What did Schellnhuber say this time?

Some of you may recall that Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and his research team produced a very good article on potential tipping points in the environment. I happened to find an interview with him in Der Spiegel entitled 'Industrialized Nations Are Facing CO2 Insolvency.'

What do you think?

Growth from a German perspective

Der Spiegel just published Can Economies Function without Growth?, which directly relates to some of the conversations we've held here in the past.

What do you think?

Sustainability by Cairns

Every once in a while, I run across a classic article I'd like to share. I've run across this one by John Cairns, Jr. several times, and I'm ready to recommend that you read it.

Cairns published Will the real sustainability concept please stand up? (link fixed) in 2004. He provides much insight in the space of four pages.

If those insights made you think (and learn), check out his Web site for more of his papers.

Creating sustainability in complex ecosystems

I recently had the privilege of teaching a course in system dynamic for Willamette University's Sustainable Enterprise certificate program. The course lasted two days, with a follow-up two-hour web seminar. We focused on qualitative system dynamics, but we treated it at a somewhat more rigorous level than many such courses, I think.

I'm writing because of one particular lesson I learned—we all learned. Early in the course, we used a simulation game to help people have a common, shared experience of interacting in a challenging system environment.

As with many such games, the expected result is that people fail in making the system work. Typically, the debrief is used to help people understand the ways of thinking that led them into trouble and to prepare them for the material that's to come.

Unexpectedly, this class managed their challenges quite sustainably. While their skill wrecked the planned flow of that part of the session, I was really pleased to see their skill in action. We spent some time talking about what made them successful and how that might carry over to real-world situations. Their insights were useful enough that I wanted to share them (with the students' permission) with a larger audience: you.

I first asked what made them succeed in the game and what provided the most challenges.

Goals were the first. While the game tells them the goal they should have, they rapidly realized that focusing on the stated goals would lead to ruin, and so they decided to set a much longer-term goal.

Communications was the second factor. After the first round, they began to spend most of their time huddled in the center of the room, talking animatedly through their decision-making processes instead of working in isolated teams.

They noted that delays provided a key challenge. As they worked to establish trust in the social system they had set up, they were both trusting other teams' commitments and verifying that they were indeed living up to their commitments. That takes time: commitments made today may not show up for quite a while.

Those delay effects were complicated by the natural delays in the system. Without revealing the game we used, I will say that the dynamics of the game included natural delays between actions and results that complicated decision making.

Some noted this seemed analogous to the situation OPEC finds itself in. They rely on mutual agreement to limit production as a way to manage prices. If anyone in OPEC breaks that agreement, the system can collapse. OPEC's problems are complicated by uncertain demand and uncertain prices, factors that had no analogy in our game.

Math skills created another success factor, which some may find surprising. A subset of the players rather immediatedly began developing quite a useful understanding of their system based on a mathematical model they developed. Once others saw that their results were accurate, everyone became driven by the data. Without some in the group being able to pull that off, they would likely not have succeeded.

Interestingly, trust and math worked together. At one point, the analyst team made a numerical error and then made an especial effort to communicate that they had made that error to others so that the others would be able to differentiate that error from a breaking of the trust relationship. Apologies were key. Information and the lack of information thus played a key role in the group's success. Even then, it took time for the others to regain their trust in the analysts' team.

Playing into this was the lack of external shareholders. Everyone on the teams had a serious take in the workings of the game; no one was in it just for the "money." Similarly, there were no new entrants into the field who might have upset the cartel relationship they had crafted.

I then asked them what they'd advise people in the real world.

Collaboration was the first clear answer. Work together across groups to align goals and actions.

They then said, "knowledge is power." After a bit of reflection and revision, they revised that to "timely, transferrable, actionable knowledge is power."

They felt it was important for everyone to be clear on a vision.

They would encourage people to watch their egos and to be visibly trustworthy.

At one point, in an attempt to test the strength of their commitment (okay, as an attempt to derail their commitment), I as facilitator announced I was the government and was giving them something they really didn't want. (To be accurate, that idea came from Anne Murray Allen, the executive director of the program, who was running the simulation computer.) For a while, I felt as if I were about to experience the French Revolution, as some rather emotionally argued for standing up to government and refusing my help, a bit of resistance I wasn't accepting.

As a result, their last bit of advice was to "Don't trust the wisdom of government, of the private sector, ... of either." In other words, test the data and the reasoning yourselves instead of blindly accepting what others say is good for you.

This was an intense and very exciting two-day workshop. I think those in the class learned a lot; I know I learned as they taught themselves and me (and now perhaps you) how to make sustainability work.

Perhaps I'll see some of you there next year.

M. King Hubbert on growth

I've written about growth from time to time; perhaps you'd be more interested in what M. King Hubbert said in 1974 in Hubbert on the Nature of Growth.

If you'd like to read more on Hubbert's model, see Evaluating Hubbert's Peak and Improvements? by Ben Witten.

The (un)Sustainable Commentator on growth

Just to keep the question series on growth going, here's what Wayne Maceyka is saying on The (un)Sustainable Commentator.

Check out Wayne's blog, too, and his extensive list of links in the right-hand column.

Questions on growth: a follow-up

After all of our good questions about growth, we've gone silent, so I was about to change topics. Then I saw The Growth Bubble on Tom Fiddaman's MetaSD and its link to Thomas Friedman's The Inflection Is Near?

