Do petroleum engineers hurt the environment?

Question

Would you consider that an immoral job?

Answer 1

A very strange question.

Start here -There are a very few persons in our society that deliberately aim to harm others. (Think mass murders for example).  The vast majority of persons strive to do the right thing by themselves and their fellow human beings.

Now for engineers,  Engineers use available technology to better society.  In the case of Petro Engineers, they search for and find needed fuel to run our societies. They make provision for minimizing harm in that process but those efforts are balanced by a need to reap a net benefit (think profit) from the effort.  If we as a society find the efforts lacking, we can adjust the balance by enacting laws and regulations to explain our expectations and penalize those that do not meet them.  

Folks who pose the kind of question you are asking are typically those with expectations outside those established by their society, who are frustrated they cannot convince others of the moral righteousness of their beliefs and so brand others as immoral and evil.  

  

Answer 2

I've seen these questions before about engineers destroying the environment.

As an engineer, I find it not only insulting, but juvenile.  If this is for school, then what a pity.  You are being instructed by ignorant fools.

Answer 3

It's not the engineers, they do little.  But without them we would be facing a unprecedented disaster, that would be immoral.  

Answer 4

Amazing as it may seem, the world is cleaner with technology that without it.  What is immoral is the effort to return humanity to mud huts, food shortage, no sewers, no clean water, etc.  Before you condemn petroleum engineers, give up entirely everything made possible by petroleum for one year (If you survive that long) and get back to us.