Every society attempts to determine which risks will be borne by the individual and which will be borne by the community. It is certainly not an exact science, and there are many situations in which risk is presumably blended, some being shouldered by the individual and some by the group, either the community in general or a specified group such as a pool of policyholders. An example would be deductibles or co-pays for various kinds of insurance. The policyholder is at risk up to a certain amount. After that, the insurance company, which really means the policyholders in the group, bear the risk.
But my task is to convince you that the idea of individual risk is flawed, and that to the extent we organize our society around it we are being hoodwinked by a false libertarian ideology, one that tells us there are choices available to the individual the consequences of which will fall only to that individual. I am going to discuss this in the context of energy and resources later, but first let me offer another kind of illustration.
Controversy continues to rage over mandatory helmet laws for motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles. Two states require no helmet for any of the three. (They are Illinois and Iowa.) Many states require helmets only for those under a certain age--ranging from 17 to 20 for motorcycles and 14 to 17 for bicycles. No state requires adult bicycle riders to wear helmets.
I am not trying to argue here for or against specific helmet requirements. You can certainly find many sites on the Internet that will argue that wearing a helmet ought to be an individual choice. But do the consequences of not wearing one fall merely on the individual?
Long ago during two separate time periods, I did marketing work for two rehabilitation hospitals, the kind that treat head injuries from motorcycle and other accidents. Yes, these hospitals compete for the very lucrative task of treating traumatic head injuries as well as other types of injuries requiring extensive rehabilitative stays in a hospital. So, now you have at least one clue about how the consequences of such injuries are actually distributed.
If you are insured, your insurance picks up much of the tab which means other policyholders are picking up your bill; that's how insurance is designed. But, if traumatic head injuries are more numerous than the insurance company anticipates, look for a rate increase to pay for the very costly treatment.
Okay, so what happens if you aren't insured? Well, in my state the state government picks up your bill, and that, of course, means all taxpayers do. What is the logic behind this? The state figures that without rehabilitation a trauma victim with severe injuries will become a long-term burden on the state and the local community through other programs that serve low-income citizens in the areas of housing, employment, home health care and transportation. It's much cheaper to bring the injured person back to his or her fullest capabilities than to treat ongoing disabilities resulting from an accident. It's also the right thing to do for that person.
But there are all sorts of other consequences of a traumatic head injury that can affect the individual and his or her family and community for years afterwards. For those who never fully recovery there can be a lifetime of follow-up services, not all of them covered by insurance and many paid for with tax dollars. Some patients who appear to have a full recovery develop subtle deficits in higher reasoning functions and find that the speed with which they formerly thought through problems, say, simple calculations, is not there. These ongoing deficits take a toll on those around the injured person even though he or she appears healed.
I've used this illustration because I am so familiar with it. But I want to apply the same logic to the way in which we use resources, particularly energy. Most Americans feel that they have a right to use as much energy as they choose so long as they can pay for it. The perceived risk is that you may not be able to pay for it, not that its supply could become scarce, something that would affect myriad systems in society, not just the individual.
In an era of rising supplies of just about everything including energy, the marketplace solution to allocating resources functioned reasonably well with occasional shortages and disruptions and, of course, with the attendant steep inequality of distribution. But, running low permanently was not considered a risk. The marketplace would always magically bring on new supply or at least substitutes.
As we face a future of constrained resources, the risks are increasingly shifting from the individual person or company to society as a whole. My resource use no longer simply drives up prices which will then cause mining companies and oil and gas companies to produce whatever society might need at ever higher rates. Instead, my profligate use of resources threatens to destabilize the very social, economic and governmental systems I depend on. Should I merely be entitled to all that I can pay for?
So much of the freedom of action we take for granted today is, in fact, a product of the availability of huge amounts of energy. Of course, not to allow the individual some range of action to take risks would indeed make our lives exceedingly frustrating and dull and our societies stagnant. But as we head down the slope of energy and resource constraints, we as a society are going to have to rethink the idea that the risks associated with access to resources are an individual risk. They are increasingly going to become a societal risk to which we will need to apply some restraints regardless of the ability to pay in order to insure the stability and integrity of society as a whole.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Global coal supplies: It might be worse than anyone thinks
My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Global Coal Supplies: It Might Be Worse Than Anyone Thinks" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:
A new study on global coal supplies suggests a worldwide peak in production from existing fields in 2011.....Read more
Sunday, August 15, 2010
James McCommons' year-long train ride
Henry David Thoreau commented at length on the frequent interruptions of his day caused by the whistle, rumble, and hiss of steam-powered trains on the Fitchburg Railroad which passed not far from his house on Walden Pond. The railroad symbolized that commercial "getting and spending" world maligned by Wordsworth in his poem The World Is Too Much With Us.
How different the railroad seems to most of us 150 years hence! As I read James McCommons' compelling account of his year riding Amtrak, Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service, the memories came streaming in. In the little burg where I grew up just two blocks from my house trains passed every evening around bedtime. The low roar of the diesel locomotives and the syncopated clatter of the railway cars on the track, far from disturbing me, lulled me to sleep.
As a young boy there were overnight trips in sleeper cars on the Denver Zephyr, one leg in the family's annual journey to Colorado for a skiing vacation in places like Vail and Aspen, long before they became exclusive celebrity playgrounds. The observation car provided a geography lesson as the Great Plains gradually gave way to the Rocky Mountains in the dusky twilight. The dining car seemed as exotic as a circus act: A formal dinner in a moving vehicle, who thought of something as neat as that? At night the gentle rocking of the train made me sleep, well, like a baby.
Passenger trains still seemed glamorous and contemporary then. Yet with only 5 percent of the passenger market, they were already lurching toward oblivion.
But McCommons' book is not about the past, but about the future of passenger rail, right? In fact, it is about both. He seamlessly weaves the history of passenger rail in with his artful travelogues as he describes the scenery he sees, the people he meets, and the problems and joys he encounters during a year of train travel that covers nearly every major Amtrak route. These travelogues are an absolute pleasure to read. And, they provide an excellent window on the current state of passenger rail in America today. Frequently, McCommons takes train trips to meet people who are actively shaping passenger rail in the United States. That's the part of the book about the future.
In reading this book it helps to have fond memories of train travel for this predisposes you to look carefully for clues about what might be done to improve and expand service. It helps even more if you have occasion to ride Amtrak today as I do to reach Chicago or visit friends in Minnesota via the Empire Builder. But herein lies part of the problem. McCommons tells us that an astoundingly low proportion of Americans have ever been on an intercity train, less than 2 percent! Only 3 percent use light rail or commuter lines. It's hard to build sympathy for a mode of travel that most Americans have never experienced and may know only from movies or television.