It's a Friday night after a long week, so I'll leave it to you to make the editorial comments.

Sustainable Enterprise: the opportunity

If you're in or near the Portland, Oregon area or willing to travel to Portland, you might be interested in Willamette University's Sustainable Enterprise Certificate program. It consists of three two-day sessions: Understanding System Dynamics, Social Systems and Sustainability Success, and Creating & Implementing a Sustainability Plan. The first one starts April 2.

Check out their Web site, and sign up now!

Is climate change irreversible?

I don't know the answer, but Susan Solomona, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Reto Knutti, and Pierre Friedlingstein make that claim in Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions from the February 10, 2009 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If you read it, you'll understand their definition of irreversible and their conclusions.

The other problem

I occasionally write about climate change and energy, but I've also noted, thanks to an initial reminder by Jay Forrest, that we also have to learn how to get along together. Now Lord Nicholas Stern says much the same thing in Expert predicts dire scenarios of climate change: mass migrations and war.

It would seem we have two major problems to address.

Thanks to AltEnergyNews for the tip.

Questions on growth: a pre-evaluation

You've helped me accumulate quite a list of questions about growth, and I thank you. Here they are once again:

1. What if (aggregate) growth went to 0% forevermore? What would it mean to you, to your business, and to your personal life?
   
   
2. Do you think there's reason to believe growth could stay at 0% or below for a very long time? Is that of necessity either good or bad, or does its value depend upon our reaction?
   
   
3. Is it a good idea to try to keep growth positive? Why? Are there any downsides? Are there indeed any limits to growth, either in terms of annual growth rates or the overall size of anything?
   
   
4. As attractive as growth may be in the current worldview, systems ideas would indicate that the longer we try to keep growth going once we've exceeded the carrying capacity of the system (the planet), the worse the eventual and inexorable fall and the lower the eventual sustainable standard of living. If you favor continued growth, how will you overcome those seemingly inviolate systems limitations?
   
   
5. If the systems theories play out in the real world, how do we reasonably make the transition from our current state to a new, equilibrium state in ways that attend to people (social justice, the ability to procure what we need for life, the ability to make a difference or find purpose, etc.) and the natural environment (sustainability, the depletion of nonrenewable resources)?
   
   
6. Can we make such a transition a good thing and not a painful thing?
   
   
7. What do we owe our descendants? For how far into the future do we bear responsibility?
   
   
8. If these systems ideas have merit, what changes in mindset (in worldview) do we need to survive emotionally as well as physically? For but one example, negative growth has long meant failure for people leading businesses, but that could be the way of the future. Can we realistically change our mindsets and our systems so that satisfying needs (instead of generating growth) defines success?
   
   
9. In case these systems ideas don't apply in this situation (e.g., if technology can once again save us even in the face of decreasing energy supplies and rising population), can we design robust actions that work well in either eventuality? How do you answer Tom Fiddaman's questions about the sufficiency of technology?
   
   
10. Can the current economic "engine" be morphed into one based on such a radically different paradigm?
    
    
11. If we change to a different paradigm that's not built on growth, can we figure out how to get money into the hands of all who need it? Or will our reaction to low or zero growth be to trim people out of companies to keep the organizations viable while building unemployment?
    
    
12. Is an economy built on lending inexorably drawn to growth for survival?
    
    
13. How we to encourage understanding that quality of life can still improve while quantity of consumption decreases?
    
    
14. In light of the current economic crisis, how can we best protect the economy's life-supporting functions such food production, health care and ecosystem services amidst the chaos that will undoubtedly trim the less important financial and luxury markets?
    
    
15. What new national and international policies and institutions do we need to design in order to prepare for a transition to a steady state, or true cost, economy that recognizes the need for investments in natural and social capital as well as financial?
    
    
16. What would constitute the analogy of complex relationships those with "imaginary" components?
    
    
17. Will a state of zero net growth become a state of dynamic economic equilibrium, and will this new state actually make markets MORE efficient, and effective at elevating the state of the common man?
    
    
18. Why is our world so hung up on growth to begin with? How did growth get into our DNA? Has it always been there or is it just since the invention of the steam engine?
    
    
19. What do you do if evolution favors individuals or groups who aspire to growth?
    
    
20. What if the US and EU go green and China and Russia don't?
    
    
21. What if growth had to be -X% per year for Y years in order to reach a sustainable steady state (in material throughput)? How might social systems accommodate that peacefully?
    
    
22. What if technology has limited potential?
    
    
23. What would an evolutionary landscape that favored sustainability look like?
    
    
24. Can wealth can go up while the material flow goes down? How?
    
    

I've numbered them this time for easy reference. If you want to see who contributed each question, refer back to the original posting.

Now the next step: how would one go about answering these questions?

Before getting to the process, though, I'm curious how you think we would recognize a good answer. I don't expect that we'll all agree, but, rather than getting into a bunch of statements about our respective positions, I think we might learn more by first thinking about the criteria by which we'll evaluate potential answers.

I suspect our answers to that may be all over the map. As food for thought, I offer up the questions critical systems heuristics offers about motivation, control, expertise, and legitimacy. You can find one article by Bob Williams and Martin Reynolds on Bob's Web site: go to Systems Stuff and scroll down to the article called Critical Systems Thinking. You can see another introduction by Werner Ulrich here. He lists the questions starting on page 11, but you probably need to read the earlier pages to understand what it all means.

