engineering and ethics 7

Emissions

Read case studies 7 “Greenhouse Emission” and case study 38 “Volkswagen Emissions Scandal” in your textbook and create a post that explains the role of the triple bottom line and life cycle analysis concepts in design and how they relate to these cases.  

Also, discuss how consideration of ethics might enter into collaborative efforts of centers and institutions for sustainability (Case 25).

Case 7

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

On November 15, 2007, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the Bush administrations fuel economy standards for light trucks and sport utility vehicles. The three-judge panel objected that the regulations fail to take sufficiently into account the economic impact that tail-pipe emissions can be expected to have on climate change. The judges also questioned why the standards were so much easier on light trucks than passenger cars. (The standards hold that by 2010 light trucks are to average 23.5 mpg, whereas passenger cars are to average 27.5 mpg.)Although it is expected that an appeal will be made to the U.S. Supreme Court, this ruling is one of several recent federal court rulings that urge regulators to consider the risk of climate change in setting standards for carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gas emissions from industry. Patrick A. Parenteau, Vermont Law School environmental law professor, is quoted as saying, What this says to me is that the courts are catching up with climate change and the law is catching up with climate change. Climate change has ushered in a whole new era of judicial review.27One of the judges, Betty B. Fletcher, invoked the National Environmental Policy Act in calling for cumulative impacts analyses explicitly taking into account the environmental impact of greenhouse gas emissions. Acknowledging that cost-benefit analysis may appropriately indicate realistic limits for fuel economy standards, she insisted that it cannot put a thumb on the scale by undervaluing the benefits and overvaluing the costs of more stringent standards. Finally, Judge Fletcher wrote, What was a reasonable balancing of competing statutory priorities 20years ago may not be a reasonable balancing of those priorities today. Given recent court trends, what implications are there for the responsibilities (and opportunities) of engineers working in the affected areas?

Case 38

Volkswagen Emissions Scandal

This is a somewhat unusual case in the study of engineering ethics, because it appears (at press time) that this scandal has resulted from an intentional decision to circumvent U.S. automobile emissions regulations. Not all facts are public at press time; it is not known how many engineers and managers were complicit or what pressures might have led to the decision to circumvent regulations. This case will probably still become an instructive case for future engineers, if for no other reason than to remind us how business pressures can affect engineering decisions, especially in large organizations, but also as an example of failure in crisis management. In September 2015, the U.S. EPA charged German automaker Volkswagen (VW) with violations of the clean Air Act124, describing the action as knowing endangerment, after it was discovered that emissions controls on certain diesel engines were programmed to operate only in a laboratory testing mode and not in normal highway driving. VW subsequently pled guilty to the criminal charges and agreed hefty penalties. The discovery came during a 2015 International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT)-sponsored research study to measure emissions during actual real-world operations for comparison to measurements in laboratory testing, as it had long been a concern that real-world emissions might be greater than laboratory measurements. Researchers found that real-world NOx emissions for the Volkswagen Jetta were 1435 times the EPA maximum allowable limit of 0.043 g/km, while dynamometer measurements in the laboratory indicated that the emissions were about half of the maximum allowable. The Clean Air Act makes it a violation to manufacture or sell, or install, any part or component of, any motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine, where a principal effect is to bypass, defeat, or render inoperative any device or element of design. The EPA charged that VW had installed sensors and software in the electronic control module (ECM) that sensed various parameters including steering wheel position, vehicle speed, the duration of the engines operation, and barometric pressure, concluding that these data were used to switch the emissions control systems between a dynamometer operations mode and a road operations mode, in such a way that the vehicle was only compliant with emissions regulations in the dynamometer operations mode, and when in the road operations mode the vehicle emitted 1040 times the legal maximum of NOx. The EPA charged that VW did not disclose this system and knowingly sold several automobile models in model years 20092015 which were not in compliance with the CAA. At the time of this writing, at least two high-level VW engineering managers have been arrested. James Robert Liang has pled guilty to charges, and Oliver Schmidt, the general manager in charge of VWs Environmental and engineering Office (EEO) from 2012 to 2015, was arrested while travelling in the United States. Liang faces five-year imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. The criminal complaint against Schmidt125quotes VWs Certificate of Conformity application to EPA and California Air Resources Board (CARB) as certifying that: The Volkswagen Group states that any element of design, system, or emission control device installed on or incorporated in the Volkswagen Groups new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines for the purpose of complying with standards prescribed under section 202 of the Clean Air Act, will not, to the best of the Volkswagen Groups information and belief, cause the emission into the ambient air of pollutants in the operation of its motor vehicles or motor vehicle engines which cause or contribute to an unreasonable risk to public health or welfare except as specifically permitted by the standards prescribed under section 202 of the Clean Air Act. What is not yet fully known is exactly how many individuals were complicit in the scheme or how the individuals involved came to a decision to violate the CAA by circumventing U.S. EPA air quality regulations. Top VW executives have claimed that they did not know about the problem until late August 2015,126but also admitted a subsequent attempt to cover up the scandal by deleting thousands of documents. Onereport127indicates software designed to turn off various engine functions was originally developed by Audi in 1999. The software, sometimes called an acoustic function, was originally intended as a way to reduce clutter in luxury vehicles while idling, and perhaps intended only for testing, but was later incorporated in production vehicles as VW struggled to meet U.S. NOx emissions standards. Liangs admission includes a statement that VW engineers realized they could not meet U.S. emissions standards so they incorporated software that enabled the emissions control systems only when the vehicle was operating in test conditions, and not during normal driving. It appears that the pressures of time and money in this case, corporate pressures to make their products meet CAA standards while meeting production dead-lines caused engineers, who were probably in other situations very mindful of their legal and moral obligations, to resort to criminal behavior. It appears that the sense of professional responsibility is sometimes not strong enough to overcome the pressures engineers sometimes face. In this respect, the VW case is similar to the case of the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo, where high operational costs and/or competitive pressures appeared to be a deciding factor in several critical engineering decisions involving a balancing of public safety and operational costs. A key difference is that the engineers shutting in the Macondo well, when responding to those pressures acted unprofessionally and unethically, but not clearly illegally ( Donald Vidrine pled guilty to manslaughter charges, but Robert Kaluza was acquitted and others were either acquitted or plea-bargained for lesser charges), while the VW engineers have apparently knowingly and intentionally violated the law. How can engineers increase their sense of professional responsibility so that they remember the professions paramount responsibility to protect the public health, safety, and welfare? Pursuing engineering licensure is one step engineers can and should take, because engineering licensure seems to increase an engineers recognition of his or her professional responsibilities and accountability and perhaps can provide that extra bit of moral backbone needed to respond more appropriately when faced with conflicting obligations.

