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My college had a pretty large environmental engineering and sustainability programs. It may have even been one of the first to have sustainability as a major.
by FigurativeVoid 5y ago
My college had a pretty large environmental engineering and sustainability programs. It may have even been one of the first to have sustainability as a major.
Many of the people found out that if you go the "save the planet route", you usually end up doing some boring regulatory job. Lots of energy auditors and EHS managers. These are important jobs, but I don't think they are very fulfilling, and they certainly aren't doing anything great for the climate.
- dgb23 5y agoYour last sentence seems contradictory, can you elaborate?
- FigurativeVoid 5y agoThey are important in the they maintain safe workplaces and enforce say... wastewater treatment standards. So in that sense they are important. However, given the trends in climate change, these jobs don't do much to change the trajectory of climate change. I guess saying they aren't fulfilling is more a personal judgement, but I thought it was boring work.
- danans 5y ago> these jobs don't do much to change the trajectory of climate change. Yes, the trends are depressing, but jobs like energy auditing are very important going forward as housing is an even larger source of greenhouse gas emissions than cars [1]. There is no way we can make significant progress toward decarbonization without a workforce trained to understand and measure efficiency and GHG emissions - even if "progress" means just avoiding the worst possible climate change trajectory. 1. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/science/5-charts-show-how-your-household-drives-up-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/science/5-charts-show-how-y...