Once we have some idea how we'll evaluate potential answers (and how we think we should evaluate them), then we can think about picking approaches, methods, methodologies, or processes we think might be of use for each of these 24 questions.

So what do you think? How will you evaluate the answers to these questions? How do you think you should evaluate them?

Questions on growth

From time to time, I've posted some of my musings about growth. I had a related email discussion recently with a colleague, and one of my emails to him contained questions that I'd like to ask you, too.

We know the world's economies are currently experiencing hard economic times. Yet I wonder if thinking of this in terms of business cycles is the best way today. Jay Forrester has written, "Our greatest challenge now is handling the transition from growth to equilibrium".

If you think of the world in terms of business cycles, getting from bad times to good is a largely waiting game, assuming you've saved enough in the good times to carry you through the bad. Before refrigeration and long-distance transportation of food, that happened on an annual basis, too: you had to save enough food from this year's harvest to survive to next year's. Admittedly, some organizations are good at gaining ground during these periodic "yellow flag" situations, but many of us will just try to survive until the good times return.

If Forrester and others are correct and we're really moving from a long period of growth into an even longer period (possibly forever, at least in practical terms) of relative equilibrium, then dealing with those (equilibrium) times may require a fundamentally different mindset (as Cynthia McEwen and John Schmidt would remind us), not just a changed process.

• What if (aggregate) growth went to 0% forevermore? What would it mean to you, to your business, and to your personal life?


• Do you think there's reason to believe growth could stay at 0% or below for a very long time? Is that of necessity either good or bad, or does its value depend upon our reaction?


• Is it a good idea to try to keep growth positive? Why? Are there any downsides? Are there indeed any limits to growth, either in terms of annual growth rates or the overall size of anything?


• As attractive as growth may be in the current worldview, systems ideas would indicate that the longer we try to keep growth going once we've exceeded the carrying capacity of the system (the planet), the worse the eventual and inexorable fall and the lower the eventual sustainable standard of living. If you favor continued growth, how will you overcome those seemingly inviolate systems limitations?


• If the systems theories play out in the real world, how do we reasonably make the transition from our current state to a new, equilibrium state in ways that attend to people (social justice, the ability to procure what we need for life, the ability to make a difference or find purpose, etc.) and the natural environment (sustainability, the depletion of nonrenewable resources)?


• Can we make such a transition a good thing and not a painful thing?


• What do we owe our descendants? For how far into the future do we bear responsibility?


• If these systems ideas have merit, what changes in mindset (in worldview) do we need to survive emotionally as well as physically? For but one example, negative growth has long meant failure for people leading businesses, but that could be the way of the future. Can we realistically change our mindsets and our systems so that satisfying needs (instead of generating growth) defines success?


• In case these systems ideas don't apply in this situation (e.g., if technology can once again save us even in the face of decreasing energy supplies and rising population), can we design robust actions that work well in either eventuality? How do you answer Tom Fiddaman's questions about the sufficiency of technology?
  


• What other questions do you have?

Let me be clear: aggregate growth of 0% does not imply that there is no dynamism, no growth in the economy. Our need for certain products and services will increase, even as our need for others will decline. I'm only thinking of aggregate growth in posing these questions.

I have lots of questions and only tentative answers. Right now, I really am interested in seeing your questions, as I've seen the power of listing questions before trying to provide answers.

Later, we'll get to considering answers and how we might test those answers for reasonableness and usefulness.

Questions?

Sustainable Energy without the hot air

You may have noticed it's sometimes hard to get good data on issues of current importance. We read and hear adjectives, but we too rarely hear numbers. When we do, they're often presented in ways that are not conducive to clear understanding. I've written about that from time to time, for grounding decisions in good data seems to be a fundamentally important skill.

I've also written about the environment, for I think we do and will face challenges of the sort our ancestors never had to address (There: more descriptive phrases! Relief is on the way.).

Today Andrew Gelman pointed to David MacKay's free book Sustainable Energy -- without the hot air as an example of a book that brings data to the fore of the discussion about sustainable energy. In general, he likes the way the data is portrayed, although he doesn't attempt to vet the book for its content. While I haven't yet double-checked any of the numbers, I have begun to read the book, and I find the data clearly, cogently, and interestingly put (quite a change from William Farr's advice to statisticians). I like that he seems to use a significant number of clear time series ("behavior over time") graphs, and the time horizons are long enough to see useful patterns developing. So far, it appears as if this work will help me put events in perspective; I'll be curious to see what I learn and what reactions I have as I finish the book.

While I'm reading it, I encourage you to get a copy, too, and see what you think. Perhaps we'll all learn something important, both about living on the planet successfully and about presenting data effectively.

Ideas from an integrated business and farming mind

Colleague Marilyn Holt runs a private M&A consultancy and runs a farm and writes. I've pointed to her blog before; today I want to point to a few more of her writings that some of you may find interesting.

First, she writes tips for Business Week. In these times, some of you might be interested in Increase Revenues While Decreasing Costs; you might find others you like linked from her blog.

Second, she also writes for EntreAlliance. She's just started a series called Seven Take-Away Lessons From a Failed Team. The first installment, Lesson # 1: Manage Your Brand, is the first of seven articles drawing business lessons from the recent McCain campaign for the presidency of the United States. Check it out!

