TED Community » Andre Poirier

About Me

I went to University with a desire to serve humankind. I obtained a degree in water resources engineering as I thought it would have a practical application in creating a better future for all. I have spent 15 years working on projects, many of them of very little use to humanity. My greatest acheivement was to help a water supply board determine how and when to build a major transmission watermain in a scientific and economically sound way. My biggest disappointment was in working for a municipality that paid lip service to concepts of sustainability, diversity, and inclusiveness, and being invited to leave when I tried to help them with sound decision making with respect to water infrastructure. Currently I am involved in processes created by a disfunctional bureaucracy that somehow allow me to charge my time to people with too much money who haven't the time or the "credentials" to deal with the disfunctional bureaucracies and their various disciplines and sub disciplines. As a licensed engineer in Ontario, I am an authority over what size a pipe should be, although it is always open to a lot of debate, for which I get paid ... amazingly. As an engineer I see first hand the infrastructure that we build to sustain (or destroy) life. I live in a world that is run by "economists" who understand resource distribution, economic growth in generalities but who do not actually see the resources themselves or understand what is behind their balance sheet. While I believe that much the infrastructure systems we are developing in my country are heading in the wrong direction, I have hope that future generations will figure things out and improve on our mistakes. I believe David Suzuki was right when he said that the economy and the ecosystem are fundamentally integrated, and that current systems that do not recognize this fact are destructive. Unfortunately, the current economy is not providing me with many opportunities to be constructive. My most lucrative work has been in land development and highway expansions. I have pursued other interests, such as water distribution optimization, energy management, demand management, however it's the highways and the subdivision development that has been paying my bills. Some would say that from a business perspective, we should be happy, that others' disfunction is an opportunity for us to make money, however they are wasting money on useless activity, and I say stop the useless activity and begin to fund other initiatives. If you have money to waste, please just give it to me and don't tell me to waste my time. Desalination research, setting up agricultural communities in deserts, use of communication systems to render public transit more efficient, convenient, attractive, and ultimately cost shared by all. These are some of the important questions that will need to be addressed for humans to survive without destroying the planet. Yet there is no money in this ... I make my money in this economy that is destined to collapse.