Still, it is indicative of the hold trains have on the popular imagination that many routes have Wikipedia entries. How many airline routes have that! It is this appeal which provides some hope. After all, many of the Amtrak routes which remain today exist only because people in the localities served by those routes fought hard to keep them. Some of the stories are detailed in the book. And, when the Bush administration tried to destroy Amtrak by zeroing out its budget, Congress simply passed Amtrak funding by veto-proof majorities. People want passenger rail.
Now, comes the sticky part. An economist acquaintance of mine has tried to drill into me that we as a society should tax the things we don't want, and let the market sort out what should take their place. If we do that, then the government doesn't need to pick winners by subsidizing anything. In fact, he insists, if the U. S. government would stop subsidizing highway travel, that is, if people were forced to pay the true cost of driving on highways, they would soon flock to rail and that rail would be privately financed because it would be profitable.
He may be right, but I am a realist. I don't think we will ever get a chance to find out if his system would work. Societies have always considered transportation as simply too important to be left to the marketplace--from the roads of the Roman Empire all the way to today's newest airports. And, so perhaps the critical point that McCommons' book makes is that if we want passenger rail to thrive in America, we as a society will have to pay for it. Passenger rail will never be profitable in the narrow sense that businesses are. But it will be vastly profitable to society by other measures: energy efficiency; national cohesion; private development associated with transit; and the comfort, aesthetic pleasure, and sociability that trains offer over other types of transport.
That means we need to focus on making passenger rail so attractive that people will abandon their cars because they think that taking the train is a better idea. And, to do that we will have to invest far more in passenger rail than we do today.
How different the railroad seems to most of us 150 years hence! As I read James McCommons' compelling account of his year riding Amtrak, Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service, the memories came streaming in. In the little burg where I grew up just two blocks from my house trains passed every evening around bedtime. The low roar of the diesel locomotives and the syncopated clatter of the railway cars on the track, far from disturbing me, lulled me to sleep.
As a young boy there were overnight trips in sleeper cars on the Denver Zephyr, one leg in the family's annual journey to Colorado for a skiing vacation in places like Vail and Aspen, long before they became exclusive celebrity playgrounds. The observation car provided a geography lesson as the Great Plains gradually gave way to the Rocky Mountains in the dusky twilight. The dining car seemed as exotic as a circus act: A formal dinner in a moving vehicle, who thought of something as neat as that? At night the gentle rocking of the train made me sleep, well, like a baby.
Passenger trains still seemed glamorous and contemporary then. Yet with only 5 percent of the passenger market, they were already lurching toward oblivion.
But McCommons' book is not about the past, but about the future of passenger rail, right? In fact, it is about both. He seamlessly weaves the history of passenger rail in with his artful travelogues as he describes the scenery he sees, the people he meets, and the problems and joys he encounters during a year of train travel that covers nearly every major Amtrak route. These travelogues are an absolute pleasure to read. And, they provide an excellent window on the current state of passenger rail in America today. Frequently, McCommons takes train trips to meet people who are actively shaping passenger rail in the United States. That's the part of the book about the future.
In reading this book it helps to have fond memories of train travel for this predisposes you to look carefully for clues about what might be done to improve and expand service. It helps even more if you have occasion to ride Amtrak today as I do to reach Chicago or visit friends in Minnesota via the Empire Builder. But herein lies part of the problem. McCommons tells us that an astoundingly low proportion of Americans have ever been on an intercity train, less than 2 percent! Only 3 percent use light rail or commuter lines. It's hard to build sympathy for a mode of travel that most Americans have never experienced and may know only from movies or television.
Still, it is indicative of the hold trains have on the popular imagination that many routes have Wikipedia entries. How many airline routes have that! It is this appeal which provides some hope. After all, many of the Amtrak routes which remain today exist only because people in the localities served by those routes fought hard to keep them. Some of the stories are detailed in the book. And, when the Bush administration tried to destroy Amtrak by zeroing out its budget, Congress simply passed Amtrak funding by veto-proof majorities. People want passenger rail.
Now, comes the sticky part. An economist acquaintance of mine has tried to drill into me that we as a society should tax the things we don't want, and let the market sort out what should take their place. If we do that, then the government doesn't need to pick winners by subsidizing anything. In fact, he insists, if the U. S. government would stop subsidizing highway travel, that is, if people were forced to pay the true cost of driving on highways, they would soon flock to rail and that rail would be privately financed because it would be profitable.
He may be right, but I am a realist. I don't think we will ever get a chance to find out if his system would work. Societies have always considered transportation as simply too important to be left to the marketplace--from the roads of the Roman Empire all the way to today's newest airports. And, so perhaps the critical point that McCommons' book makes is that if we want passenger rail to thrive in America, we as a society will have to pay for it. Passenger rail will never be profitable in the narrow sense that businesses are. But it will be vastly profitable to society by other measures: energy efficiency; national cohesion; private development associated with transit; and the comfort, aesthetic pleasure, and sociability that trains offer over other types of transport.
That means we need to focus on making passenger rail so attractive that people will abandon their cars because they think that taking the train is a better idea. And, to do that we will have to invest far more in passenger rail than we do today.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
The end of prevention
It is a frequent conceit among humans that they are at the beginning of some new important era or at the end of a previous grand or decadent era. It is quite boring to imagine oneself simply in the ongoing stream of an already well-established pattern of life that will neither reach a climax nor inaugurate a new epoch.
What if, a friend of mine proposed, we are not approaching a point that will tip us into a grand ecological catastrophe which we are called upon to prevent? What if we are in the middle of that catastrophe and it began some time ago?
So much of the environmental community is focused on preventing this catastrophe. So much of the scientific community is warning us about what we must change in order to avert disaster. Of course, disaster is already arriving for many species who are being wiped out daily by the encroachments and ill effects of industrial society. But apparently the marker for much of the public will be widespread human casualties from lack of heat, lack of food, disease and myriad other causes.
William Catton Jr., author of Overshoot and Bottleneck, has already stepped forward and said that the public will have to wait no longer than sometime in this century for their preferred signal that the great ecological catastrophe is upon us. He believes we are now on a trajectory for a mass dieoff of humans. It probably won't mean the extinction of homo sapiens, he believes. But it will mean the end of industrial civilization as we've known it.