Grounding beliefs in data

We all have beliefs about the way parts of the world work. Data is sometimes hard to come by; when we can find it, it's sometimes in a form that's hard to use.

Tom Fiddaman published State CO2 Emisssions from Fossil Fuel Combustion on many eyes. Click through to the interactive version, and see if you find any surprises.

One set of lessons: it appears that industrial emissions have improved between 1990 and 2005 in about half the states of the USA. Emissions from electric power generation have increased in all but four states (all in the Northeast), and emissions from transportation have increased in all states but Kansas.

It would be interesting to see these results expressed in per capita terms, too.

While we're talking about data, see his experiments with his kids on how fast a bathtub drains. Before you do, though, what do you think a time series graph of the water left in a bathtub as it drains would look like? Then read the results.

To me, the bathtub experiment sounds a bit like Seth Robert's self-experimentation, which leads to the obvious thought that we can all be amateur scientists, if we want.

CAFE standards are so 20th century

While we in the USA struggle with CAFE standards, those regulations that limit the minimum average fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks, others are moving forward. The Europeans are considering a 120 gm / km CO₂ limit on automoble emissions.

Thanks to Ralf Lippold for the tip via a Tweet. Check out his 120g/km-Campaign wiki.

(I'll let someone else translate 120 gm / km CO₂ into "English" units; I'd rather we just adopt metric.)

More not good news

A bit over three years ago, I published Not good news; what do we do about it?, a story prompted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Today, Grist News published Planet Ahead, a pointer to the World Wildlife Fund's 2008 Living Planet Report. In short, we're continuing to live beyond our (or the planet's) means, and, at current trends (not consumption levels, as reported in Grist according to my interpretation), we'll need two planet's worth of resources by the mid 2030s.

While they don't reveal the details of their model, it seems by their admission (p. 22) that it does not incorporate feedback effects. Thus it may miss behaviors that could prove dominant and perhaps more damaging over time.

One challenge is that the degradation is largely invisible to many of us. For one, many of the factors they measure are not bought or sold, so normal market forces don't make them visible nor work to manage their use. For another, the degradation is largely confined to tropical regions, yet I suspect most of us reading this live in temperate regions and don't really observe those changes.

Yet, amidst that gloomy projection, there is cause for optimism. They speak of "sustainability wedges" as an approach to help us have our cake and eat it, too, or at least to grow energy services and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The report is 48 pages long, so I've just skimmed it. I think it's well worth the time at least to skim it to become better informed on the current state of the world and current trends.

What does that mean for us in business? What does that mean for us as citizens? What are your thoughts?

Food policy

I heard part of a piece about food policy on Fresh Air recently, but I forgot about it until I read Marilyn Holt's A Locavore Manifesto by Michael Pollan in her Amicus Agraria. She points to Michael Pollan's thoughtful and thought-provoking letter to the US President-Elect called "Farmer in Chief" in the New York Times. Yes, it's long; yes, it's worth your time.

You can see prior postings about food in A Prius for the pantry?, No such thing as a free (or even cheap) lunch, and Food and fuel in the news.

Postscript: Thanks to a tweet from Garr Reynolds, I found the related Eat fast, eat until full to get super-sized.

The Marblehead Letter

I've written about my musings on growth a number of times, even as I worried that my ideas might be controversial.

Now I've seen the Marblehead Letter, written by executives at a SoL conference in 2001, and I think those of you reading this blog might find it worthy of your time. Read both the full letter—it's only two pages long, and I think it states its questions better—and the summary, which hints at some of the signatories.

Note that the letter has questions, not answers, and note that the letter comes from people high in the ranks of major organizations.

I discovered this letter by reading Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society, courtesy of InBubbleWrap and 800ceoread. For various reasons, that's been a hard book for me to get through, but I'm persevering (and those of you who have a copy can tell the page I've reached by this blog posting). Perhaps I'll blog more about it when I finish it.

What do you think? It's comforting to know that others are considering similar questions to the ones I've been raising. Question 3 is exactly what I want to work on, but reading it brings two thoughts:

• You can't address that one question in a vacuum; you have to consider their other questions and still more (for example) in the process. It is a systems issue on multiple levels.
  
• I wonder if they didn't go far enough in question 3. They want to reconceive growth. I wonder if and how and under what conditions overall sustained growth is possible and good for us. If, in aggregate, it is not (and I have yet to see evidence that the systems mantra of "there are always limits to growth" is false), I want to help find a new and successful way forward. While we have to address the long-term situation, I'm more interested in helping us figure out how to make the transition from growth to sustainability, whether on an organizational, societal, or personal level.
  

Those of you acquainted with some of the literature on growth will realize that a stable system doesn't mean there is no growth. For example, in a business sense, some technologies, products, or services outlive their usefulness, and their companies shrink or perhaps go out of business. Other technologies, products, or services are needed in increasing amounts, and their companies grow. Equilibrium in the aggregate doesn't require equilibrium in the details.

While I'm optimistic we'll figure out a way to deal with this, I still think the issue of growth is an integral part of one of the two major problems we face as a people. From what I read, we may well have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. If that be true, then these are important times, for the way we respond can likely have a major effect on the response of the systems in which we live, and the recovery of a system from overshoot can be harsh.

I really would welcome your comments on this.

