Not Giving It All She's Got

I'm not entirely sure where Scotland got it's reputation for producing great engineers. Perhaps it's all mixed up in Empire folklore, or perhaps it's because we seemed to invent a lot of Industrial Revolution machinery. Or maybe it's simply all the fault of Star Trek.

Wherever it came from, the myth certainly doesn't seem to match present day reality.

This week's Sunday Herald had an article (registration required) in the business pages looking at the engineering challenges of reaching the Scottish Government's goal of producing 100% of our energy from renewables.

It would have been a nice article if it had been in any way balanced, but instead it focused on some weary-willies from the engineering community who were saying that these goals were stupid, and we should go for something "achievable". The subtext of the whole article was that the engineers don't like to see their powerbase in the coal, oil and nuclear industries threatened, despite the new jobs and challenges that will come from the new industries of wave, tidal and offshore wind power generation.

I've said time and again that there's no point in setting goals which are "achievable". You don't strive and grow if you can easily do what you set out to do. The lack of ambition that pervaded the article was staggering to me.

I was left with the sense that if the 19th and 20th Centuries had been left to Scottish engineers, then we'd all be huddled around highly-efficient candles.