Exploring Engineering and Sustainability: Concepts, Practices, Politics, and Consequences

Engineers deliberating over how to incorporate sustainability concerns into their practices should consider three issues. First issue: what is sustainability, anyway? A response can be catalyzed by examining different meanings of this ambiguous term, from which a spectrum of possibilities can be sketched. Second issue: after identifying a range of meanings, it is necessary to consider how each affects engineering practice. Here two difficulties arise. Initially, the perpetual nature of sustainability results in severe, perhaps unreasonable, restrictions on engineering as it is currently practiced. Relaxing these restrictions adds complexity and uncertainty to an engineer's decision-making process. Another difficulty is that static assumptions used to determine the overall landscape of production, consumption, and disposal of materials are contrary to the dynamism present in engineering innovation. Finally, third issue: cognizant of a range of options and of their corresponding difficulties, engineers need to deliberately determine courses of action. One option is to include sustainability, with its ambiguities, in codes of ethics. Another is to add descriptive phrases that express some aspects of sustainability. Importantly, however, engineers can contribute to sustainability in several other ways. Recognizing that sustainability is a political quality expands the range of possible responses and may entail new responsibilities.