Climate forecast: Germany

"In keinem anderem Land der Welt liegt bis dato eine präzisere Kalkulation der Klimafolgen vor. Sie soll die Grundlage für politische Planungen bilden." ("In no other country of the world do such precise calculations exist regarding the effects of climate change. They should serve as the basis for political planning.") That's what it says in Regierungsprognose enthüllt Folgen des Klimawandels für Deutschland in Der Spiegel for September 2, 2008 (you can read the entire report, too).

Now I'm mindful that I've recently written about the dangers of forecasting. Jay Forrest has reminded me of limitations to my claim; taken to extremes, it might suggest we can't usefully predict the rising of the sun in the morning or the need to buy food at the store (or grow it in the earth). I certainly don't mean to take it that far, and I'll write more about those limits someday.

Without having read the full report (it's 159 pages, after all), I suspect that this report can be useful if viewed at least like a scenario planning exercise: what could happen? How much in advance do we need to prepare? What are the triggers that would indicate it is time to prepare? If the time to start preparing is in the past, can we make strides in that direction without compromising our ability to deal with other futures, too? In other words, can we create robust plans for the future?

Or perhaps it's more accurate than that. I'd welcome ideas from people who have read it and have particular insights: what did you expect? What did you find? Were there any surprises? Does it seem credible?

And where are the rest of us in thinking about changes we'll face?

Prediction, system dynamics, and Future-Fusion

Recently, I made the claim that we're better off focusing on adapting to the present than predicting the future. I've made similar claims in the past, too. I've even given one example in which predictions serve a useful purpose.

That's all a bit simplistic, of course. Even system dynamicists could be said to predict the future in a way: we show behavior over time we feel is more likely to occur (although we may warn people away from point predictions based on a behavior over time graph). In other words, I might suggest that your current policies could produce a boom and bust effect in your business, but I wouldn't want you to draw the conclusion that your business will grow another 172.3% by June 15, 2009 before taking a tumble that afternoon.

Because we all would like to know the future, I've experimented with blending system dynamics and Bayesian analysis to quantify the probability of a particular behavior pattern, for example. Of course, that probability is conditioned on both the historical data and the model being correct, which is a loophole big enough for a good-sized locomotive to run through: models are always incorrect. Still, I think this approach may give more useful insight in certain cases.

Now Kshanti Greene of Stottler Henke Assocates, Inc. has shown me a Bayesian tool they've developed called Future-Fusion, and I've been exploring it a bit. They are using Bayesian networks and the power of groups to get a better handle on what the future holds. Much as Data360 looks at the past, Future-Fusion attempts to look at the future. As of this writing, they've created four test areas which you can explore: the 2008 US presidential election, the Iraq war, corporate strategy, and energy. Try it out: learn how to use the system, see current predictions, and add your own (I think you only have to create a free account if you want to add your own predictions). Perhaps you'll learn something, and perhaps they will, too.

Kshanti has pointed out a recent addition to Future-Fusion that may intrigue some of you: time. They've enhanced their technology to allow limited dynamic execution of a network model, which begins to narrow the gap between Bayesian networks and system dynamics from the Bayesian network side, much as what I've tried has narrowed it from the system dynamics side. To try that out, go to the energy model, select a prediction (e.g., "Reduced SUV sales"), click "view graph," note the numbers, and then click "Next Time Step."

I think this is all still experimental in many ways, but it's a good opportunity to learn a bit about this technology by trying it out on real-life issues. I'll be curious what you discover.

Bittersweet asphalt

No, it's not that I find asphalt bittersweet (I haven't tried tasting it). It's the news that I find bittersweet.

Five and a half years ago, I published Out of Gas: A Systems Perspective on Potential Petroleum-Fuel Depletion. In that column and in the accompanying simulation model, I suggested that delays due to debates over how to allocate shrinking petroleum stocks might hurt our ability to replace energy resources in a timely fashion.

Today, I read Asphalt shortage disrupts road projects. I'm sure you can find other examples, perhaps closer to your home, in which the imbalance in supply and demand of petroleum is leading companies to prioritize one usage over another, which can cause pain for the unfavored group.

Models such as this aren't designed to predict the future, at least in the sense that they tell you that a certain event will happen in a certain year. They're intended to give insights into the likely and potential ramifications of current and proposed policies, both formal and informal, that we've created. They're intended to help us test policies quickly, inexpensively, and at low risk, so that we can be more confident when we implement a policy in our organizations. They do not provide guarantees, but they can provide very useful and sometimes unexpected insights.

In which areas would you like to think more effectively about the effect your current policies could have on your organization's future?

Environmental optimism: an example

Glen Hiemstra commented on my blog yesterday, and he also blogged about Al Gore's speech calling for a 10-year program to end the use of carbon-based energy sources for generating electricity.

Al Gore has presented a great example of environmental optimism on a grand scale, and he's done it in a manner I found challenging and uplifting, not depressing and defeatist. You've probably read about it by now, but I encourage you to watch the video.

Environmental optimism

If you've read my blog for a while, you may you wonder: why do I spend so much time talking about environmental issues on a business blog?

The answer is simple: business operates in the environment, and we have no choice in the matter. The environment seems poised to make a few changes right now. That seems fair; it's apparently doing it largely in response to changes we've made. In times of transition, there are usually economic winners and losers. We've seen that building inefficient SUVs is not a winning strategy now (or, presumably, ever again); I want to help you (and me) think about the areas in which we can win.