The idea that we can prevent the great ecological catastrophe has certain psychological effects that I have noticed even in myself. For some it creates a great sense of urgency and a desire to leaflet the neighborhood. There is a deadline looming, and we must as a society act in time. If we succeed at prevention, then life will return to normal. For others the idea that we still have time for preventive measures simply means that we can leave the task of prevention to future generations. It'll be their problem. But if, as my friend and the venerable William Catton suggest, the catastrophe is upon us, then neither of these outlooks will do.
Now some who believe that the catastrophe is here have chosen resignation as their stance. Since we have not prevented the catastrophe from happening and it is too late to prevent it, then there is nothing that can be done. But we do not typically take this attitude with an illness, for example. Having failed to prevent it, we set about treating it. We try to alleviate the symptoms if they are severe. We attempt to get at the underlying cause to shorten the time of recovery. And, if the problem proves chronic, we look for ways to cope with the condition long term.
All three of these approaches seem appropriate for those who accept that we are now beyond the possibility of preventing a collapse of some type in our ecosystems and ultimately our society. The cure, if there is one, is not something that will take us back to the coveted perpetual economic growth of industrialism, but forward to a sustainable society based on other principles.
For those alive today, we may be faced with something akin to dealing with a chronic disease. Fortunately, unlike actions aimed at prevention, there is no expiration date on our task. If we are at the end of prevention, then we might be fated simply to cope with the intractable problems of climate change and declining energy and resources. But "cope" seems too small a word for the task ahead. When people think of coping with a situation, they think of others around them happily proceeding with business-as-usual while they cope. What is actually available to us is a lifetime of creative response in collaboration with others to an unprecedented challenge. That view I believe takes us into a new dimension and along the path of action.
What if, a friend of mine proposed, we are not approaching a point that will tip us into a grand ecological catastrophe which we are called upon to prevent? What if we are in the middle of that catastrophe and it began some time ago?
So much of the environmental community is focused on preventing this catastrophe. So much of the scientific community is warning us about what we must change in order to avert disaster. Of course, disaster is already arriving for many species who are being wiped out daily by the encroachments and ill effects of industrial society. But apparently the marker for much of the public will be widespread human casualties from lack of heat, lack of food, disease and myriad other causes.
William Catton Jr., author of Overshoot and Bottleneck, has already stepped forward and said that the public will have to wait no longer than sometime in this century for their preferred signal that the great ecological catastrophe is upon us. He believes we are now on a trajectory for a mass dieoff of humans. It probably won't mean the extinction of homo sapiens, he believes. But it will mean the end of industrial civilization as we've known it.
The idea that we can prevent the great ecological catastrophe has certain psychological effects that I have noticed even in myself. For some it creates a great sense of urgency and a desire to leaflet the neighborhood. There is a deadline looming, and we must as a society act in time. If we succeed at prevention, then life will return to normal. For others the idea that we still have time for preventive measures simply means that we can leave the task of prevention to future generations. It'll be their problem. But if, as my friend and the venerable William Catton suggest, the catastrophe is upon us, then neither of these outlooks will do.
Now some who believe that the catastrophe is here have chosen resignation as their stance. Since we have not prevented the catastrophe from happening and it is too late to prevent it, then there is nothing that can be done. But we do not typically take this attitude with an illness, for example. Having failed to prevent it, we set about treating it. We try to alleviate the symptoms if they are severe. We attempt to get at the underlying cause to shorten the time of recovery. And, if the problem proves chronic, we look for ways to cope with the condition long term.
All three of these approaches seem appropriate for those who accept that we are now beyond the possibility of preventing a collapse of some type in our ecosystems and ultimately our society. The cure, if there is one, is not something that will take us back to the coveted perpetual economic growth of industrialism, but forward to a sustainable society based on other principles.
For those alive today, we may be faced with something akin to dealing with a chronic disease. Fortunately, unlike actions aimed at prevention, there is no expiration date on our task. If we are at the end of prevention, then we might be fated simply to cope with the intractable problems of climate change and declining energy and resources. But "cope" seems too small a word for the task ahead. When people think of coping with a situation, they think of others around them happily proceeding with business-as-usual while they cope. What is actually available to us is a lifetime of creative response in collaboration with others to an unprecedented challenge. That view I believe takes us into a new dimension and along the path of action.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
What will it take to convince people about the dangers of peak oil?
As I watched the compelling interview of Michael Ruppert which was made into the movie Collapse, I found myself identifying with Ruppert's frustration that the public does not seem to understand the problem of peak oil and that it's hard to figure out what will convince it that peak oil is a serious problem.
I contrasted Ruppert's use of everyday analogies to illustrate the problem with the fact-and-figure laden presentations I've seen from Matt Simmons over the years and Simmons' book, Twilight in the Desert, a challenging tome of technical information that lifted the veil on Saudi Arabia's oil reserves. Each approach seeks out different audiences. Ruppert talked to a general audience through his now defunct newsletter. Simmons was typically addressing well-informed specialist audiences that were capable of following his technical explanations.
I applaud and have benefitted from the efforts of both to bring the realities of peak oil to a larger audience. It occasionally concerned me, however, that the two would engage in prognostications that time would likely debunk primarily because they put a near-term emphasis on them. At the time he was interviewed for Collapse Ruppert believed that the recent economic crash was the beginning of the unraveling of industrial civilization. Since then a partial revival, especially in Asia, has made that view seem at best premature. He may turn out to be right in the long run. But not today!
Simmons has been lecturing about the decrepit state of the oil and natural gas infrastructure. When I saw him at a conference in 2008, he was concerned that an oil crisis would quickly lead drivers to top off their tanks and draw down the levels of petroleum products in pipelines and other oil infrastructure below what he called the "minimum operating level." (PDF) Such a drawdown would, in his view, cripple the entire system and halt transportation of food and other critical commodities. Though he didn't exactly predict that such an event was imminent, he was clearly very concerned that it could happen at any time. As of this writing, it hasn't happened. That doesn't mean that it won't. Just not today!
Unfortunately, such failed predictions provide fodder to those who tell the public that erroneous predictions somehow invalidate the concept of peak oil as well as the writings and presentations of those who make such predictions. I myself have been too much obsessed with a possible natural gas cliff in North America. I had the good sense to use a question mark in the title of the piece cited. But I'm not sure that's much of a defense.
My professional experience is in the area of mass communications. Naturally, when I think about important public issues, I think about how to communicate about them to a broad public. Lately, however, I've been pondering a piece of advice Richard Heinberg often gives in his lectures. He tells his audiences that like an airplane passenger in a depressurization emergency who is instructed to put on his or her own oxygen mask before assisting others, those in the peak oil movement need to make their own peak oil preparations before assisting others. Partly this is a practical consideration. How can one be effective in assisting in the energy transition if one's own finances, livelihood, and basic needs such as housing, food and transportation are not reasonably robust?
