Why Climate Change Mitigation Is Such an Intractable Problem
Here’s my response to the Facebook post at the right:
It’s as if climate change were a problem tailor-made to confound our society. Mitigating it requires cooperation at every level (from interpersonal to international), personal sacrifice on behalf of others, and the postponement of gratification in favor of a long-term vision. Human beings, especially Americans, utterly suck at 100% of this. Just like alcoholics, they have huge “discount rates,” meaning that they are willing to accept a huge amount of pain later in exchange for a little pleasure right now.
Moreover, amoral rich people, who control virtually everything that happens on this sad planet, really won’t suffer at all, regardless of the immensity of the misery inflicted onto the population as a whole. There will always be servants, debutante parties, caviar, champagne, and private jets that take them skiing in Aspen.
I couldn’t conceive of a problem more impervious to a solution by this civilization.
Craig,
My goodness, I never realized that solving the problems of the environment was as simple as getting rid of “amoral rich people, servants, debutante parties, caviar, champagne, and Aspen skiers using private jets”.
That simple, eh ?
You seem to be living in fantasy world that disappeared sometime before WW2 ! (Either that or been watching too much Downton Abby).
Downtrodden servants haven’t existed for decades in the Western World and the last real Debutantes “coming out” ended in 1958, when Queen Elizabeth 11 abolished the practice in the UK.
Today’s débutante balls are just dances or parties, mostly organized by high schools, church groups or service clubs, such as Lions or Rotary. The girls are usually aged between 15 and 18, and often fund-raisers for local charities.
Caviar is no longer fashionable, (and mostly farmed) while Champagne (or Champagne style) is mass produced for consumption by ordinary folk’s.
celebrations.
You’re beginning to sound like an old fashioned class war warrior fighting phantoms of a long forgotten era. You complaints are increasingly curmudgeonly, reminiscent of the bitter envy and hypocritical moral indignation typical of a dying class of petti-bourgoisis.
(It’s especially illogical for an advocate of Clean Tech to resent those sufficiently affluent to be first adopters !)
I was recently asked to assess the problems of ailing business enterprise. The directors of the business had spent a great deal of time and money on various ‘experts’ who delivered reams of beautifully written advice.
I met with the “marketing consultant’ who came highly recommended and been retained by several large corporations over the years.
As is quite common in these situation, I and my team, came as a bit of a shock.
After a careful analysis of the companies assets and potential I decided the investment could be profitable, but only with radical surgery.
The corporation had lost focus and hunger for competition. A gentile bureaucratic malaise stifled aggressive profit seeking and enterprise.
When terminating the services of the various consultants, one employees of the marketing consultancy challenged my decision. Normally, I don’t encourage explanations, but I on this occasion I decided an explanation might be useful for the education of my newest, and youngest team member.
I asked the consultant (a senior partner in his firm);
1) What enterprise he had owned and operated in his career.
2) How much of the client corporation’s product he had personally sold.
3) What car he drove
4) What vehicles did the client corporations sales staff drove.
5) What proportion of the client corporation’s stock he wanted as his fee
6) What motor vehicles did the corporation’s executives drive, and why.
7) What investment did he recommend to increase company prestige, and why.
This is just a sample of the question asked.
The consultant was obviously baffled, so I explained more for my employees benefit than the consultants.
Business is like any other competitive endeavor, it has winners and losers. The most innovative, adaptive and hungrily competitive with survive, the rest with perish (or exist on government handouts).
Corporations who neglect their sales staff will perish. Sales staff must feel and believe not only in the product and the company, but believe represent such and organization is the path to personal prestige, wealth and success.
They must be prepared to put in long and often unrewarded hours, endure the heartbreak of rejection and setbacks, sacrifice of family time to focus on beating the competition. They’re the professional athletes of commerce and deserve the same level of recognition and reward.
They’re the corporate equivalent of SAS or Navy Seals. They must believe they’re members of an elite of professionals.
Innovation is the key to any successful enterprise. Complacency, contentment and bureaucracy is the hallmark of decay.
For the directors of any enterprise the first duty is to beat the competition, while maximizing reward for shareholders and employees.
Financial success is proof what you are doing is appreciated by others.
Business success takes enthusiasm, dedication, perseverance, judgement and self belief.
The bemused consultant observed doubtfully “so, you believe it’s just all about making money”. To which my newest employee replied, “if you don’t think so, try living without money”.
The point of the story is we need success, material wealth and prosperity, even conspicuous consumption if we are to introduce clean9er) technology.