Every human movement and action is unavoidably linked to the metabolism of human with nature. Modern technology-based civilization has enhanced this metabolism by several orders of magnitude and thus, created the bulk of pollution problems. To control this metabolism will be in the future the basic task of the engineering community. A withdrawal from high-technology based production is not viable. Instead solutions for the polltion problems will have to be looked for in the core of industrial design and production. The self-understanding of engineering has to be re-directed somewhat towards “mastering the ubiquitous metabolism of human with nature”. The implications which derive from this change of the engineering paradigm for the curricula of the profession are subsequently illustrated.