“Government as engineer for top-down planning or bottom-up incentives is a fatal conceit. Misidentifying the problem and imposing (government) solutions is error upon error–and in this case on a global scale. What about here-and-now economics? Consumers matter. Taxpayers matter. Energy freedom matters.”
Susan Krumdieck, an “energy transition engineer,” posted an open invitation to her network about a March 16 online discussion hosted by Insight Committee for Convergence, “Global Solutions and Outreach Programs – Our Best Chance to Resolve Global Warming.” The invitation read:
Humanity is staring into the face of an existential threat of its own making. Humanity must collaborate to minimize the risk from this threat. Current global collaboration efforts are failing.
The pitch:
We are now locked into a paradigm that prevents us from resolving this threat. That paradigm is framed by neoclassical economics, the marketplace, a shortsighted expectation of return on investment, and four understandable human biases. Those biases are corporate vested interests, career vested interests, public passions, and political agendas.
Market failures galore, expert guidance from above is needed.
At a minimum, key stakeholders and decision makers that operate in this paradigm must be informed on the best national, regional, and global action plans to resolve global warming. There are no such action plans in-hand now. Current global efforts to resolve global warming have not provided action plans…. We are now placing our bets at the casino built on short sightedness and biases.
The experts promise much to untangle a “wicked problem”!
Nobody has done the integrated-systems analyses that must be done at a scale of the planet. Global Solutions and Outreach Programs will use the Wicked-Problem Approach (WPA), over three years involving thousands of full-time and part-time professionals, to do integrated-systems analyses using WPA. The detrimental effects of human bias will be mitigated. Planetary limits of minerals will be addressed. Societal and economic challenges will be addressed. Nobody has done these analyses. Nobody has even proposed doing these analyses. UNTIL NOW.
The end describes Global Solutions and Outreach Programs as “our best chance to resolve global warming.” The whole exchange can be watched here.
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Susan Krumdieck, a thoughtful soul, opined:
I have a slight disagreement with the pretext that analysing the whole world from the top down will be the way to make progress. Transition Engineering is a process to take on wicked problems at the ground level – in your product packaging design, in your local waste management, in your local supermarket, at your national oil company…
Engineering has universal fundamentals, based on science, and standard approaches and modelling approaches. But engineering is done on the ground, one project at a time. When the whole world demands transition engineering as part of the duty of care, then we will see a global change.
Safety Engineering emerged from idea in 1911 to discipline by 1930, Transition Engineering is ready to be the gold standard for social responsibility in every institution and enterprise.
I commented on her post:
Check your premises! Energy density from stock energies explains the economic and ecological problems of (dilute, intermittent) wind and solar. Climate harms are exaggerated, and adaptation is the way forward given the intractable problems of mitigation. (Climate mastery via modern, ecological fossil fuels, per Alex Epstein)
Energy efficiency is not technological efficiency–economics and resources matter. And CO2 enrichment is the gift that gives every hour of every day to green Planet Earth.
Final Comment
Government as engineer for top-down planning or bottom-up incentives is a fatal conceit. Misidentifying the problem and imposing (government) solutions is error upon error–and in this case on a global scale. What about here-and-now economics? Consumers matter. Taxpayers matter. Energy freedom matters.
The problem with “sustainability” is that it is a subjective term. Is CO2 enrichment, with a declining forcing effect, really unsustainable? Is growing government and increasing economic burdens ‘sustainable’?
Private property and mutually advantageous exchange in a free market governed by the rule of law might just be the most ‘sustainable’ institution of them all.
The appearance of the words “existential threat” is a foolproof method for accurately discriminating between informed commentators and innumerate, scientific and economic illiterates.
It is similar to the invocation of “tobacco” or use of the word “denier” in any discussion of climate— automatic disqualification.