But there is another important aspect to one's own preparation. Last week I was traveling in Canada and had a long conversation concerning peak oil with a couple staying at a bed and breakfast. Once they found out that I write frequently on the topic, they were interested in what I had to say. But they were also keenly interested in what I was doing to prepare.
I find myself these days especially attentive to people talking about their preparations for a post-peak oil world. I am partly learning and partly measuring myself against their level of preparation. If they are, in my evaluation, further along than I am, my focus is even more intense.
That has turned out to be an important clue for me about what it will take to convince the public about the dangers of peak oil. There is no more compelling testimony that peak oil is a critical issue than the time and treasure one is willing to put into preparing oneself for a post-peak oil world.
I contrasted Ruppert's use of everyday analogies to illustrate the problem with the fact-and-figure laden presentations I've seen from Matt Simmons over the years and Simmons' book, Twilight in the Desert, a challenging tome of technical information that lifted the veil on Saudi Arabia's oil reserves. Each approach seeks out different audiences. Ruppert talked to a general audience through his now defunct newsletter. Simmons was typically addressing well-informed specialist audiences that were capable of following his technical explanations.
I applaud and have benefitted from the efforts of both to bring the realities of peak oil to a larger audience. It occasionally concerned me, however, that the two would engage in prognostications that time would likely debunk primarily because they put a near-term emphasis on them. At the time he was interviewed for Collapse Ruppert believed that the recent economic crash was the beginning of the unraveling of industrial civilization. Since then a partial revival, especially in Asia, has made that view seem at best premature. He may turn out to be right in the long run. But not today!
Simmons has been lecturing about the decrepit state of the oil and natural gas infrastructure. When I saw him at a conference in 2008, he was concerned that an oil crisis would quickly lead drivers to top off their tanks and draw down the levels of petroleum products in pipelines and other oil infrastructure below what he called the "minimum operating level." (PDF) Such a drawdown would, in his view, cripple the entire system and halt transportation of food and other critical commodities. Though he didn't exactly predict that such an event was imminent, he was clearly very concerned that it could happen at any time. As of this writing, it hasn't happened. That doesn't mean that it won't. Just not today!
Unfortunately, such failed predictions provide fodder to those who tell the public that erroneous predictions somehow invalidate the concept of peak oil as well as the writings and presentations of those who make such predictions. I myself have been too much obsessed with a possible natural gas cliff in North America. I had the good sense to use a question mark in the title of the piece cited. But I'm not sure that's much of a defense.
My professional experience is in the area of mass communications. Naturally, when I think about important public issues, I think about how to communicate about them to a broad public. Lately, however, I've been pondering a piece of advice Richard Heinberg often gives in his lectures. He tells his audiences that like an airplane passenger in a depressurization emergency who is instructed to put on his or her own oxygen mask before assisting others, those in the peak oil movement need to make their own peak oil preparations before assisting others. Partly this is a practical consideration. How can one be effective in assisting in the energy transition if one's own finances, livelihood, and basic needs such as housing, food and transportation are not reasonably robust?
But there is another important aspect to one's own preparation. Last week I was traveling in Canada and had a long conversation concerning peak oil with a couple staying at a bed and breakfast. Once they found out that I write frequently on the topic, they were interested in what I had to say. But they were also keenly interested in what I was doing to prepare.
I find myself these days especially attentive to people talking about their preparations for a post-peak oil world. I am partly learning and partly measuring myself against their level of preparation. If they are, in my evaluation, further along than I am, my focus is even more intense.
That has turned out to be an important clue for me about what it will take to convince the public about the dangers of peak oil. There is no more compelling testimony that peak oil is a critical issue than the time and treasure one is willing to put into preparing oneself for a post-peak oil world.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Asymmetrical accolades: Why preventing a crisis almost never makes you a hero
A friend recently related to me that the quality assurance manager at the pharmaceutical firm he used to work for was an absolute stickler for one thing: There had to be a convincing cleanup procedure for anything anyone proposed to bring into a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant. If it got on the floor or in the air or on the walls or in the production line and it wasn't supposed to be there, there had to be a way to get rid of it completely. Either that or it wasn't coming into the building.
This friend explained that the quality assurance program run by this man was so good that the Food and Drug Administration pointed other firms to it as an example of what they should be doing. So, how did people at the company feel about this man? Well, they didn't really like him. I imagined that to his fellow employees this man must have been like an insect buzzing around their heads--a beneficial insect, to be sure--but a buzzing insect nevertheless.
It is doubtful that this man will ever receive an award for the deaths and illnesses averted because his diligence prevented impure drugs from reaching the public. Of course, there is no good way to gauge the number of lives saved or illnesses prevented. And, there is no one act people can point to as the clear reason that these deaths and illnesses never occurred. There is just the everyday heavy-handed enforcement of the safety and quality rules which only become an issue when they are violated.
In our thinking we place a premium on the dramatic rescue, the last-minute escape, and the ingenious on-the-fly technical solution. They all make good copy for reporters, and they make good stories for television and movies.
Who would argue that Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed a disabled U. S. Airways jet in the Hudson River in January 2009 without a single death, is not a hero? The engines shut down after the plane hit a large flock of geese forcing the pilot to land without power. Sullenberger and his crew received many honors for their virtually flawless handling of the emergency.
No one should diminish the heroism of the pilot and crew of Flight 1549 on that January day. But who will sing the praises of the designers of jet engines who made them capable of withstanding almost all other bird strikes? Who can tote up the number of lives spared as result?
And, what about the workers at various government agencies who were given the gruesome task of finding places near New York City where geese live, corralling them and then taking them away to be gassed? Other workers coated goose eggs with corn oil to kill the unhatched goslings. Will they be given awards for helping to avert similar incidents in the future?
The movie Apollo 13 dramatized the ingenuity of American aerospace engineers as they skillfully improvised ways to get the crippled spacecraft home. Of particular significance was an improvised designed for adapting carbon dioxide filters from the command module for use on the lunar module. The astronauts had been forced to retreat there after an explosion hobbled the command module. The design had to be made using only materials available on the spacecraft. Again, no one should diminish the achievements of the people who saved the crew of Apollo 13. Without these adapted filters, the crew would have died from the buildup of carbon dioxide coming from their own respiration.