Case 25

Sustainability

Scientists, engineers, and the government are publicly expressing urgent concern about the need to address the challenges of sustainable scientific and technological development. Global warming, for example, raises concern about glacial meltdown and consequent rising ocean levels threatening coastal cities. A related concern is the lowering of levels of freshwater in the American West as a result of lowered levels of accumulated mountain snow. In Joe Gertner The FutureIs Drying Up, Nobel laureate Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is cited assaying that even optimistic projections for the second half of the twenty-first century indicate a 30 to 70 per-cent drop in the snowpack level of the Sierra Nevada, provider of most of northern California’s water.80Gertner goes on to discuss other likely freshwater problems that will have to be faced by Western states as a result of both global warming and the consumption needs and demands of an increasing population. He also outlines some of the efforts of engineers to address these problems aggressively now rather than wait until it is too late to prevent disaster.81We noted in Chapter 7 that most engineering society codes of ethics do not make direct statements about the environmental responsibilities of engineers. How-ever, in 2007, the NSPE joined the ranks of engineering societies that do. Under section III. Professional Obligations, provision 2 reads, Engineers shall at all times strive to serve the public interest. Under this heading, there is a new entry, d:Engineers are encouraged to adhere to the principles of sustainable development in order to protect the environment for future generations. Footnote 1 addresses the conceptual question of what is meant by sustainable development: Sustainable development is the challenge of meeting human needs for natural resources, industrial products, energy, food, transportation, shelter, and effective waste management while conserving and protecting environmental quality and the natural resource base essential for future development. Although this definition of sustainable development leaves many fundamental conceptual and value questions in need of further analysis (e.g., What are human needs? What is meant by environmental quality?), it provides a general framework for inquiry. It also identifies a variety of fundamental areas of concern (e.g., food, transportation, and waste management). Of course, responsibilities in these areas do not fall only on engineers. Government officials, economists, business leaders, and the general citizenry need to be involved as well. Thus, a basic question relates to how those who need to work together might best do so and what role engineers might play. We offer three illustrations for discussion. The first is an early effort to involve students from different disciplines in a project that supports sustainable development. The second is the recent proliferation of centers and institutes for sustainability on college campuses throughout the country. The third is service learning opportunities in support of sustainable design and development.

