We spoke with engineer Eduardo Tanco during a webinar on global warming, its challenges, and solutions. Engineer Tanco is a professional with over 25 years of experience supporting organizations in Argentina and around the world that require transformation processes. His specialty is the planning and management of "Integration" projects (Process Reengineering + Technology + Change Management) . He founded InnovaSouth, a company focused on helping its clients maintain and acquire leadership positions through innovative solutions and cutting-edge technology.
During his presentation, the specialist shared with attendees a historical framework explaining the current challenges the world faces in the fight against global warming and climate change. According to him, global warming must be viewed within a much broader context: sustainability. This involves rethinking certain practices, seeking more effective forms of governance, and exploring possible future directions. He emphasized that the main challenge is human capital: human beings and their struggles for dominance and control often lead them to resist leaving their comfort zones. And this frequently clashes with the work that needs to be done to begin caring more for the environment. In this sense, the throwaway economy, or wear and dispose , speaks to how humanity is taking paths that are bringing it ever closer to the finiteness of resources.
The way we understand our relationship with resources today is largely due to the Industrial Revolution. This was a pivotal moment in history when we began to consume more than we could afford. However, Tanco pointed out that the world's population at that time was around 900 million, and the average life expectancy was 30 years. Today, the population exceeds 8 billion, and life expectancy is over 70 years. This speaks to the revolutions we have undergone in just a few years and the development of humanity, "but all this progress required a great deal of energy, and these advances didn't come without a price."
“If we want to continue living and enjoying the levels of development we've become accustomed to, we're going to have to make revolutionary changes,” the specialist stated emphatically. Therefore, it's necessary to understand global warming within a historical context.
Concepts like greenhouse gases, climate change, natural disasters, and rising sea levels are appearing with increasing frequency in media headlines. But it's necessary to organize the causes to understand such a complex problem.
Global warming, in its primary sense, is the sustained increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans over decades. It is a large-scale climate trend, driven mainly by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
So, what causes it?
The causes are varied, and can be divided into three main groups:
The decisions made behind the scenes of development now reveal the other side of the coin. The price the planet is paying is reflected in ecosystems that are increasingly at risk: species extinction, habitat loss, and acidified oceans, all of which affect marine life. Humanity is also affected by heat waves, compromised food security, and forced migrations due to climate events.
The results are clear. “If we continue generating these gases and, at the same time, reduce the planet’s capacity to mitigate warming (which is only achieved through photosynthesis), then the process will continue to accelerate,” says Tanco.
However, the picture isn't entirely bleak. Change is still possible and will come about through a combination of government policies, the use of emerging technologies like green hydrogen, and individual actions involving the conscious use of resources.
All these topics open up the debate and allow us to look inward, at what we are doing as individuals and what we can do from our professional and work positions, with organizations more committed to slowing global warming. Engineer Eduardo Tanco's reflections are explored in greater depth and theorized in a Diploma in Sustainable Environmental Management, offered by the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad Austral. The commitment to training and knowledge development, aligned with the challenges presented by the world we live in, drives the faculty to offer programs that help companies meet the challenge.
Discover all the academic offerings in the environmental area of the Faculty of Engineering: Link to the website.