Which brings me to my main point: optimism. Sometimes I post items that could seem depressing; I think my previous posting fits that description.

There are two steps to change. The first involves becoming motivated, and the second involves doing something. Facing up to the facts, as best we know them, is arguably the first thing we have to do. As we continue to get new data (even as the fundamental message hasn't changed in a while), I think it's important to keep looking at the science so we base our actions on the best insights we have.

I happened to see Great Read! Important Read! in Tom Peters' dispatches from the new world of work. While I haven't read Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why, the subject of his post, yet, I think the concept meshes well with my idea that we are the ones who can make a difference. We can do it through business, we can do it personally, and we can do it through our governments. I think it's important to push forward on all three dimensions and not to let difficulties in one of those three areas prevent us from making progress in the remaining ones.

Is that a call to become dour prophets of doom? I sincerely hope not. While I think we have to make changes soon, I think we can and should do it with cheer, energy, and a spirit of optimistic entrepreneurialism. That's one of the things I liked about teaching at Bainbridge Graduate Institute: everyone there had an upbeat, infectious approach to life, to business, to social justice, and to the environment. That's one of the things I like about Bernie DeKoven's Junkyard Sports: he takes trash that no one wants and turns it into the stuff of play. That's one of the things I like about the growing interest in wind power, photovoltaic arrays, and high-efficiency transportation: the business system is responding to a real need. I'll let you have fun and success finding (or, better, creating) more examples.

What do you think?

More gasoline, pain, feedback, consensus

A month ago, I wrote Gasoline, pain, feedback, consensus to highlight a consensus I read between Thomas Friedman and Charles Krauthammer. Now Matt Simmons says much the same thing. Thanks to Glen Hiemstra and his Futurist.com blog for the tip (and see his pointer to a 1979 Jimmy Carter speech on energy).

Alternative energy: not as easy as it sounds?

Five and a half years ago, Pegasus Communications published my Out of Gas: A Systems Perspective on Potential Petroleum-Fuel Depletion. If you try out the downloadable model (see the column for instructions), you will discover my concern that we wouldn't start soon enough or be able to move fast enough to replace petroleum. Such delays could have a significant, perhaps massive, impact on society and on our economies.

Yesterday Forbes published America's Best Places For Alternative Energy and noted SRI's estimates that we need "[r]oughly 4.2 billion solar rooftops, 3 million wind turbines, 2,500 nuclear power plants or 200 Three Gorges Dams" to replace the amount of oil we use annually and that "no single category of renewable energy is growing anywhere near the speed it needs to bear the full brunt of displacing carbon-emitting fossil fuels anytime soon."

So my simple concept model identified a problem that's substantiated by more research at SRI (and by our daily experience, for if alternative energy sources were fully replacing petroleum, would we see overall energy price increases?).

That's part of the message of Is predicting the future really worthwhile?. My simple model didn't predict the future.

• It did identify past patterns of action that could credibly lead to a problem.
• It did use information that's known reasonably well (quantities of petroleum, even admitting that we don't know reserves as well as we'd like, as well as something about the dynamics of petroleum discovery and use) and apply simulation to explore what ramifications those factors might have over time.
  
• It did allow one to try different scenarios to see whether one's conclusions were sensitive to assumptions. For example, does it make a fundamental difference if petroleum reserves are 25% higher than assumed? (No, it just changes the timing of the problem.)
  
• It did provide a test bed for exploring strategies to see which might be more effective.
  

More research (in this case, in the form of the SRI study) substantiates the nature of the problem and helps us understand its magnitude and timing.

What systems are at work in your organization, your business, or your part of the world that might lead to consequences you don't want? How might you test your ideas? What can you change that might lead to better results? How might you test those ideas?

Higher oil prices help business

Last year, I made a rash generalization: "Riches can be made off the transitions from one status quo to the other." Now the Wall Street Journal has posted Green Products Gain From New Price Equation, listing a number of products that are gaining a significant price advantage over their competitors by virtue of being green in a time of rising oil-related prices.

Thanks to Grist for the tip.

Climate change made understandable

There's lots about climate change that's confusing to those of us who aren't climatologists. What is climate, what is weather, and how do they interact? What are the prime causes of climate change, how well do we understand them, and which causes are more important? What will climate change mean to me?

I happened to discover Reports to the Nation: Our Changing Climate, written by Professor Dennis Hartmann, interim dean of the new University of Washington College of the Environment, and I thought some of you might find it useful, too. While it was published in 1997, it seems to explain many of the key factors. Certainly more up-to-date reports can help, but this one seems both good and easy to read.

Gasoline, pain, feedback, consensus

Speaking of sustainable energy solutions ...

The price of gasoline is rising, as you've no doubt noticed (if it happens to drop today, it seems likely to return to its upward path tomorrow). People are protesting the high prices for the personal and business pain they cause, and politicians (at least some of them) are floating plans to reduce the pain. Manufacturers and retailers are trying innovative approaches to lightening the load on our household budgets.

While the pain is real, I've noticed a strange consensus recently. Both Thomas Friedman and Charles Krauthammer have advocated for using governmental means to keep gas prices high. In Truth or Consequences, Friedman noted that putting a $4 a gallon floor on gasoline prices could be a great cornerstone of a national energy policy to help us lower consumption, which brings with it all sorts of benefits, including our investment in more efficient infrastructure (different means of transportation, for example) and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. In At $4, Everybody Gets Rational, Krauthammer calls for taxes to keep that same $4 a gallon floor and to increase taxes by $0.50 every six months for the next two years.