Renewable Energy

Dwayne Breger, a civil and environmental engineer at Lafayette College, invited junior and senior engineering, biology, and environmental science students to apply to be on an interdisciplinary team to design a project that would make use of farmland owned by Lafayette College in a way that supports the college mission. Twelve students were selected for the project: two each from civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, and bachelor of arts in engineering, plus three biology majors and one in geology and environmental geosciences. These students had minors in areas such as economics and business, environmental science, chemistry, government, and law. The result of the project was a promising design for a biomass farm that could provide an alternative, renewable resource for the campus steam plant.83Professor Breger regards projects such as this as providing important opportunities for students to involve themselves in work that contributes to restructuring our energy use toward sustainable resources. abet Engineering Criteria 2000for evaluating engineering programs includes the requirement that engineering programs demonstrate that their graduates have an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility, the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context, and a knowledge of contemporary issues. Criterion 4 requires that students have a major design experience that includes consideration of the impact on design of factors such as economics, sustainability, manufacturability, ethics, health, safety, and social and political issues.84Dis-cuss how the Lafayette College project might satisfy criterion 4, especially the ethical considerations.

Academic Centers for Sustainability

Historically, joint research in colleges and universities is done within separate disciplines rather than in collaboration with other disciplines. Thus, biologists collaborate with other biologists, chemists with other chemists, economists with other economists, and political scientists with other political scientists. The recent emergence of centers and institutes for sustainability represents a significant and important break from that tradition. In September 2007, the Rochester Institute of Technology initiated the Golisano Institute for Sustainabil-ity.85Noting that it is customary for new programs to be run by just one discipline, Nabil Nasr, the institute director, comments, But the problem of sustainability cuts across economics, social elements, engineering, everything. It simply cannot be solved by one discipline, or even by coupling two disciplines.86Dow Chemical has recently given the University of California at Berkeley $10 million to establish a sustainability center. Dows Neil Hawkins says, Berkeley has one of the strongest chemical engineering schools in the world, but it will be the MBAs who understand areas like microfinance solutions to drinking waterproblems.87The center is in Berkeleys Center for Responsible Business, directed by Kellie A. McElhaney. Commercialization of research undertaken by students and professors is expected. However, McElhaney notes, Commercialization takes forever if the chemical engineers and the business types do not coordinate. So think how much easier it will be for chemistry graduates to work inside a company if they already know how to interact with the business side.88Discuss how considerations of ethics might enter into the collaborative efforts of centers and institutes for sustainability.

Service Learning Opportunities

The first two issues of the recently launched International Journal for Service Learning feature three articles promoting the notion that service learning projects can provide hands-on opportunities to undertake sustain-able design and development. in Service Learning in Engineering and Science for Sustainable Development, Clarion University of Pennsylvania physicist Joshua M. Pearce urges that undergraduates should have opportunities to become involved in projects that apply appropriate technologies for sustainabledevelopment.89Especially concerned with alleviating poverty in the developing world, Pearce argues, The need for development is as great as it has ever been, but future development cannot simply follow past models of economic activity, which tended to waste resources and produce prodigious pollution. The entire world is now paying to cleanup the mess and enormous quantities of valuable resources have been lost for future generations because of the Western model of development. For the future, the entire world population needs ways to achieve economic, social, and environ-mental objectives simultaneously .He cites successful projects in Haiti and Guatemala that make use of readily available materials in the locales in which they have been undertaken. in Learning Sustainable Design through Service, Stanford University PhD students Karim Al-Khafaji and Margaret Catherine Morse present a service learning model based on the Stanford chapter of Engineers fora Sustainable World to teach sustainable design.90They illustrate this model in discussing a Stanford project in the Andaman Islands that focused on rebuilding after the December 26, 2004, earthquake and tsunami. Behind such projects is a student-led course, Design for a Sustainable World, that seeks to Develop students iterative design skills, project management and partnership-building abilities, sustainability awareness, cultural sensitivity, empathy, and desire to use technical skills to promote peace and human development. Help developing communities ensure individuals human rights via sustainable, culturally appropriate-ate, technology-based solutions. Increase Stanford University’s stewardship of global sustainability.91InSustainable Building Materials in French Polynesia, John Erik Anderson, Helena Meryman, and Kimberly Porsche, graduate students at the University of California at Berkeleys Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, provide a detailed, technical description of a service learning project designed to assist French Polynesians in developing a system for the local manufacturing of sustainable building materials.