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Mining has always been a significant contributor to Australian trade and income, from

the gold rush of the 1800’s to the more recent boom in the resources sector. This rise of 

mining in Australia has seen a wide range of effects on life both within Australia and on an

international level, mostly raising the question of economic and environmental sustainability.

This presents a unique set of moralistic issues for the next generation of Engineers, withissues specific to Mechanical Engineering being of specific significance for myself. This

essay seeks to explore these issues, and aims to examine the specific ethical problems facing

a mechanical Engineer in current global engineering practice and typical corporate structure.

The growth of Australia as a producer of raw material has seen a large rise in the

number of Mechanical Engineers employed in the resources sector; a 25% increase from

2006 to 2011 alone4. This will have influence on a great number of things, which can be

grouped into national and international factors for ease of analysis. On a national front, this

industrial focus on mining has very lucrative short term effects for both Engineers and the

general public, such as a strong Australian dollar, increases in employment and very

 profitable mining jobs for engineers. However, these advantages set up circumstances similar 

to those in the Netherlands during the resource boom of the 70’s; The stronger Australian

dollar means other exports are too expensive for other countries, and skilled labour is pulled

in by the large incentive of mining salaries, effectively pulling both the people and the

 business away from industries like manufacturing. This leads one to conclude that Australia

is suffering from the ‘Dutch disease’, an economic similar to the conditions described above

that potentially leads to recession3.

On an international level, this increased focus on mining will mean the elongation of 

dependence on fossil fuels, which in turn, continues the effects of climate change and

environmental degradation. While both the national and international factors of Australia's

mining boom are not localised to Mechanical Engineers, what is specific to the discipline is

how little consideration of the matter there is in the degree. From firsthand experience, the

Mechanical engineering degree is sorely lacking in content outside of technical skills. Over 

the full 32 courses undertaken in a Mechanical Engineering degree at this University, only

two touch on environmental sustainability; both are general engineering courses that every

discipline completes, and focus more upon economic sustainability. Chemical, Civil and

Environmental engineering students I talk to have each stated that one or more of their 

courses at least touches upon discipline specific studies of sustainability. In a recent material

selection course, the database on materials had extensive documentation on energy and water 

consumption as well as the CO2 footprint associated with the material, but at no time did the

course use this data or reference it in any way. This all leads me to conclude that Mechanical

Engineers are not being adequately informed about the repercussions their choice of 

employment could have on the economy, the environment, and the profession itself.

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Another repercussion of Australia's mining boom is the increased interaction with

foreign countries, which gives rise to potentially conflicting values, especially in cultures

outside of Europe. China is a very apt example of this, given Australia's increased trading

with the country over resources1. China is a country run by a fundamentally different political

and cultural system, with entirely different values; what may be deemed an appropriatesolution to an Engineering problem in Australia, could be culturally incompatible with the

Chinese Engineers and public. My cousin works for Bradken Engineering in Newcastle, and

regularly flies out to China to work on the high speed rail being built there. When he leaves,

his internet access and ability to contact home from the country are seriously inhibited by the

Chinese government’s censure of communication and controlled social media. This

fundamental difference in ideologies is a good example of how a Mechanical Engineer 

working abroad must not only consider the optimal solution for the problem, but also must

consider it’s appropriate in the framework of local values.

A number of actions have been implemented by various parties to try and ensure thesustainability of the mining sector, both economically and environmentally. The most

 prominent of these is by the Australian Government; its introduction of a sovereign wealth

fund (The Australian Government Future Fund) meant that surplus gained in boom times

from mining would be kept and used to assuage the losses felt by other industries after the

mining boom wanes3. Similarly, the introduction of the Carbon Tax was intended to put a

 price on the social and environmental costs of industrial pollution. In regards to interventions

outside of the government, Engineers Australia states in its code of ethics that an Engineer 

should "Balance the needs of the present with the needs of future generations" 5. These

responses are fairly effective in promoting sustainable engineering: Vesilind (2006) notes that

litigious enforcement of sustainability is effective in motivating companies toward ethical

 behaviour. In this way, sustainability is forcibly worked into the financial and legal

considerations of the projects (facets which are very rarely overlooked by management) to

ensure it is not ignored.

This approach to ensuring sustainability is a justifiable one. Utilitarian thinking states

that the most moral option available maximises benefit for the greatest number of people 8.

This thinking means that the relatively small losses imposed on the businesses would be far 

outweighed by the much greater benefits for the global environment and Australia’s economy

(which, by extension, includes everyone). In this way, the greater good of preservingresources for future use is achieved while reigning in comparatively small profits of business.

