According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor (January 16, 2008, issu

Question

According to an article in the Christian Science Monitor (January 16, 2008, issue), environmentalists claim that a development around a remote lake 140 miles north of Augusta, Maine, would emit 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide over 50 years, including estimated emissions from cars traveling to and from the development. An environmental group has presented this “carbon footprint” to the state, and is requesting that the impact on the environment become part of the process for granting development permits. As many as 35 states have adopted climate-action plans, but there are few cases like this in which environmental impact factors into government approval of land development. This could have a significant effect on engineers involved with land development, structures, land-use planning, or environmental impact assessments in the future. The original article can be found at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0116/p01s04-wogi.html. Discuss both sides of this issue, and take a stance for or against mandating carbon footprint assessment for new developments. Justify your position, including information from at least three sources. Ideas to include in your essay are cases in other states, climateaction plans, calculation of a “carbon footprint,” or the land-development approval process. Most importantly, consider how an engineer would view this issue. Thank you to Dr. Lisa Benson for contributing this assignment.

Explanation / Answer

Any project that comes into existance brings its pros and cons with it. It has never been the case wherein a new project only had pros and no cons. But, this doesn't deter the engineers from carrying forward anty expedition in this respect. The most important thing in these types of projects, from an engineers point of view, is the Benifit-to-cost analysis. An engineer can never simply rely on opinions. He has to have some mathamatics backing him up. Now, speaking on a general note, whenever a new project has to be brought into exisatance, all its pros and cons should be secrutinised. After that the Benefit-to-Cost analysis is needed to be done. In this analysis we see primarily the cost that the new project will incurr. After that we analyse the benifits that will be reaped out of it. If the benifit > cost, we go for the project. Otherwise the project is scrapped.

Now looking at the above mentioned case, since an environmental case arises, we have to be a lot more careful in our analysis now. The environmentalists suggest that this project would emit 500000 metric tons of CO2 over a period of 50 years. That's a huge deterrent for the project but one thing that needs to be analysed here is that the United States contributes 12000 times that amount and that too in a single year, we can not just shut down America for that. However, that doesn't mean we start the project anyway. But the thing that needs to be analysed here is that 50 years is a long time and in this time a simultaneous process could be started to counter the effect of CO2 produced. Like planting trees elsewhere on regular basis and all the other necessary things.

Now the other side of the issue is that climate changes will ocour rapidly. There is no denying the fact, but the point is climate change will not stop if this project is stopped. Both the things need to be taken care of. This project needs to get started and all other necessary actions need to be taken in order to ensure that we are not breaking the environmental permissible limits. The environment needs to be taken care of as well

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