Aerospace and Defence Industry Against Climate Change
I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the first major conference dedicated to how the Aerospace and Defence industry can help combat climate change. The Energy and Environmental Defence and Security Conference (E2DS’09) held at the RSA, London on November 5th to 6th gave a fascinating insight. Sponsors included Rolls Royce, EADS, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Saab, Northrop Grumman, ITT, Finmeccanica, ADS, ASD and others.
The extent of the very real climate change threat that we face was hammered home by keynote speaker Dr Berrien Moore, co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
This illuminating and thought provoking conference was a result of the vision of Nick Cook, journalist and MD of Dynamixx, the organisers of the event. As Nick said, “Our mission is to create a dynamic forum for the Aerospace and Defence community and so foster dialogue, debate and analysis of the many opportunities that await it in the energy and environmental arenas.”
Here at Beechwood, we’ve developed creative marcoms campaigns for our technology clients on The Greening of the Data Centre, Energy Efficiency, IT for the Environment and more. So it’s reassuring to think that, maybe one day, the Aerospace, Defence, IT and Technology sectors will all combine together to take up the challenge of climate change through collaboration and innovation.
With congratulations to Roz Littlewood and Graham Hart for managing such a successful event.
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November 19th, 2009 at 4:16 am
Mark - many thanks indeed for your plaudits about our E2DS’09 conference and it was good seeing you there. I know - it is really counter-inuitive at first sight: looking to the aerospace and defence sector for a global, innovative and consutructive solution to climate change, but actually, when you start to think about it - I mean, really think about it - it makes sense. Climate change is a ‘threat’ - what A&D companies are supposed to deal in - and many of these companies have been in posession of climate change data for years, but much of it, on the insistance of their government customers, has remained classified. I’ve spoken to many of the A&D ’systems-engineering’ engineers who we (Dynamixx) believe have a key role to play in combatting climate change at a global, as well as local level, and they are brimful of ideas on what to do. At Dynamixx, we see our job - inter alia - as getting governments to engage the A&D industry to fight climate change - governments, after all, are their customers - for the industry to agree between itself that it will work collaboratively, where appropriate,on solutions; for the A&D industry to work with other sectors, especially academia; and finally for the emerging data itself to be totally transparent. Unlike energy companies, A&D companies are not conflicted by the need to pump oil and gas out of the planet, or cut back on their renewables research when times get hard. There is a real willingnness, we at Dynamixx have noticed, by A&D engineers to engage with the climate change problem - in large part because it represents a challenge that they haven’t collectively, as an industry, been faced with potentially since they achieved the near-impossible task of placing a man on the moon within the decade laid down in President Kennedy’s challenge. We want other sectors - IT, the communications media - to engage in the debate and hopefully become a part of the solution, too. Let’s watch that space …