Values of Land and Energy

The conflict between personal interests and public interests is a common issue that comes with decisions made by higher ups. Because in the end, it is impossible to satisfy everybody's needs. It is true that providing cheaper energy for the public will benefit a lot of people, but on the other hand it is true somebody has to suffer from it. Unfortunately, I simply do not have enough knowledge to make a judgement whether this project will do more harm than good. In the end, the most important aspect to making such decisions is to consider the overall picture in order to maximize the pros and minimize the cons done to society. This includes the short term and long term consequences of large scale operations. From reading the articles, the short term effects are obvious. The public values of providing cheaper energy and the personal values of tearing down land will be a imminent result from building the natural gas pipeline. The longer term effects are extremely difficult to predict. And this is actually where engineers do play an important role in this controversial subject.

One of the main concerns is the dangers of hydraulic fracturing. This method is relatively new and has become quite popular in harvesting natural gas. However, the long term consequences have not been decisive as there are cases where leaks occur and cases where they do not. These factors are decided by how the pipelines are built and ultimately engineers are the ones who design them. I believe it is the engineers' responsibility to firstly choose whether to partake in potentially risky projects and if they do, to do the best of their ability to prevent accidents from happening.