Articles
When the history books get written, will 2010 be seen as the year in which the UK saw a seismic shift? It’s probably a bit early to say whether the coming together of two of our political tectonic plates – in the form of our new government – is real change or just a convenient bit of make-do-and-mend. But one of the first actions of the new coalition, one that both partners agreed on, was to cancel the proposed new runway at London’s Heathrow airport. And that might just give an extra shove to the event that could, with the eventual benefit of due hindsight, be regarded as the real game-changer of 2010: the Icelandic volcano and its attendant ash cloud.
What the ash cloud did was to call into question one of the great “untouchable” topics that never gets debated. For half a dozen days, the idea that air traffic would continue to grow, no matter what, was suddenly stopped in its tracks. For a short period, we could all contemplate what it might be like if one of the “givens” of modern life was withdrawn.
There are a lot of things we take for granted. Many are dependent, somewhere in the background, on engineers and engineering, and many presuppose that growth will continue and that growth is a good thing. Strangely, things that seem fundamental to the way we live now don’t date back that many generations. We flick a switch and expect lights to work, as they have done pretty reliably for maybe 90 years, though some remember more recent times when it was less reliable. Personal mobility has been around for the majority of the population for rather less time. Access to the internet is very recent indeed.
You don’t have to go far up your ancestral chain to find generations who didn’t expect or depend on any of these things, and for many people in today’s world they are still the stuff of aspiration rather than reality. And if they were suddenly withdrawn, perhaps through the failure of the economic model that is based on never-ending growth, or the using up of resources, or global warming…?
The ash cloud, the economic circumstances under which this government has come to power and the spiralling cost of fuel are all factors that signal perhaps that the serene presumption of permanent growth and progress should no longer be a given, and that new uncomfortable questions should now be asked. Engineers will be expected to come up with answers no matter what the questions are. But perhaps we should now start widening our view of what the real questions are, to take account of the seismic shifts we may be undergoing.