The Shift Project

Due to sickness, I was not been able to attend the Climate Fresk. Instead, I attended the Shift Project which had the same goals as the Climate Fresk: Raising awareness of future engineers about the climate problems and challenges. This page is a reflection on The Shift Project conference organized at N7 in October 2021.

The Shift Project is an association that aims to raise the awareness of workers, engineers, CEOs of companies... about climate change and global warming. In addition, The Shift Project, as its name indicates, aims for a decarbonated economic transition in the next decades.

Since engineers are one of the most important individuals in an economy as they are the group of people who realize projects in real life. The Shift Project thought it is important for engineering schools to graduate students who are aware of the climate challenges. That would make it easier for the world to make an economic transition with less CO2 emissions.

The lecturers made it very clear that all these climate changes discussions and calls to action are not done to save the planet. The planet is actually fine. All this is done to save the human race as with these CO2 emissions, humans will not be able to live on earth. The earth's temperature is increasing due to greenhouse gas emissions, the earth is fine with it; during its long life, it has witnessed some insane increases in temperature. However, it is human beings who cannot tolerate this rapid increase in the earth's temperature.

The lecturers warned that the consequences of this increase in earth's temperature started to be noticed in some areas around the world, precisely in Africa. I have done some research after the conference. And I found that Madagascar for example is one of the countries that starts to take the hit of these climate changes as it became impossible to live in some areas around this big island.
Some countries are suffering too like Kenya. As the lecturer predicts, this will spread throughout the entire world if some actions are not to be done in both the close and far future.

In response to this dangerous situation, the lecturers of this conference showed that all countries aim to reduce their CO2 emissions by half by 2050. Since this reduction will not come with magic. A lot of things have to be done to reach this goal. Everything has to start with the individual, so it is important to raise the awareness of people who are holding the countries economies, from CEOs to engineers to simple workers.

The major solution countries and The Shift Project propose is to include the climate problems in literally every economic plan or project. Instead of fixing a problem, it is better to not commit it in the first place. Therefore, it is a requirement for companies to add the environmental approach while planning their future projects.

Another solution The Shift Project specifically practices is to lobby companies to reduce their CO2 emissions. Since this world is not a utopia, a lot of companies or individuals will not care for this big problems and they will continue their economic activities with no regards of the state of our environment. So it is necessary sometimes to take hostile measures to reach the aimed goals. Countries are required to do the same with independent companies working on their yard.

To conclude :
Personally, I enjoyed this conference and gathered a lot of information that I was not aware of. I also aim to be an engineer that cares about the environment before taking any steps. That is why I changed my mind about NFT after I was interested in it.