When we found ourselves exposed to things around us as green as created in the beginning, we took great pains to destruct them in some way, with various engineering activities, in the name of, and for the sake of development. Development was a mission central to engineering, to technology, and even to science. When we found green things disappearing gradually from the human vision or pressed to the utmost margin of human perception and conception, we were suddenly awakened to the dangers of the environmental deterioration brought by depletion of natural resources, extinction of wildlife and destruction of ecosystems, and therefore, for remedies or escapes, began to take much greater pains to reconstruct them, in the hope of sustaining all that we have. We want sustainment, but we can never brake the invisible engine of development. When we were first confronted with the dilemma more than twenty years ago, thinkers conceived and contributed the idea of sustainable development. The idea of sustainable development inspired not only engineers, technologists and scientists, but also policy-makers all over the world, soon new policies were made, new strategies were prescribed, and new measures were advocated.
Green engineering, together with green technology, entered theatres of sustainable development of the world, mostly in the central grounds. Green engineering is a powerful guarantee of sustainable development, though sustainable development is not guaranteed by green engineering alone. Green engineering is one term, but might be various things, in almost all sectors of engineering. Green transportation system formulation, “zero-emission” clean ecosystem construction, renewable energy development, and ecological environment protection, for instance, are all components of green engineering.
Green engineering is an unaffordable ideal in some countries as it is more expensive than conventional engineering of the industrial times, an experimental exploration in some countries, and an ongoing movement in other countries, especially in those whose people have recognized its significance. Frontiers of Engineering Management called for papers for the first issue of 2014, to the surprise of the editorial board, most papers submitted are reports of research on and around green engineering. This reminds us of a saying popular in the English-speaking world, “Great minds think alike.”
It is reasonable to say that, where there are so many engineers, technologists and scientists thinking alike and working alike up green, there are people in the world living alike up green.
February 22, 2014
Zhejiang University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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