Yet, all the thousands of workers around the country who have designed and manufactured the components that have allowed countless hours of safe space travel will never have a movie made about them. (Yes, there have been two spacecraft lost since Apollo 13, namely, two shuttles, Challenger and Columbia. Space travel has always been risky. The culprits in each case were found, a faulty O-ring and a wing damaged during takeoff, respectively. But given the complexity of the U. S. manned spaceflight program, the track record is still very good.)
Moving our focus elsewhere, we can differentiate between the accolades given to those who make conquest through force, and those who do it by other means. In The Art of War the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu outlines an approach to winning that is based on stratagem, not fighting:
This friend explained that the quality assurance program run by this man was so good that the Food and Drug Administration pointed other firms to it as an example of what they should be doing. So, how did people at the company feel about this man? Well, they didn't really like him. I imagined that to his fellow employees this man must have been like an insect buzzing around their heads--a beneficial insect, to be sure--but a buzzing insect nevertheless.
It is doubtful that this man will ever receive an award for the deaths and illnesses averted because his diligence prevented impure drugs from reaching the public. Of course, there is no good way to gauge the number of lives saved or illnesses prevented. And, there is no one act people can point to as the clear reason that these deaths and illnesses never occurred. There is just the everyday heavy-handed enforcement of the safety and quality rules which only become an issue when they are violated.
In our thinking we place a premium on the dramatic rescue, the last-minute escape, and the ingenious on-the-fly technical solution. They all make good copy for reporters, and they make good stories for television and movies.
Who would argue that Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed a disabled U. S. Airways jet in the Hudson River in January 2009 without a single death, is not a hero? The engines shut down after the plane hit a large flock of geese forcing the pilot to land without power. Sullenberger and his crew received many honors for their virtually flawless handling of the emergency.
No one should diminish the heroism of the pilot and crew of Flight 1549 on that January day. But who will sing the praises of the designers of jet engines who made them capable of withstanding almost all other bird strikes? Who can tote up the number of lives spared as result?
And, what about the workers at various government agencies who were given the gruesome task of finding places near New York City where geese live, corralling them and then taking them away to be gassed? Other workers coated goose eggs with corn oil to kill the unhatched goslings. Will they be given awards for helping to avert similar incidents in the future?
The movie Apollo 13 dramatized the ingenuity of American aerospace engineers as they skillfully improvised ways to get the crippled spacecraft home. Of particular significance was an improvised designed for adapting carbon dioxide filters from the command module for use on the lunar module. The astronauts had been forced to retreat there after an explosion hobbled the command module. The design had to be made using only materials available on the spacecraft. Again, no one should diminish the achievements of the people who saved the crew of Apollo 13. Without these adapted filters, the crew would have died from the buildup of carbon dioxide coming from their own respiration.
Yet, all the thousands of workers around the country who have designed and manufactured the components that have allowed countless hours of safe space travel will never have a movie made about them. (Yes, there have been two spacecraft lost since Apollo 13, namely, two shuttles, Challenger and Columbia. Space travel has always been risky. The culprits in each case were found, a faulty O-ring and a wing damaged during takeoff, respectively. But given the complexity of the U. S. manned spaceflight program, the track record is still very good.)
Moving our focus elsewhere, we can differentiate between the accolades given to those who make conquest through force, and those who do it by other means. In The Art of War the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu outlines an approach to winning that is based on stratagem, not fighting:
Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field. With his forces intact he will dispute the mastery of the Empire, and thus, without losing a man, his triumph will be complete. This is the method of attacking by stratagem.
The Chinese must still be taking lessons from Sun Tzu. While American military forces are in their eighth year of fighting in Iraq--a move designed to put American military power at the center of the world's most important oil region--the Chinese have been busy sewing up long-term commercial agreements for the delivery of oil and natural gas. And, they have been buttressing their efforts with economic aid to countries with critical natural resources such as petroleum and iron ore. They have also been busy buying companies or interests in companies with large deposits of key minerals.
No Chinese generals will be receiving promotions for such actions. And, it is difficult to make compelling military recruitment commercials from such material. It may be that the Chinese culture recognizes and rewards such stratagems. One might say that the Chinese have pursued such a strategy out of military weakness. But it may also be that Chinese leaders simply compared costs and found the cheapest, most efficacious way of gaining access to needed resources. They avoided military action and still achieved their goals. But there were no heroic acts to point to. And, nobody became a hero for having averted a catastrophe that might have resulted from military intervention in places having the resources the Chinese so desperately need for their industrial machine.
America seems stuck in the past. Without a centrally-directed industrial policy we have relied on a combination of military and private commercial power to secure needed imports. Perhaps the Chinese were quicker to realize that such a paradigm can no longer be effective given the costs exacted by those who are occupied.
In comparing the Chinese and American methods of securing access to critical resources I am not recommending either. Rather curtailment and conservation, relocalization of production, and reworking the infrastructure to consume far less energy seems the more prudent course. And, yet this is a preventive strategy. It is designed to avert a catastrophe in the future, not respond to an emergency apparent to the public right now.
As such those advocating this course are put in the unenviable position of the quality assurance manager mentioned above. Their ideas might save humanity from a catastrophic future. But since most people on the planet believe such a future is a mere fantasy, sustainability advocates are sometimes regarded in a worse light than the quality assurance manager whom the people at the pharmaceutical firm begrudgingly accepted as necessary. By and large the public still believes our situation is not critical and that heroic technological measures will solve all our major ecological problems.
The public is more interested in someone who tells them that nuclear power and biofuels will provide our future energy needs without any sacrifice than it is in an obscure British economist who has designed a system for a more equitable distribution of declining energy resources using a market-based quota system. The public is beguiled by heroic technological measures such as seeding the ocean with iron or building a space umbrella to help address the problem of climate change. Switching to bicycling for short trips and reducing meat intake seem like unnecessary sacrifices.
If a catastrophe of sufficient magnitude to get the public's attention were to occur--a sudden rise in sea level or a rapid, persistent decline in world oil production--then those in the sustainability movement would move from being prophets to being emergency responders. Maybe this would finally give them the recognition and respect they deserve. Only by then it will be too late to avert the worst.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Adaptation and the long view
One blade of grass is vulnerable to all sorts of shocks: drought, flood, infestation, and various human interventions including plowing and herbicides (if it's not the kind of grass a groundskeeper wants). But the whole family of grasses would be hard to eliminate. They are so various, so well adapted to their habitats, so ubiquitous in their reach. In short, they are excellent examples of organisms conditioned by millions of years of natural selection, nature's form of trial and error.