What we're seeing are feedback effects. As prices rise, we drive less, reducing demand. As demand drops, prices moderate in an attempt to balance supply and demand. (Over the long haul, that's problematic with a non-renewable resource.) Of course, it's a bit more challenging than that, but that simple balancing loop describes the basic mechanism at work.

In a free-market society, as the one we have crafted, the primary feedback signal we have to adjust behavior is economic. When that feedback kicks in, it causes both pain and changed behavior. It would be nice if you could get changed behavior without the pain, but we don't seem to have mastered that as well.

What do you think we ought to do about this? I wrote a possibly pertinent posting three years ago with almost that for the title. Glenn has an idea on The Oil Drum. You may have your own idea.

As a closing note, I've noted before that exponential growth of physical things always has limits, and likely the price of gasoline or petroleum is subject to the same laws. For one idea how the price of oil and gasoline could evolve, see Ugo Bardi's review of the price of whale oil when it was becoming scarce.

Sustainable Energy Solutions

Recently, I wrote about a non-credit course called Sustainable Energy Solutions to be offered this summer by Bainbridge Graduate Institute, where I'm teaching this spring.

Some of you may have been interested but wished for a bit less expensive course, and BGI seems to have heard you: they've reduced the price of this course to $1,500. If you're interested, hurry and sign up; the class starts soon. Tell Jim Stretch that you read about it here.

Making a big difference

Business Week just published John Hagel and John Seely Brown's Changing the World from the Edge describing how University of California, Berkeley students are making a real difference in the world, this time in issues such as "energy efficiency, Third World poverty and disease, and sustainable housing, among others." By the end, they summarize lessons those of us in business might find useful. I like all three of their three lessons, and I'm looking for ways to apply them, too. If you have suggestions, comment here, or get in touch.

That's related to my recent posting called It's a new world in business education. In all these cases, strong change leadership is again coming out of universities and focused on making the world a better place.

Thanks again to the TP! Wire service for the link.

It's a new world in business education

I began to notice that last winter, as I taught in the highly-rated Information School at the University of Washington, for they seemed very focused on the intersection of information, technology, and people issues, not just one or the other. I like that; it reminds us that people are closer to the goal than technology and that technology is (or should be) in service to people.

I'm noticing it even more this spring, as I co-teach at the also highly-rated Bainbridge Graduate Institute. BGI, too, is about intersection and synergy—in this case, the intersection of business and sustainability—as they integrate sustainability and business in every course they offer.

You can read more of the details on their Web site; I'll content myself to say it really seems true: people there have made and are making a difference both in business and in sustainability, they have a passion for what they do, and they like to have fun both as part of making a difference and as part of living. Associating with the faculty, the administration, and perhaps especially the students gives me hope for the future.

If you're interested in BGI, there are at least three ways that you can partake. They offer an MBA in Sustainable Business, which may fit some of you quite well. Others of you may find one of their two certificate programs to be more suitable.

This summer, they're starting a third option: a non-credit course called Sustainable Energy Solutions. In these times of seemingly never-ending increases in the price of petroleum and petroleum products, this course may be very timely for some of you.

The price of oil

I've written before that history provides another form of simulation: while it includes many confounding factors, it does offer important lessons for us.

Now Ugo Bardi has explored what might happen to the price of oil, based on what happened to a prior generation's non-renewable resource.

What do you think of his ideas? What impact might this have on the way you do business? On the way you should do business?

Food and fuel in the news

DrumBeat: April 25, 2008 offered two particularly interesting links.

First, Time offered How to End the Global Food Shortage, their suggestion on three actions we can take in the short term. I'm not sure I see a long-term solution there, for I sense that global population is still growing exponentially, while their solutions seem focused on taking current food production to a new level, not creating matching exponential growth in the production and distribution of food. Put in systems terms, I sense population is still driven by a reinforcing loop, while the three Time proposals seem driven by goal-seeking loops. The short-term effects do seem beneficial, as long as we don't forget the longer term.

Second, oil financier Matt Simmons has published more presentations. Check out The 21st Century Energy Crisis Has Arrived. Slides 9-10 should not be a surprise to any who took IMT 586 at the University of Washington last winter or who have worked the challenge on pages 212-213 in John Sterman's Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World with CD-ROM.

While you're there, also see his Are We Nearing The Peak Of Fossil Fuel Energy? Has Twilight In The Desert Begun? He does offer optimism, but only if we act well and only after some, um, "transitional" times. If anything, I wonder if his estimate of the rate of decline of production is optimistic, for, with the high raw demand for petroleum these days, I suspect we will deplete available reserves at a rather rapid rate.

Followup to Bush and greenhouse gases

One of the claims about working on greenhouse gas emissions is that it costs too much. Business Week tries to put that in perspective.

Fooled by Randomness: some thoughts

I read and wrote about Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan some time ago; now I'm reading his Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.

