The IMechE is ‘relaunching’ (always a worrying phrase) their CEnv, or Chartered Environmentalist, qualification this week in response to “spectacular growth” in clean tech, renewable energy and sustainability reports BusinessGreen this morning.

I won’t be applying for it.

Why not?

My whole ethos is to make sustainability “the new normal”. In this ideal scenario, every engineer will have the skills required to do their job in a sustainable economy. That job may be in renewable energy systems or electric vehicles or low carbon housing or developing the circular economy, but it will be nothing special – just what they do. In this convergence model, people like me will be redundant – that’s my life’s ambition!

At a time when renewable/low carbon energy is putting in a real challenge to the status quo, electric vehicle sales are growing fast and the circular economy is starting to emerge, we want to be heralding their emergence into the mainstream, not creating further ghettoisation of the sector.

CEnv just seems to me another step towards to a high priesthood of sustainability, muttering their incantations about mindfulness around the roped off altar of their own self-righteousness. We need a popular movement, snowballing rapidly, not fragmenting into cliques.

So, no offence, IMechE, but I won’t be sad if the CEnv sinks below the waves immediately on its relaunch.