That's the long view of adaptation. Then, there is the human view. We are a species with a short history--perhaps at most 500,000 years. Our natural way of living--hunting and gathering--has been superseded by agriculture only in the past 10,000 years. And, our industrial way of life might be said to have begun a little over 200 years ago. And, yet we imagine that the least tested of our human systems of adaptation is somehow the most robust.
One of the latest adaptations in industrial society has been the microchip, now only about 70 years old with widespread application only about 30 years ago. Like a pioneer species it has spread quickly and is now ubiquitous in the modern world which could not function without it. We know its vulnerabilities including susceptibility to electromagnetic pulse, coding errors such as the Y2K or Year 2000 problem, malicious software that can not only commandeer computer resources but also destroy hardware, and a high degree of connectivity through the Internet that makes the spread of software-related problems easy and fast. And yet, we build an ever more complex world completely dependent on it.
We are now experimenting with even more destabilizing technologies such as nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and robotics that computer scientist Bill Joy suggested might endanger the entire human species and perhaps many other species as well.
This understanding and the gathering problems of fossil fuel depletion and climate change have led some groups to suggest that new technology may not be the most adaptive path. The worldwide integration and homogenization of technology might be analogized to a monoculture, highly susceptible to a complete failure in the way that the grasses of the world discussed above are not. So often we hear that technology will solve this or that problem and increasingly that it will solve global climate change and rescue us from fossil fuel depletion. And, many of us have become conditioned never to think of the possible downsides of this technology. We almost never ask whether the cure might end up being worse than the disease.
Part of the problem is that the threats to the sustainability of human civilization are rushing toward us so fast that we simply don't have the time to do what nature does, namely, weed out poor adaptations over thousands of years. Nor do we seem to understand the risks we are running because of our highly interconnected society. Fatally flawed adaptation strategies won't just imperil an isolated population in one segregated locale. Rather, poor strategies have the potential to bring down all of modern civilization.
The optimists say that such risks are overblown, that so far all the concern about technology bringing us to our knees has been for nothing. But a fair reading of the data on climate change, fossil fuel depletion, soil depletion, water depletion, biodiversity destruction, and myriad other measures tells a different story. What the optimists mean is that human populations are still growing and flourishing. What they leave out is that the natural systems upon which those populations depend for their survival are being swiftly degraded. We are like the proverbial man falling from the 100-story building who, when asked how things are as he passes by the 50th floor, says, "Fine,so far."
The wiser course may be to return to the type of systems that have shown themselves to be more resilient through history: smaller settlements with more decentralized production of goods and services, broader participation in the growing of food and the production of goods, reliance on renewable energy such as wind and solar, and a society that designs its objects to make the full cycle from "cradle to cradle." This doesn't mean abandoning all new technology. It means developing technology that will stand the test of time based on known principles of resilience and sustainability and will do so without risking the wholesale destruction of humanity.
That's the long view of adaptation. Then, there is the human view. We are a species with a short history--perhaps at most 500,000 years. Our natural way of living--hunting and gathering--has been superseded by agriculture only in the past 10,000 years. And, our industrial way of life might be said to have begun a little over 200 years ago. And, yet we imagine that the least tested of our human systems of adaptation is somehow the most robust.
One of the latest adaptations in industrial society has been the microchip, now only about 70 years old with widespread application only about 30 years ago. Like a pioneer species it has spread quickly and is now ubiquitous in the modern world which could not function without it. We know its vulnerabilities including susceptibility to electromagnetic pulse, coding errors such as the Y2K or Year 2000 problem, malicious software that can not only commandeer computer resources but also destroy hardware, and a high degree of connectivity through the Internet that makes the spread of software-related problems easy and fast. And yet, we build an ever more complex world completely dependent on it.
We are now experimenting with even more destabilizing technologies such as nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and robotics that computer scientist Bill Joy suggested might endanger the entire human species and perhaps many other species as well.
This understanding and the gathering problems of fossil fuel depletion and climate change have led some groups to suggest that new technology may not be the most adaptive path. The worldwide integration and homogenization of technology might be analogized to a monoculture, highly susceptible to a complete failure in the way that the grasses of the world discussed above are not. So often we hear that technology will solve this or that problem and increasingly that it will solve global climate change and rescue us from fossil fuel depletion. And, many of us have become conditioned never to think of the possible downsides of this technology. We almost never ask whether the cure might end up being worse than the disease.
Part of the problem is that the threats to the sustainability of human civilization are rushing toward us so fast that we simply don't have the time to do what nature does, namely, weed out poor adaptations over thousands of years. Nor do we seem to understand the risks we are running because of our highly interconnected society. Fatally flawed adaptation strategies won't just imperil an isolated population in one segregated locale. Rather, poor strategies have the potential to bring down all of modern civilization.
The optimists say that such risks are overblown, that so far all the concern about technology bringing us to our knees has been for nothing. But a fair reading of the data on climate change, fossil fuel depletion, soil depletion, water depletion, biodiversity destruction, and myriad other measures tells a different story. What the optimists mean is that human populations are still growing and flourishing. What they leave out is that the natural systems upon which those populations depend for their survival are being swiftly degraded. We are like the proverbial man falling from the 100-story building who, when asked how things are as he passes by the 50th floor, says, "Fine,so far."
The wiser course may be to return to the type of systems that have shown themselves to be more resilient through history: smaller settlements with more decentralized production of goods and services, broader participation in the growing of food and the production of goods, reliance on renewable energy such as wind and solar, and a society that designs its objects to make the full cycle from "cradle to cradle." This doesn't mean abandoning all new technology. It means developing technology that will stand the test of time based on known principles of resilience and sustainability and will do so without risking the wholesale destruction of humanity.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Is net energy peaking?
My latest column on Scitizen entitled "Is Net Energy Peaking?" has now been posted. Here is the teaser:
When most people think of fossil fuel supplies, they think in terms of barrels of oil, cubic feet of natural gas and tons of coal. But in evaluating how much energy in the form of finite fossil fuels the world has left, these are no longer adequate measurements....Read more
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Whither the weak in the post-peak oil world?
It is often said that the test of any civilization is how it treats its weakest members. Those who are compromised physically, mentally or emotionally create a sort of live-action Rorschach test. Do the weak among us evoke our compassion or our scorn? If we are among the lucky ones who have our full faculties, our reaction to the weak says more about our view of the disfigured, stricken and defeated parts of our own psyche--the parts which make us feel most vulnerable and ashamed--than it does about the weak among us.
