After reading these two articles, I believe that making the most and best use of the resources on Earth is the most important to engineers. As the Earth is a world with finite resources, it is important for engineers to avoid wasting of them and misusing of them.
As the resources on Earth are far from enough in today’s world, engineers should avoid wasting of them. It is mentioned in the article “Introduction to the Grand Challenges for Engineering” that the earth is a planet of finite resource, and its growing population currently consumes them at a rate that cannot be sustained. It is true that human beings require more and more clean water and food to live. Human beings also need more products such as mobiles, televisions, laptops and cars to enrich their life. However, because of the limitation of resources, it is important for engineers to avoid wasting of the resources and find out solution to satisfy the requirement.
On the other hand, engineers should avoid resources to be misused. Some resources on Earth have a negative effect on our environment, such as fossil fuels. The article “Introduction to the Grand Challenges for Engineering” has mentioned that evidence is mounting that the carbon dioxide pumped into the air by burning fossil fuels is increasing the planet’s temperature and threatens disruptive effects on climate. Hence, we cannot over use fossil fuel and also those resources that have negative effect on our environment. As a result, it is engineers’ duty to find out other resources that can replace those ones. Only in this way can we avoid resources to be misused.
Engineers play an important role in today’s society. With their help, I am sure that human beings can make the most and best use of the finite resources on Earth.
