Lara Harland, Environmental College Chair, assisted by me. Both the Electrical College and the College of Leadership and Management provide representatives.

At the end of 2019 EA had a change of president and a new CEO so both Lara and I met with Bronwyn Evans and Chris Champion to establish their positions. They were both enthusiastic towards our proposition. With that under our belt we held another set of training and a workshop around content, focussing on modules including Transition Engineering as developed by Christchurch University, and the rating system developed by the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia (ISCA). We are now comfortable with how those modules fit with the overall plan. Implementing Sustainability: Principles and Practice (ISP&P), which was launched late 2017 by EA is also included as part of one of the modules.

The training committee has met to confirm content, an implementation plan has been developed and submitted to Engineering Education, an EA project manager, Grant Watt, has been appointed and Engineering Education is close to coming back to us with their plan.

I am excited about where we are. I am excited that finally SENG is being requested to talk about sustainability to other engineers. I am excited that this is not just about lip service. There is a real willingness to learn about and embrace real sustainability goals.

Commentary

Learning from History - Coal and Climate

Graham Davies

We humans are slow learners. Or is it that we are stubborn – or perhaps protecting our patch.

Consider this article that appeared in an Australian mining journal in 1912 viz. The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal.

Coal Consumption Affecting Climate 1912

This also appeared in a New Zealand newspaper around the same time. Both articles it seems originated from an article in the March 1912 edition of Popular Mechanics, which was part of a longer article trying to understand remarkable weather patterns in 1911. Of course, like any body of knowledge, any advance is usually incremental; Fourier (and others 100 years before) had looked at the atmosphere as an insulator. Arrhenius introduce the term “greenhouse gases” when he published in the London Journal of Science in 1896...

The Redundant Saga of Salt

Foti Pitrakkos

Salt was once a potent commodity. It played a vital role in the lives of ancient people, particularly due to its use in food preservation. Cities rose to prominence around its deposits. Empires were sustained by its power.

...

It is a remarkable saga. Rebellion and death, oppression and power, universal importance and historical impact – salt has touched everything.

And then, it simply faded away.

No impressive ending, no last stand – it just realised that it no longer had any power.

There are lots of reasons. Technology being the main player, in multiple ways. Salt became much easier to produce after the industrial revolution, transportation of such resources became a much more reliable and efficient undertaking, and electricity made its profound mark on civilisation.

The quiet actor in this play, that dealt a significant blow to the value of salt, was the refrigerator. ....

Positive Change from the Ground Up

Foti Pitrakkos

A lot of change, for a plethora of reasons, starts from a place quite high up.
It may not be the very top, but it certainly involves people with agency making progress within the system’s parameters, using their intellect, influence and passion to manoeuvre the pieces into better positions on the board. And change is a result of these players and their actions.

But that is just one side of history’s story. The other side starts from the ground floor.

We all know about ground up movements – we understand the idea, and we use the philosophy when we can to make things happen. Protests, whether the crowd is gathered or is on the march, are of course most notable in the modern day’s version of ground up movements.

When it comes to revolutionising the way society thinks about its energy requirements, I think more can be done in this arena. And if historical patterns are any indication, I think more needs to be done. ...

To EV or not to EV

Steve Posselt

An important meeting in another capital city put us in a quandary. Can environmental warriors fly 800km for a two-hour meeting? Lara Harland is the chair of the Environmental College of Engineers Australia. I am the chair of the Sustainable Engineering Society. Together we were to meet the CEO and the President of Engineers Australia. Both civil and environmental engineers, we opted to drive Lara’s Tesla 3 from Brisbane to Sydney for the meeting.

Before I tell you about the trip, I need to let you know about my rev-head credentials. I bought my first motorcycle in 1969 after the NSW police had my licence revoked because they caught me driving faster than they thought I should. In those days it was easy to then just get a learners’ permit for a motorbike. I progressed through some pretty powerful bikes with a mantra that if you weren’t concentrating on holding your eyeballs together all the way through first gear, then the bike wasn’t powerful enough. On the water I didn’t talk about how long it took for the boat to plane. If it didn’t stand on the propeller and throw the boat out of the water when the throttle was thrust forward, it wasn’t worth having. ...

Independent review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999

The public survey on the proposed reforms put forward by Professor Graeme Samuel AC in the Interim Report will close on Monday 17th August 2020 at 09:00am.

Further details about the Review and how to be involved are available here.