Even if we feel compassion for those less fortunate, we are rarely called upon to find the limits of that compassion. In a post-peak oil world that will in all likelihood no longer be the case. Let me do a thought experiment involving two hypothetical post-peak oil communities. One has done little to prepare for the shocks ahead. This lack of preparation of necessity means that only the strong survive the depredations suffered during a serious decline in the energy available to society.
A second community has been careful to make many useful adaptations before the onset of energy decline. This preparation has created a solidarity in the community and the means to shield the weakest members of that community from the worst consequences of a shrinking energy budget.
In the first community, once the initial crisis passes, resources that might have been devoted to helping the weaker members of society can now devoted to the needs and aspirations of the strong. It is a troubling conundrum that the first community, the unprepared community, has through its lack of preparation and perhaps hardheartedness created a robust cohort of survivors.
But all is not what it seems. The first community has merely been hit early by declining resources through lack of foresight and preparation. That community has made decisions about the welfare of the weak in an ad hoc, haphazard manner. The results might not be due to hardheartedness at all, but plain disorganization and poor planning.
The one advantage of the second better prepared community will turn out to be a superior sense of solidarity that may make it easier to march together down the slope of energy decline with more mercy and fewer casualties. I say there is ultimately only one advantage in this case because the second community will likely face that same choices as the first community only later.
We will be tested early or late on the limits of our compassion for the weak. How much of society's dwindling resources will we be willing to devote to the needs of those with limitations: the elderly, the infirm, the emotionally disturbed, the developmentally disabled?
In the fossil fuel era we have congratulated ourselves on our enlightened treatment of the weak, not realizing that our vast and increasing energy surplus made it possible to expand their possibilities without risking the viability of society as a whole. No doubt technology helped, too. How many books would Stephen Hawking have written without the special technologies available to the handicapped, especially those linked to the computer? How many children might have been left to wither and die in institutions were it not for new methods of instruction practiced by trained specialists who have made possible the vastly increased range of activities and even a degree of independence for some of the most profoundly handicapped among us?
But that infrastructure of people and machines implies a certain energy input from society. Even though we know that the current infrastructure can make those who are weakest among us vastly more capable of participating in society, will we be able to resist the calls from those who will say that the weak are too much of a burden on society--that it is best for society to let them wither and die and to nourish the strong instead?
There is, of course, the rather difficult problem of determining what constitutes a strong person and what constitutes a weak person. In some cases it will simply be a question of social position and life chances, or in other words, luck. If we say a strong person is one who survives and a weak person is one who does not, we are now truly back to the most brutish morality possible, i.e., that might makes right.
And, there is another consideration. There is a need to keep one's community functioning through adequate levels of nutrition, health and shelter. This is a prerequisite for helping the weaker members of society. That means weighing the more diffuse compassion that one might feel for an entire community against the tangible and immediate needs of those suffering in front of one's eyes. This balancing act will tax the souls of even the most compassionate and enlightened leaders.
The post-peak oil era will indeed test us. It will test whether our compassion merely flows from the end of a pipeline or whether we can sustain it in the depths of our hearts as the fossil fuel era draws to a close.
Even if we feel compassion for those less fortunate, we are rarely called upon to find the limits of that compassion. In a post-peak oil world that will in all likelihood no longer be the case. Let me do a thought experiment involving two hypothetical post-peak oil communities. One has done little to prepare for the shocks ahead. This lack of preparation of necessity means that only the strong survive the depredations suffered during a serious decline in the energy available to society.
A second community has been careful to make many useful adaptations before the onset of energy decline. This preparation has created a solidarity in the community and the means to shield the weakest members of that community from the worst consequences of a shrinking energy budget.
In the first community, once the initial crisis passes, resources that might have been devoted to helping the weaker members of society can now devoted to the needs and aspirations of the strong. It is a troubling conundrum that the first community, the unprepared community, has through its lack of preparation and perhaps hardheartedness created a robust cohort of survivors.
But all is not what it seems. The first community has merely been hit early by declining resources through lack of foresight and preparation. That community has made decisions about the welfare of the weak in an ad hoc, haphazard manner. The results might not be due to hardheartedness at all, but plain disorganization and poor planning.
The one advantage of the second better prepared community will turn out to be a superior sense of solidarity that may make it easier to march together down the slope of energy decline with more mercy and fewer casualties. I say there is ultimately only one advantage in this case because the second community will likely face that same choices as the first community only later.
We will be tested early or late on the limits of our compassion for the weak. How much of society's dwindling resources will we be willing to devote to the needs of those with limitations: the elderly, the infirm, the emotionally disturbed, the developmentally disabled?
In the fossil fuel era we have congratulated ourselves on our enlightened treatment of the weak, not realizing that our vast and increasing energy surplus made it possible to expand their possibilities without risking the viability of society as a whole. No doubt technology helped, too. How many books would Stephen Hawking have written without the special technologies available to the handicapped, especially those linked to the computer? How many children might have been left to wither and die in institutions were it not for new methods of instruction practiced by trained specialists who have made possible the vastly increased range of activities and even a degree of independence for some of the most profoundly handicapped among us?
But that infrastructure of people and machines implies a certain energy input from society. Even though we know that the current infrastructure can make those who are weakest among us vastly more capable of participating in society, will we be able to resist the calls from those who will say that the weak are too much of a burden on society--that it is best for society to let them wither and die and to nourish the strong instead?
There is, of course, the rather difficult problem of determining what constitutes a strong person and what constitutes a weak person. In some cases it will simply be a question of social position and life chances, or in other words, luck. If we say a strong person is one who survives and a weak person is one who does not, we are now truly back to the most brutish morality possible, i.e., that might makes right.
And, there is another consideration. There is a need to keep one's community functioning through adequate levels of nutrition, health and shelter. This is a prerequisite for helping the weaker members of society. That means weighing the more diffuse compassion that one might feel for an entire community against the tangible and immediate needs of those suffering in front of one's eyes. This balancing act will tax the souls of even the most compassionate and enlightened leaders.
The post-peak oil era will indeed test us. It will test whether our compassion merely flows from the end of a pipeline or whether we can sustain it in the depths of our hearts as the fossil fuel era draws to a close.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
The complexity gurus and our margins of safety
Human societies have long relied on specialists to help in complex matters involving the natural and human-built worlds. Ptolemaic astronomers used what would seem to us moderns as a needlessly complex Earth-centered system to explain the heavens and predict celestial events. And yet, they were amazingly accurate. Complex societies of the past have employed specialists in war, statecraft, engineering, agriculture, shipbuilding, and a variety of other tasks that would be difficult to accomplish without in-depth knowledge.
