Shades of green: Exploring the engineering profession-environment relationship in three Canadian provinces

Research on risk and uncertainty and on environmental issues often refers to ‘decision-makers’, ‘science and technology decision makers’ or ‘science-engineering decision makers’ (i.e., Murphy, forthcoming; Ascough et al., 2008; van Asselt, 2008; Walker et al., 2003; Freudenburg, 1996, 2000, 2011). The conflation of administrators and science and technology actors undoubtedly reveals the interdisciplinary (Walker et al., 2003) make-up of environmentally-related decision makers but, conversely, the conflation also leads to further questions that are particularly relevant for sociological analysis in order to understand underlying social dynamics. Expert division of labour research also frequently conflates ‘science’ and ‘engineering’ (discussion in Petroski, 2010). In this paper I explore the latter group of experts and my guiding question is, how has the profession of engineering ecologically modernised its environmental governance in Canada? My main goal is to compare ecological modernisation of the profession’s environmental governance in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. I explore the profession-responsibility-environment triadic relationship through the lens of ecological modernization theory by incorporating responsibility in environmental governance analysis. An underlying argument in this analysis is that the focus on individual actor or industry-specific environmentally-related responsibility detracts from the critical institutional, structural and mostly invisible responsibility role played by professions in almost every aspect of mobility, infrastructure and the treadmills of production and of consumption. I zero in on the profession of engineering with its privileged knowledge and pivotal yet oftentimes overlooked environmentally-related role and decision-making. In addition, instances of environmentally-related encroachment between ‘linked ecology’ professions that provoke and shape respective ‘professionalization’ (Adams, 2004) are brought to light.  Analysis reveals the profession of engineering's varying shades of green in the three provinces under study.  Finally, I hope to contribute to the understanding of profession-environment dynamics at the meeting point between environmental sociology and the sociology of the professions.