Transition Engineering History

In this article I would like to explore the current transition period by looking at history. We have a mission to accomplish, obviously, Net Zero like Now. But we are taking about changing things in a purposeful way that I'm pretty sure has no precedent in history. This article will present the case that this time the way to accomplish the mission is from the inside out, from the ground up, and that is not how we have been looking at it - yet.

The experiment of society and technology

Human society has 60,000 years of experimentation with survival as a objectively hopeless wild animal – we have to be a social animal. In that society there are the 98% that do what is normal, what was done yesterday, what the traditional ways and teachings and skills are set up to maintain. Then, there are about 2% who are observer-tinkerers. Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most famous ones, and the outcomes of his technical and scientific disruptive thinking are aligned with the vast majority of such tinkerers – his “ideas and concepts” never made it to the market. 

These  tinkerers are our survival strategy. On one hand we have to not change what works. It would be way too risky if people tried out innovative new ideas or got visions all the time. No – We hunt the mammoth in the fall, we tan the hide like this, we eat these plants after they change to red… Don’t experiment with what works, that could risk disaster for our clan. But – if something changes, if the tinkerer comes up with something that fits, and improves the chances of survival and the tinkerer can communicate the innovation in a way that can integrate it into the culture… then we have a technology change. That change will change society. Hopefully it will all be slow enough that society can cope and adjust and adapt, and it won’t have too many unintended consequences. I present proof by evidence: 

• Stirrups, chimneys, wheels, ploughs
• Salted meat, smoked meat, fermented grains, cheese, pickling
• Ceramics, metals, fibre spinning, weaving, looms

Until the industrial revolution

Now the observer-tinkerer genie is out of the bottle. Now it isn’t survival it is wealth creation that they deliver to society. OK, of course there are a lot of good things like sanitation and heated dwellings, but this unleashing of the inventor has changed the dynamic of society in a way that maybe society wasn’t prepared for.  Social evolution will have to hurry up. 

Until World War II

There was a special thing that happened – standardization, especially in the USA. The industrial capacity from across the huge and diverse country had to get standardized in order to manufacture the war systems. After the war, that new idea of standardization went into the universities and they taught standard methods, materials and practices. Standardisation became commoditised and consolidated and ensconced in compliance, and became, well, the standard in all industries. As new technologies shot out of the military research spending they rapidly were standardized as well, as you can see with the naked eye. Look at any graph of anything from 1880 to 2020 – there is a massive jacknife upward starting in 1950. The social integration of this new engineering standardization became called “progress” and economic growth and we created our own story where the explosive impact of standardisation became the core value of the society. 

And here we are

All of us packed into a run-away train that only a few know how to operate. Some scientists have warned that we are going too fast and heading for a cliff but the owners of the train are cheering for more speed. 

I am 100% sure that we do not have the political, social or economic corrective actionability that will stop the disaster. The engineers have to safely slow the train, pull the emergency brake without derailing. And yet, none of the passengers on the (metaphorical) run-away train even know that there are engineers, they’ve paid for their seat and they want to know what movies are available. 

Four step strategy to accomplish the mission

1. Problem Definition: the problem is that 80% too much fossil fuel is being produced, and that 80% too much land and waterway destruction is happening every year.
2. Corrective Action: Prevent what is preventable. Don't do what must not be done.
3. Surprise Solution: A massive transformational change across the spectrum of engineering professionals changes the professional duty of care to include compliance with the COP21 Paris Agreement, and all other science-based targets. All professionals rapidly up-skill with basic "Climate Emergency First Responder" training. The engineering professions change their methods and ethos, therefore the world changes as downshift of fossil fuel production is transition engineered.
4. And society deals with it.