And, yet these specialists typically lived not within societies that were managed along completely rational principles. Instead, the role of religion was far more prominent that it is today and tightly interwoven with the workings of the state. In recognition of the irrational and unknowable in human affairs, the gods were invoked to help steer events which humans were incapable of fully understanding or controlling.
Fast forward to today. The modern managers of the rational state rarely invoke the divine except for ceremonial purposes. They imagine that they can model the world of social and natural events accurately enough to understand and control it. But today these managers enlist the help of an entire class of theorists and researchers who do nothing but study the complex systems we rely on. And, it has become a matter of faith that this class of complexity gurus can amass enough understanding to overcome the vast uncertainties that drove ancient humans to seek help from the gods.
Recent events should give us pause. Daniel Yergin, the ever smiling guru of world oil supplies from Cambridge Energy Research Associates, is regarded as perhaps the most influential energy analyst on the planet. We cannot say what his private counsel to clients has been. But we can judge his public pronouncements about supplies and prices for the first decade of this century. That record is miserable. A site called "The Sad Record of Daniel Yergin and Cambridge Energy Research Associates" details his and his firm's prognostications.
We should not expect one person to be omniscient. But if he pretends to be omniscient, and we go along with it because we don't have expert knowledge, then we are only doing what most people are simply forced to do in our society: Defer to specialists because we have neither the time nor the inclination to master the subject at hand. But people in high places are making public policy and important corporate investment decisions based on such advice. And, that affects us no matter who we are.
Also in the last decade, Wall Street wizards told us that the complexity of the supposedly new financial instruments they cooked up were simply a response to a more complex world. Perhaps. But even these wizards failed to understand the risks involved. Alan Greenspan, former U. S. Federal Reserve Bank chairman, admitted as much in congressional testimony in 2008. Prior to that Greenspan and his fellow travelers in the financial community put their faith in ideology, not the gods. The so-called free market would sort everything out and keep everyone within bounds. Instead, a bloodbath ensued that still threatens the viability of the world economy.
Finally, the promoters of offshore drilling managed to convince themselves and others that no untoward major spill could come from the advanced technology now available. It was, of course, full speed ahead until the BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. There were concerns prior to the blowout. But in the arcane world of offshore drilling, few outsiders were qualified to judge the risks of such drilling properly. As far as I know, there was no public pronouncement that a blowout on the scale of the BP one was likely before the accident.
What should be taken from this record of the complexity gurus? Certainly, they have technical knowledge which few can match. And, they keep track of developments in their respective areas much more thoroughly than nonspecialists. So, given that, why are their judgments frequently so mistaken?
First, no one can know the future, not even well-informed specialists. Second, specialist knowledge by its very nature tends to crowd out a broader and more nuanced view of the world. The perennial optimism of technophiles is alluring. But a good dose of history and literature would teach the specialist that in the affairs of men and women, things often don't go according to plan no matter how carefully constructed that plan has been. Third, and probably most important, is that the systems we depend on have become so complex that we simply cannot know all the ways that they can go wrong hampering our efforts to prevent accidents or outcomes with severe consequences.
Should we do away with complexity gurus? In a word, no. But our expectations of them need to be far more circumscribed. We must simply stop taking their word for it that the risks inherent in our modern systems are well-understood and under control. And, we need to widen greatly our margins of safety to account for what we do not or cannot know.
And, yet these specialists typically lived not within societies that were managed along completely rational principles. Instead, the role of religion was far more prominent that it is today and tightly interwoven with the workings of the state. In recognition of the irrational and unknowable in human affairs, the gods were invoked to help steer events which humans were incapable of fully understanding or controlling.
Fast forward to today. The modern managers of the rational state rarely invoke the divine except for ceremonial purposes. They imagine that they can model the world of social and natural events accurately enough to understand and control it. But today these managers enlist the help of an entire class of theorists and researchers who do nothing but study the complex systems we rely on. And, it has become a matter of faith that this class of complexity gurus can amass enough understanding to overcome the vast uncertainties that drove ancient humans to seek help from the gods.
Recent events should give us pause. Daniel Yergin, the ever smiling guru of world oil supplies from Cambridge Energy Research Associates, is regarded as perhaps the most influential energy analyst on the planet. We cannot say what his private counsel to clients has been. But we can judge his public pronouncements about supplies and prices for the first decade of this century. That record is miserable. A site called "The Sad Record of Daniel Yergin and Cambridge Energy Research Associates" details his and his firm's prognostications.
We should not expect one person to be omniscient. But if he pretends to be omniscient, and we go along with it because we don't have expert knowledge, then we are only doing what most people are simply forced to do in our society: Defer to specialists because we have neither the time nor the inclination to master the subject at hand. But people in high places are making public policy and important corporate investment decisions based on such advice. And, that affects us no matter who we are.
Also in the last decade, Wall Street wizards told us that the complexity of the supposedly new financial instruments they cooked up were simply a response to a more complex world. Perhaps. But even these wizards failed to understand the risks involved. Alan Greenspan, former U. S. Federal Reserve Bank chairman, admitted as much in congressional testimony in 2008. Prior to that Greenspan and his fellow travelers in the financial community put their faith in ideology, not the gods. The so-called free market would sort everything out and keep everyone within bounds. Instead, a bloodbath ensued that still threatens the viability of the world economy.
Finally, the promoters of offshore drilling managed to convince themselves and others that no untoward major spill could come from the advanced technology now available. It was, of course, full speed ahead until the BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. There were concerns prior to the blowout. But in the arcane world of offshore drilling, few outsiders were qualified to judge the risks of such drilling properly. As far as I know, there was no public pronouncement that a blowout on the scale of the BP one was likely before the accident.
What should be taken from this record of the complexity gurus? Certainly, they have technical knowledge which few can match. And, they keep track of developments in their respective areas much more thoroughly than nonspecialists. So, given that, why are their judgments frequently so mistaken?
First, no one can know the future, not even well-informed specialists. Second, specialist knowledge by its very nature tends to crowd out a broader and more nuanced view of the world. The perennial optimism of technophiles is alluring. But a good dose of history and literature would teach the specialist that in the affairs of men and women, things often don't go according to plan no matter how carefully constructed that plan has been. Third, and probably most important, is that the systems we depend on have become so complex that we simply cannot know all the ways that they can go wrong hampering our efforts to prevent accidents or outcomes with severe consequences.
Should we do away with complexity gurus? In a word, no. But our expectations of them need to be far more circumscribed. We must simply stop taking their word for it that the risks inherent in our modern systems are well-understood and under control. And, we need to widen greatly our margins of safety to account for what we do not or cannot know.
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