Similarly, Kantianism postulates that one should justify morality by applying universality,

that is, thinking if an action would be moral if it were to be undertaken in every instance of 

the same situation 8. We note then that if every government were to place restriction on the

impacts industry makes on the environment and hold it accountable for the social cost of 

 business, then the world would be a more moral place8. This means that the government

interventions are also justifiable in the Kantian framework. While the Engineer’s Australia

code of Ethics may not be as enforceable as federal law, it is still no doubt morally acceptable

to have this code of ethics. Virtue ethics states that one should cultivate moral substance by

acting virtuously, and the code of ethics provided by Engineers Australia clearly enunciates a

series of virtues a moral engineer should have.

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Despite this, the fact remains that those actions are punitive rather than formative

measures to make industry conform to modern views on sustainability. They aim to treat the

 behaviour of industry but make minimal effort toward changing attitudes. The problem with

the mining boom is therefore ultimately precipitated by cultural factors. By this, I don’t mean

foreign culture, but engineering culture. A combination of tradition, financial incentive, andthe fact that long term consequences are removed from the immediacy of benefits means

Engineering graduates simply don't value environmental and economic sustainability as

highly as monetary reward. Engineers are expected to have a core set of values, outlined in

the Engineers Australia Code of Ethics; they must value the “…health, safety and wellbeing

of the community and the environment” 5.The education of discipline specific sustainability

however, tends to be fragmented. Likewise, industry itself sets a fairly poor example in

attitude toward sustainability, seeing it as a legal or fiscal goal rather than a moral one. These

factors combine to undermine critical values in the Engineers, resulting in garbled

expectations; the government and Engineers Australia set out a list of virtues to embody,

while the employer deemphasises these and focuses on profit.

Modern mining in Australia is characteristic of the culture described above. While the

government does impose legislation on sustainability issues, it has possibly confounding

 personal interest in the mines; they are an excellent source of income tax, gross domestic

 product, and have large lobbying groups. This is entirely typical of large corporate business

with strong political ties, in that the government is reliant on the business for political and

economic reasons. The same corporate/government structure existed in the case of the

Challenger disaster, where NASA and Morton Thiokol were able to effectively avoid legal

responsibility because of their ties with government funding and image8. Corporations and

 private industry have a big hand in this issue, as they perpetuate the attitudes that have

 precipitated the issues associated with the mining boom.

Key to morally virtuous Engineers is the role of corporations as their employers.

Industrial interests all too often focus primarily on fiscal bottom lines while maintaining the

front of a sustainable company out of necessity, a mindset which is then passed on to the

employees. The formative powers of the corporate structure can easily tend to the

 perpetuation of adverse attitudes, but this same structure means that Engineers with

favourable attitudes toward sustainability can enter the industry, move upward and supplant

the outdated values over time. The best thing that an Engineer can do is realise that a

corporation is an abstraction, that people make up its structure, and that only individual

morality can lead to corporate morality. This means an Engineer should act as if it were their 

sole personal responsibility to ensure that all of the company’s actions are socially, morally,

economically and environmentally sound. This would not only ensure that corporate culture

improves its morality, but would also fulfil the expectations placed on Engineers from society

in general.

The large growth in the mining sector of Australian industry has introduced numerous

moral issues, complicating the roles of Mechanical Engineers and the expectations placed on

them. With a dangerous undercurrent of negligence toward sustainability, as well as a lacking

of specific sustainability education, the Engineers of tomorrow are entering industry with

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values in disharmony with modern attitudes. As such, Engineers generally should treat it as a

 personal prerogative to embody the values reflective of society, and Mechanical Engineers

specifically should refocus education toward sustainable practice.

References

1. Australian Government, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2010. ‘China’,

http://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/fs/chin.pdf . Retrieved on 5/6/13

2. Clarke, S (18 November 2009). "Australia leads world in carbon emissions". ABC 

 News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Retrieved 18 June 2012.

3. Ebrahim-zadeh, C. (2003). Dutch Disease: Too much wealth managed unwisely.

 Finance and Development, Vol 40, Number 1, 50-62.

4. Engineers Australia, 2011. ‘The Engineering Profession; A Statistical Overview’.

http://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/sites/default/files/shado/Representation/Publicat

ions/Overview%20Document.pdf 

5. Engineers Australia, 2010. ‘Our Code of Ethics’.http://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/sites/default/files/shado/About

%20Us/Overview/Governance/codeofethics2010.pdf . Retrieved on 5/6/13

6. Harris, C.E, 2009. Engineering Ethics; Concepts and Cases. 4th ed. California,

U.S.A: Wadsworth

7. Marris, Sid; Korporaal, Glenda (23 January 2007). "Future Fund gets time-out on

Telstra stock". The Australian. Retrieved 16 March 2012.

8. Van de Poel, I., 2011. ‘Ethics, Technology and Engineering’ . Sussex: Wiley & Sons.

9. Vesilind, PA., 2006, ‘Ethics of green engineering’ , Sustainability Science and

Engineering, vol 1, pp. 33-46.