Two recent blogospheric discussions can be applied, via the magic of Strained Analogy, to the climate/energy woes that so consume us here in Gristland. Both have to do with the social context of knowledge and action—only not in the boring way that sounded.
First, Ezra Klein brought us comments from economist Dean Baker:
The honchos in the profession (Paul Krugman excepted) said everything was fine. Agreeing with the honchos will never get you in trouble. You will never lose your job or even miss a promotion because you made the same mistake as all the leading lights in the profession.
On the other hand, if you go against the honchos and end up being wrong, well you should be prepared to be sent to oblivion. You are obviously a raving lunatic who has no business being taken seriously as an economist. Even when you end being right against the honchos you can’t count on any great reward, since the honchos so control the profession and the media that “nobody could have seen” will be repeated at least frequently as the fact that some people did see.
... In short, the incentives in the economics profession, just as in finance, strongly encourage a lack of original thinking.
Second, a Clay Shirky piece on the demise of newspapers—and how they should have seen it coming—prompted Tim Lee to point out that “it’s often close to impossible for an organization built around an older technology to retool for a new, disruptive one because their cost structures just don’t allow it.” He adds:
Companies are not big people. They change much more slowly than individual people do. And anyone suggesting that a firm should do things in a new way—even the guy at the top—is going to face strong pressures from traditionalists who want to continue doing things the old way. And in the short run, the traditionalists are almost always right. The old way of doing things is almost always going to be more profitable in the short run. ... With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it’s easy to come up with scenarios that would have turned out better. But from an ex ante perspective, these trends were far from clear, and the people making the decisions were under tremendous pressure to continue the status quo.
Kevin Drum echoes:
Yes, it would have been great if railroads had converted into airline companies, if IBM had taken PCs more seriously, and if newspapers had embraced the web, but that kind of thing is really, really hard to do. That’s why it so rarely happens. Cannibalizing your own business is almost impossible for both institutional and economic reasons, and knowing that you’re in the generic transportation business, not the train business (or the generic computing business or the generic information business) isn’t nearly as profound an insight as some people think. Anyone who thinks differently needs to run an actual business first and then report back on how they did converting its core business into something brand new.
Both these insights can be applied to energy: a herd mentality among thought leaders and rigidity among large industries. That as much as anything explains why energy efficiency still gets comparatively little attention. America has enjoyed cheap energy for a long time, and energy sustainability hasn’t drawn mainstream intellectual attention. The intellectual “honchos” in energy have been employees of politically connected energy industries, politicians who enjoy their largesse, and think-tankers who accept their funding. The bias has overwhelmingly been toward securing and expanding supply.
So you’ve got big energy companies that desperately want the “solution” to be a move from fossil supply all the way to ... “unconventional” fossil supply and end-of-pipe waste solutions like CCS. This is the shortest and least uncomfortable move for them.
And you’ve got an intellectual space where the leading economists and technologists still view renewables as an expensive extravagance and efficiency as marginal.
It’s going to take a great deal of cultural and institutional change to bust out of this state of affairs. And—I urge all my wonk friends to hear this—cultural and institutional change requires more than good arguments.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 6:24 am
30 Dec 2008
...........as usual" status quo as well as our idolatry of unbridled global economic growth and outrageous per capita overconsumption could prove to be lethal for our children also to worship because these distinctly human activities could soon become patently unsustainable on a relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible planet like the planetary home which God has blessed us to inhabit......and not to ravage as elders in my "Not So GREAT GREED GRAB Generation" have been advocating so religiously and doing so recklessly in these early years of Century XXI.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1 ...
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markk Posted 6:39 am
30 Dec 2008
Click vote in the upper left hand corner and then spread the word!!
FTN's last event, a national teach-in on climate change, educated nearly a million people at more than 1,900 events and catalyzed the conversation on global warming solutions with 64 members of Congress, 15 governors and countless local and state politicians. Now we are building off of that success to catalyze the shift toward a clean energy economy.
This would be a great opportunity to push clean, sustainable energy at the national level. So click the link below, and vote by clicking on the "Vote!" button in the upper left hand corner. Voting ends on Dec 31 at midnight Pacific time, so if you're interested, please make your voice heard ASAP.
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Howard Silverman Posted 11:55 am
31 Dec 2008
I recently wrote a piece about rigidity traps:
http://www.peopleandplace.net/perspectives/60
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stopgreenpath Posted 5:50 am
01 Jan 2009
Add to that, they blatantly lied in their recent 200-page report, by PRETENDING that 2 extremely controversial power lines in very expensive, fragile regions are ALREADY PERMITTED AND BUILT, even though neither is even close. By perpetuating this lie, they are suddenly able to site all kinds of pet project for their Big Energy paymasters in places that would otherwise be environmentally and economically impossible. Isn't that sweet? This is Sierra Club and NRDC, folks - the only voting "Environmentalists" on the committee, since anyone who supported efficiency or point of use solutions to CA's energy needs was refused membership in RETI.
Add to that, the fact that Industrial Wind starting having tantrums when the truth about it's inefficiencies and environmental devastation was included, threatened to pull their money out of the CEERT coffers, and all of a sudden, Big Wind, which destroys 35-70 acres/MW, only destroys 3% of that. as if the desert tortoise is cool living on a new road, instead of in its burrow, eating the powerlines instead of the no-longer-existing plants.
So, maybe it's not just "big business" that is the problem. maybe it's the people we have entrusted the conservation of our fragile ecosystems to, who are betraying us and the planet for their new buddies in Big Energy. Check out the "roadmap to renewables" at Sierra Club's website and do the math. Roughly 4 million acres of wilderness will be permanently destroyed in their version of saving the wilderness.
My version, of course, which focuses on point of use solutions and local generation, kills no wilderness, empowers and engages people, economically rescues property values, jobs and dwindling incomes, wastes no precious water, increases conservation (when people are getting paid feed in tariffs, they cut back more than with any other conservation program), and chips away at the monopolies which are destroying our economy and our environment.
So what'll it be? Business as usual, with remote generation, lengthy transmission, eco-death and ratepayer hijacking, or clean power and energy independence? it's a zero sum game...
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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