A historic heat wave in California has led to high demand for energy usage this past week, but officials have urged millions of residents to turn up their thermostats and shut off their appliances to prevent overwhelming the power grid. However, lawmakers and regulators at the forefront of the state’s green energy initiatives are also feeling the heat.
View More How California’s Heat Wave Almost Broke the State’s Power Grid
Climate change has long been underway, but new research has shown that the known effects of climate change may be expanding to include an increase in infectious disease. Are we able to curb the severity of these consequences before it’s too late?
View More Climate Change Concerns May Be Getting Worse
Global water demand is rising, but our water supplies are decreasing. Desalination offers an unconventional source of fresh water to meet the needs of the world’s growing population. However, the process harms marine organisms and their natural environments, and exacerbates the threat of climate change. Examination of environmental ethics suggests that prioritizing concerns about environmental and community health is vital to the successful establishment and operation of desalination plants.
View More Nature is Not a Means to an End: Applying Environmental Ethics to Desalination
The impacts of climate change will disproportionately impact disadvantaged groups on regional, national, and international scales. The skewed vulnerabilities that arise from exposure to natural disasters, susceptibility to damage, and community ability to recover fuel the need to examine the ethical implications of producing greenhouse gas emissions in bulk for luxury purposes. As engineers are the creators of industrial processes, the responsibility an engineer holds towards themselves, the community they serve, and the future must be displayed through accountability for the cumulative impacts of each action.
View More The Ethical Implications of Climate Change and Future Inequality We Can’t Ignore
The damaging effects of climate change are not distributed equally among the world’s nations — those who pollute the least bear more of the burden, so are these countries owed reparations for their losses? If so, who should pay?
View More Climate Change Reparations: Who Should Carry the Cost?
President Biden is pushing for the implementation of CO2 pipelines to help decrease emissions, but if they come at the cost of the disadvantaged communities they travel through, are they worth it?
View More Sacrificing the Innocent in the Battle Against Climate Change
Until recently, the concept of geoengineering has widely been dismissed as a far-fetched and unethical idea to manipulate the environment. Geoengineering proposals intend to reduce the effects of global warming by manipulating the environment through extracting carbon dioxide from the air or reflecting sunlight to reduce global temperatures. However, as the context of climate change has shifted in urgency, geoengineering has emerged as a potential last-ditch effort to save humanity from climate-induced destruction. Despite its many unknowns and risks, geoengineering might provide a temporary solution to delay the detrimental effects of climate change and prevent the irreversible damage projected by current global warming trends.
View More Ethics of Geoengineering