Integrated Man

Pull the Plug; Walk Away

Concerted Procrastination is an accepted and well worn decision-making practice among senior executives in all venues -- government, business, NPOs.  The theory is that, if you can wait long enough, difficult problems will resolve themselves when all options have been reduced to the worst one by default.  Then the 'decision' is inevitable, and often unarguable.

I,too, though not a senior executive by any means, have practiced it on occasion, most recently in relation to forming my personal opinion on the efficacy of the Government assisting the US auto industry to a soft landing.

Capitalist Papers 2 - Corpocracy and Agency

Capitalism has been a vehicle for vastly improving and advancing the human condition.  But no system is perfect, and Capitalism's flaws are becoming progressively more apparent. While it is unlikely to collapse as dramatically as Soviet styled Communism, neither is it likely to survive in its current mode. 

However, before I delve deeper into this subject, perhaps it would be useful to separate Capitalism from some of its philosophical underpinnings that are as vital to a democracy as to a Capitalist paradigm of economic enterprise.

The Odd Couple

A few weeks ago T. Boone Pickens unveiled his energy plan to deal with our oil addiction.  At the same time, Al Gore put forth his own prescription for the energy crisis, apparently coming to the realization that the energy crisis will drive the climate crisis, because we will respond to the energy crisis by any means necessary, even at the risk of the climate.  Neither readily embraced the other's position, though both are apparently singing from the same hymnal.

Sometimes it's good to be wrong

Sometimes its good to be wrong.

Sometimes it doesn't make a difference.

Or, to borrow a title from one of the skits of the political satirists Fireside Theater: "How Can You Be In Two Places at Once, When You're Really Nowhere At All?"

Reality - The First Speed Bump on the Way to Green

I try not to go to the Connecticut State Legislature more than once a year.  When I do so, it is only because my frustration with the status quo exceeds my frustration in watching how we struggle to make progress through the legislative process.  Nor is Connecticut unique by any means. 

But there I was on February 27th, endeavoring to testify on Raised Bill 5600, Section 3, regarding a proposal to study the impacts of Climate Change on Connecticut; a bill similar, but inferior to, Bill 1432, Section 3 of last year which suffered death by calendar at the end of the legislative session.

Convergence

The New York Times’ editorial of Feb. 23^rd, “Before the Next Bridge Falls”, fell short of the mark. It focused on one issue, largely ignoring two other related issues and a fourth which encompasses all three.

We are facing a convergence of three paradigms, wrapped in a fourth. Infrastructure, climate change and constrained energy are proceeding along seemingly parallel lines, but will converge in time, and vary by place. How we deal with them will be a combination of our perception of their interrelationships, and a fourth paradigm, demographic-driven economics.

Inconvenient Truths, Asymmetric Response and Unintended Consequences

I have often thought that the most valuable contribution of Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, was its title.  Although it spoke specifically to Climate Change and our unwillingness to face its multifaceted implications, there are many inconvenient truths in our lives, and our unwillingness to address them directly accounts for many of the problems we face. 

Take Iraq for example. 

Binary Thinking

Show me an issue that is framed in terms of two options: A or B, black or white, blue or red, left or right,...
...and, nine times out of ten, I'll show you a dysfunctional dialog.  There is almost always a third choice, if not a fourth, fifth, sixth..., simply because:

1.   rarely does one person or side have all the answers to any issue; and

2.   if they did, rarely would society embrace it.

Yet we persist in couching issues in this context, and we persist in pursuing seriously flawed policies, if we survive gridlock.

Random Reflections on: Space Junk and Earth Junk

2007/12/28

I'm a little behind the news on this one, but the One Eyed Monster reported tonight on recent developments in Google's challenge to private sector entrepreneurs to put a working lunar lander on the Moon. This was first announced on or about 2007, Sept. 13.  A total purse of $30 million has been established for distribution according to various mileposts of accomplishment. One of the mileposts is for the new space junk to send back photos of space junk previously deposited by governments.

This is what happens when too much money lands in too few hands. Google has announced a number of initiatives to spur technological creativity, many of them more down-to-earth in locus as well as relevance.  But this one and its predecessor, the Ansari X prize of $10 million for private sector suborbital flight, prompt a number of questions.

Clim-Ergy - It's About Time

2007/12/09

Clim-Ergy:  The combined manifestation of two phenomena - Climate Change and Constrained Energy - into a unified paradigm of impacts, and requiring a unified human response. 

I just made up that definition.  But the term and its meaning have been fermenting in my mind for about nine months since I gave a presentation on Climate Change impacts to the Joint Environmental Committee of the Connecticut Legislature, and subsequently testified on behalf of a bill to study the impacts of Climate Change as they might pertain to Connecticut.   The bill got stalled to death by the end of the legislative session, but the experience of attempting to navigate the bizarre bazaar of the state Legislature (and I'm sure that Connecticut is by no means unusual, our specific quirks notwithstanding) was instructive of why we are, and will be for the foreseeable future, in 'deep twinkies' regarding progress on either Climate Change or Constrained Energy.