What is the most important engineering problem of our future?

[Chris Hibner]

I hate to continue the thread down a side path, but...

I agree with Ken that population growth is going to be a big problem in the future. In many ways, it already is becoming a problem.

One problem that I see quite often is society's lack of acceptance of people that choose to not have children. Since my wife and I fall into this category, I have had to endure everyone's opinion on this (mostly negative). The one that gets me is that we are "selfish" for our choice. Since I agree with Ken's point about overpopulation, I hardly think that our choice is "selfish". In a lot of ways it's the opposite.

Anyway, I just want to give another "heads up" to people to have an open mind about other people's choices, and to not continue to spout old-fashioned beliefs without first thinking about them.

(As a side note, I support everyone else's choice to have kids. It just irks me when people think that what they choose to do is the "right way" to do things.)

Back to the thread:

I think the most important engineering problem of our future is to find a replacement for fossil fuels. Fossil fuel is used not only to fuel our vehicles, but also to generate electricity, heat our houses, run manufacturing plants, and also make things like plastics, medicines, and many other materials. It's amazing how much of our current lives depend on fossil fuels. The computer that you're using to read this thread depends heavily on polymers (plastics and rubber) that are made from petroleum.

The problem is that there still isn't a great substitute. Some reports state that corn-based fuels (such as ethanol) actually require more energy to produce them than they contain - that hardly makes it a sustainable energy source.

I really don't know what the answer is, but I hope that the answer is found before mass chaos sets in as the supplies are depleted. I recently read an article that estimates that the world's supply of oil will run out in about 20 years. That's pretty scary.