The Bird Feeder
“What do they want: smart kids or fast cars? They can’t have both!” -- 'An Einganeer's Tale', page 38
When I was with the Big Oil companies, I was taught that the EPA was my arch enemy. Now, they were sort of an ally. -- 'An Einganeer's Tale', page 72
This is sad. It's a picture of a sparrow sitting on an empty bird feeder with its head trying desperately to peck at the last morsel that may be stuck at the bottom. The bird is dead. Frozen in place. Temperatures dropped into the single digits last night.
What should I have done? Made sure the bird feeder was never empty, as if the livelihood of all local birds depended on me? Never have hung the bird feeder in the first place, so that the bird would not have been drawn to it and instead found its food as nature intended? Or say to myself, oh well -- I sure do enjoy watching the birds when the bird feeder is full and the weather is nice.
As I'm sure most engineers do, I often encountered situations that might adversely impact the environment. It's the nature of the job. Ever since that first engineer created fire to keep warm, and then burned down a forest, we've had to weigh benefits to man against environmental concerns in many of our decisions.
As a young engineer, I always did whatever the company wanted, which was usually whatever was cheapest or saved the most money. Seldom were these actions what was actually best for the environment. But early in my career, environmentalists were seen as 'nut jobs.' They were the 'tree-huggers' from the 60s. Nixon created the EPA only a few years earlier just to appease them.
For nearly twenty years, the EPA was little more than an expensive nuance to Big Oil. Then, the biggest reformation since Martin Luther's occurred. The EPA decided to reform Big Oil's primary product, gasoline. Big Oil had already cleaned up gasoline by doing things like removing lead. But NOOOOO. That wasn't good enough. The EPA had to go and actually redefine what gasoline is.
Big Oil management, however, seemed not to realize that the engineers they recently hired were the children of the 'tree-hugger' generation. These young engineers refused to follow the old company line, and instead embraced EPA's direction. They went on to create and respond to solutions that would meet and later exceed EPA's new gasoline standards.
In the years since, they have transformed the industry to become truly environmentally friendly, while remaining very profitable. All while also becoming more acceptable to the public. American oil companies are, in my opinion, no longer seen as the bad guys they were in the last century. In fact, we are applauding their part in moving us towards energy independence, while still reducing their carbon footprint by devising the cleanest refinery processing methods in the world.
As for the bird feeder? I'm taking it down. Let nature take care of its own. I'll enjoy watching the birds during a walk through the woods.