WOMEN IN OPTICS
Connecting climate with photomasks: Using skills for good
Emily Gallagher, Imec, says we can all choose to apply our skills – in her case, within photomask-related semiconductor development – to help minimise the effects of climate change
T
here are burdens and benefits to writing an editorial. The burden is
writing something original and worth the readers’ time. The benefit is the freedom to write what feels relevant. For me, that topic is climate change. I don’t mean to inject politics into photomasks, but I do intend to foster thought. Climate change and photomasks became temporarily connected for me when my daughter encouraged me to read a New Yorker article during the week of the SPIE Photomask Technology conference in September 2019. It was written by Jonathan Franzen and had the provocative title: ‘What if we
stopped pretending? The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it’1
. I quote two of
his most disturbing points here: ‘If you’re younger than
sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilisation of life on earth – massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.’ ‘... the impending catastrophe
heightens the urgency of almost any world-improving action.’ Since its publication, the
article has been criticised, partly because Franzen is a writer instead of a climate scientist2
. Perhaps this distance
from climate science is what renders his conclusions so blunt, so sticky, so immediate. To stay closer to my field of expertise, I will not weigh in
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on climate science, and instead consider how people who devote their working lives to the field of semiconductors – more specifically, photomask- related development – could be connected to minimising the impact of climate change. Humans will not willingly
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