We Need to Train More Environmental Scientists
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes (Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016
Bold title, this seems like a necessity to me. But not as much as the need for highly trained scientists in the knowledge economy and Computer Age, we can’t not do without it. We need it. Without the technological know-how to comprehend the natural world with precision, well, we’d be in a real mess.
We won’t get our scientific answers from religious texts. You won’t get it from pseudoscientific ideas like Reiki or Chi. Never have, and very likely never will, at least accurate, real, natural pictures of the world.
Although, we might find moral guidance on these issues. We need to send out our questions to the natural world through experimentation and wait for an answer. And that leaves us to ask about what experiments have been done, data has been gathered, and concerns, problems, and issues for human survival that have come out of this. Answer: many.
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field. It works within the confines of information science, biological science, and physical science. It is a vast field. But it does have important elements. Relevant to major issues such as overconsumption and the waste from it, and climate change or global warming.
If we know that there is vast amounts of overconsumption and waste, the answer seems clear to me. We have run experiments. Well, not me or we, but the professional scientists. The answers have come back from the natural world. The answer is that we have tampered with the environment to such an extent as to produce what some call the Anthropocene.
It is a period of such power for humankind based on our technology that we have sufficiently altered the chemical and biological makeup of the atmosphere and biosphere to cause mass extinction and pollution. The pollution could end us.
Climate change or global warming is an immediate concern as well as for the long-term. That means engineering and other disciplines are relevant to it. Now if it’s the case, and it is, we need to move forward in development of technologies that can better integrate our societies into nature with current levels of living.
Because people tend to not want to lose their standard of living. Especially for the children, they want a better life for the kids and grandkids. So I want to make a call. A call for action on education.
And an educational movement for more environmental scientist to work on these issues immediately. It will take half a decade at least to train people to then be put in the field. Once in the field, these individuals would be sufficiently skilled and knowledgeable to advise, design, and implement technologies that could weaken the affects of climate change and overconsumption.
We are already doing too much. We have already caused a lot of damage. Our descendants will feel the effects of all this activity. But I think that we can at least make major moves fast to reduce the effects of the problems we’ve created.
This could be issues like reduction of biodiversity, endangering species, soil contamination, water pollution, greenhouse gases, airborne contaminants, noise pollution, light pollution, surface runoff, and other panic-stricken concepts.
But it doesn’t have to be. And we can do something about it. We can do something now by training the next generation of some of the most needed scientists of the early 21st century.
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