Gore: Climate crisis could attract next generation of engineers

By Suzanne Deffree, News Editor -- Electronic News, 4/3/2007

SAN JOSE — Former Vice President Al Gore delivered an impassioned speech this morning at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC), linking the global climate crisis to the engineering crisis in the United States.
 
Beginning his speech, Gore defined the word “crisis” as the Japanese and Chinese do, with two symbols that separately translate into danger and opportunity. From the 2000 presidential candidate’s view, the climate crisis, more often referred to as global warming, is a massive danger to our ecosystem but an opportunity for encouraging a new generation’s involvement in engineering.

As stated by many industry organizations including the AeA and Dean Kamen’s FIRST, the combined lack of young engineers and massive amount of soon-to-be retiring engineers could leave the United States at a significant competitive disadvantage if situation is left unchanged.   

Gore pointed to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik program of the 1950s as a catalyst for his generation’s involvement in technology and science and said he believes the present danger to the Earth’s ecosystem could inspire the next generation of engineers.

“I have come to see the climate crisis as the most dangerous and important collision between our civilization and the ecosystem,” Gore said. “I really believe the climate crisis should be seen as an opportunity to bring focus and creativity to a worthy goal.…This challenge could be the way your profession attracts young people around the country.”

Gore, who was recently nominated for an Academy Award for his 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth , stated that those in the embedded-systems field can be a big part of a solution to the climate crisis.

“Embedded systems can be a big part of this. [Embedded systems engineers] are embedding higher and higher levels of intelligence into everything,” he said, quipping “…except public policy.”

Without technical expertise, Gore pointed to power conservation and better efficiency as aids to lowering the amount of CO₂ released into the atmosphere.

“Asking better questions and systems design are really key to this,” Gore continued, noting that no-clean PCB (printed-circuit-board) processes designed to eliminate the use of ozone-depleting chemicals weren’t developed until an alternative view of the process was presented.

Gore concluded his speech by turning the climate crisis into a question of moral obligation, not a political problem.

“Just as Sputnik focused our attention, here we have a mandate from our children and grandchildren to understand that one day they will ask one of two questions: ‘What were they doing?’ or the latter, which I hope they will ask, ‘How did they find the moral courage to do what many said was impossible?’

“An engineer is someone who has a vision and puts that vision into a solution.…You can lead this evolution because engineering is making vision real.”

For commentary on Gore’s ESC keynote, see our blogs:
Strategy Session
Leibson’s Law
Supply Chain Reaction