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Climate Change and Professional Responsibility: A Declaration of Helsinki for Engineers

In this paper, we argue that the professional engineering institutions ought to develop a Declaration of Climate Action. Climate change is a serious global problem, and the majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from industries that are enabled by engineers and represented by the engineering prof...

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Autores principales: Lawlor, Rob, Morley, Helen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5636869/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28281157
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9884-4
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author Lawlor, Rob
Morley, Helen
author_facet Lawlor, Rob
Morley, Helen
author_sort Lawlor, Rob
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description In this paper, we argue that the professional engineering institutions ought to develop a Declaration of Climate Action. Climate change is a serious global problem, and the majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from industries that are enabled by engineers and represented by the engineering professional institutions. If the professional institutions take seriously the claim that a profession should be self-regulating, with codes of ethics that go beyond mere obedience to the law, and if they take their own ethical codes seriously, recognising their responsibility to the public and to future generations (and also recognising a duty of “responsible leadership”), the professional institutions ought to develop a declaration for engineers, addressing climate change. Our argument here is largely inspired by the history of the Declaration of Helsinki. The Declaration of Helsinki was created by the medical profession for the profession, and it held physicians to a higher standard of ethical conduct than was found in the legal framework of individual countries. Although it was not originally a legal document, the influence of the Declaration can be seen in the fact that it is now enshrined in law in a number of different countries. Thus, we argue that the engineering profession could, and should, play a significant role in the abatement of climate change by making changes within the profession. If the engineering profession sets strict standards for professional engineers, with sanctions for those who refuse to comply, this could have a significant impact in relation to our efforts to develop a coordinated response to climate change.
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spelling pubmed-56368692017-10-23 Climate Change and Professional Responsibility: A Declaration of Helsinki for Engineers Lawlor, Rob Morley, Helen Sci Eng Ethics Original Paper In this paper, we argue that the professional engineering institutions ought to develop a Declaration of Climate Action. Climate change is a serious global problem, and the majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from industries that are enabled by engineers and represented by the engineering professional institutions. If the professional institutions take seriously the claim that a profession should be self-regulating, with codes of ethics that go beyond mere obedience to the law, and if they take their own ethical codes seriously, recognising their responsibility to the public and to future generations (and also recognising a duty of “responsible leadership”), the professional institutions ought to develop a declaration for engineers, addressing climate change. Our argument here is largely inspired by the history of the Declaration of Helsinki. The Declaration of Helsinki was created by the medical profession for the profession, and it held physicians to a higher standard of ethical conduct than was found in the legal framework of individual countries. Although it was not originally a legal document, the influence of the Declaration can be seen in the fact that it is now enshrined in law in a number of different countries. Thus, we argue that the engineering profession could, and should, play a significant role in the abatement of climate change by making changes within the profession. If the engineering profession sets strict standards for professional engineers, with sanctions for those who refuse to comply, this could have a significant impact in relation to our efforts to develop a coordinated response to climate change. Springer Netherlands 2017-03-09 2017 /pmc/articles/PMC5636869/ /pubmed/28281157 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9884-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Lawlor, Rob
Morley, Helen
Climate Change and Professional Responsibility: A Declaration of Helsinki for Engineers
title Climate Change and Professional Responsibility: A Declaration of Helsinki for Engineers
title_full Climate Change and Professional Responsibility: A Declaration of Helsinki for Engineers
title_fullStr Climate Change and Professional Responsibility: A Declaration of Helsinki for Engineers
title_full_unstemmed Climate Change and Professional Responsibility: A Declaration of Helsinki for Engineers
title_short Climate Change and Professional Responsibility: A Declaration of Helsinki for Engineers
title_sort climate change and professional responsibility: a declaration of helsinki for engineers
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5636869/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28281157
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-017-9884-4
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