From Friday Fatboy Free For All:
"Great ideas often come from the intersection of two or more other lines of thought.
Back in the day, producers of 8 inch floppy disks missed the inflection point and allowed producers of 5 1/4 inch floppy disks to flourish while they essentially perished. Creative destruction if you will. Numerous examples exist, perhaps GM is one. The thing about 5 1/4 inch floppies was that at first, they were more expensive for the same capacity of storage and required new hardware so there was quite a bit of risk associated with making the jump to the new "S curve" on the part of the producers of 5 1/4" disks. There was not a consumer demand for the new product because it did not exist. Again, the producers of 8 inchers who held on to their business model went away. The destruction of one firm often comes at the hands of another firm since it is very hard for managers with a profitable product to scrap it at the point of inflection and commit resources to a new product which may not (at first) result in the same profits.
On another axis, we have a potential threat with global climate change. We have preemptively acted on lesser threats, the threat of WMD's in Iraq for one. By lesser I mean that a) less people were potentially threatened and b) there was, arguably, less intelligence on the subject. Could there be a lesson somewhere at the intersection of these two points? Is it possible that we could miss the inflection point because of our fear of the chaos that comes along with creative destruction of our current energy reliance, the same creative destruction that we proponents of capitalism espouse or worse yet, individual greed set on wringing the last bit of profits from an old business model?"
Sunday, June 28, 2009
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2 comments:
Mudge's comment:
bbauer - that is one of the better presentations of the case for acting now that i've seen. i really liked it. there are some assumptions, I believe, in your argument that bear discussion: (1) changing our reliance on carbon based energy will in fact turn the global climate change around (2) that doing so now will have soon-enough realizable return on investment such that the ends actually justify the means (5 1/4" floppy producers would have gone out of business, or at least dropped the line, had the ROI not been realized within a couple years of introduction) and (3)that the danger imposed by WMD in the hands of a despot was in fact a lesser threat than the global climate change you cite. You may be thinking that there is overwhelming evidence that manmade climate change is a real threat. But then there was similar overwhelming evidence that WMD existed in Iraq. Again, not trying to diminish a really fine argument, just want to examine the assumptions which is where I believe the most controversy is bound to exist.
A Moderate's Comment:
"Isn't there a secondary benefit from investing in climate change friendly technologies? It seems to me that there is a great deal of overlap between the technologies & policies one would pursue to achieve a greater deal of energy independence/security. Increased competition for scarce resources is a much more tangible threat than catastrophic climate change.
Furthermore, are we not acting because it easy to wrap our minds around the risk to the bottom line in the short term of increased regulation (cap & trade) and investment in new technologies, but more difficult to comprehend the risk of some disaster (climate change beyond some threshold) in the future?
How much overlap is there between actions to mitigate against climate change and making us less reliant on foreign sources of energy? If there is a great deal of overlap, isn't that a compelling enough argument to act?
Even if CC could be measured to be a low probability event. When factoring in the catastrophic impact of this event, shouldn't we be more compelled to act now? Even if we couldn't change the ultimate fate (CC is irreversible given current and near-future technology), shouldn't we take actions to lessen the hardship.
Finally (and more controversially), how many people on the conservative side of the climate change argument belief in the "End Times"? Given that answer, is it conceivable that some policy foot dragging or obstructionism in preparing or future hardships is supported by the notion that it won't matter anyway?
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