I'm struck by the application of his ideas to environmental and ecological issues. It seems as if we're placing most of our societal bets on growth, a bet that has played well for centuries. Given the current news, though, those seem like some of the investment bets Taleb describes as foolhardy. A prudent "investor" (citizen or business person) at this stage in the Earth's development might place most or all money on bets that can't lose much. Betting on the ability of the planet to absorb more growth, on nonrenewable energy sources to remain plentiful, or on technology to increase efficiencies sufficiently yet again seems like a risky bet, given the news of the day (and year and decade).

That's consistent with the precautionary principle; do check out THE YEAR IN IDEAS: A TO Z.; Precautionary Principle from The New York Times.

What do you think?

For more on Taleb's book, see words by Andrew Gelman, Wikipedia, and James Glassman.

Business, Earth Day, and other thoughts

After teaching at my first Bainbridge Graduate Institute Intensive, I am very impressed. The administration, faculty, and student body seem, in person, even more focused on and effective with both words in "sustainable business" than they say they are. I confess that this MBA program truly excites me, and I am glad to play a small part in its work.

That led me to think about business, business practices, and Earth Day tomorrow (there is another Earth Day that passed last month). A bit of looking turned up Nice Guys Don't Finish Last, a Business Week article that indicates that international executives seem to think being green helps them. You can see more in The Economist's report.

A bit more looking turned up Climate Counts, which promises to help us as consumers and as investors, think about which companies have made more strides than others. If you're in business, see their scorecard to think about various dimensions to climate impact. While we might quibble about the weighting of the various dimensions and the focus on climate alone instead of also including usage of nonrenewable resources, social justice, and other issues of corporate social responsibility, we can probably learn from reviewing their measures. Even though I think my overall footprint as a company is quite small, it's prompting me to make an assessment and to think about additional factors that I think might be important.

If you're looking for other thoughts for Earth Day, check out the Donella Meadows Archive at the Sustainability Institute. After being part of the team that did the research and produced the original Club of Rome report, she wrote the weekly Global Citizen, which you can peruse in that archive. There's plenty of food for thought there.

What suggestions and thoughts do you have?

President Bush and greenhouse gases

I haven't been a political blogger, and I'm not about to start now. Yet the news of the past few days does offer ways to illustrate systems concepts I've mentioned before, and so I thought I'd point out what I hope is obvious to all here.

For but one example, take US President Bush's goal of having greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stop growing by 2025, which is stirring up comment world-wide.

In system dynamics terms, GHG emissions (largely CO₂) are a flow, and the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere is a stock. If you recall what I've written before on stocks and flows, you'll see that stopping the increase of a flow does not mean that the stock will decrease; it simply means that it will increase less rapidly.

In other words, even if we do meet this goal, things may well continue to get worse well after 2025, but they will at least get worse less rapidly after then.

I want to show you a little model that demonstrates that behavior, but, to publish it here, I'd like to get the numbers at least close to right, and that would take a bit of research time I don't have tonight. Let me try an analogy, instead; those of you who studied and remember the calculus can probably make a more elegant argument, and those who do system dynamics models can create one on your own in a few minutes (if you have the needed parameters, let me know, or post a pointer to your model).

In the real world, we are emitting CO₂ into the atmosphere by breathing, burning fossil fuels, and the like. That stock of CO₂ in the atmosphere is growing and threatening climate havoc.

Some of that CO₂ is taken out of the atmosphere each year through the action of photosynthesis and perhaps other mechanisms.

According to the science I read, we have too much CO₂ in the atmosphere at present, and our global CO₂ emissions per year, already above what the environment can naturally purge, are increasing. If that weren't the case, there would be little reason for President Bush's call to action.

Let's look at an analogous situation. For example, let's say you have a bathtub that's three-fourths full of water. The drain is open, but it's partially clogged, and so it's draining slowly.

In addition, the faucet is turned on, putting more water in the tub. It so happens that the water is currently coming into the tub faster than the partially-stopped drain can take it out, so the water level is rising, causing fears for the well-being of the bathroom floor.

The person controlling the faucet is opening the faucet as we speak, letting water come into the tub at an ever faster rate. That person, realizing the risk to the floor, promises to stop opening the faucet anymore in about 15 minutes.

What do you think will happen to the floor?

Even with the rough data I supplied, I hope you can see that the water will rise increasingly rapidly for the next 15 minutes. If the person takes their hand off the faucet in 15 minutes, the water will continue to rise until it overflows the tub (assuming it doesn't overflow sooner). The only way to save the floor is to reduce the flow of water from the faucet to below the flow of water out of the drain before the tub overflows. Even if they started reducing the flow of water out of the faucet now, the water in the tub would still rise until the inflow was less than the outflow.

Of course, this is a silly little example; the real world of GHG emissions is much more complex. Yet the general principle of stocks and flows holds: as long as the inflow exceeds the outflow, the stock will rise.

I'm not about to use this short, informal essay to argue for or against specific GHG or climate proposals or to try to balance climate stability against economic stability. I am suggesting that we all remember the lesson of stocks and flows when we are thinking about or evaluating policies such as these.

PS: Thanks to colleague Wayne Wakeland for, in a totally different situation, reminding me of the effectiveness of simple bathtub models (and I hope it worked here!).

A sense of urgency and a great opportunity

Glen Hiemstra posted Peak Oil and Global Warming - the Cross Matrix linking to important material by Jeremy Leggett, Dr. James Hanson, and Al Gore. The Jeremy Leggett clip is about 10 minutes long and seems to be an excerpt of a longer talk; the Al Gore segment lasts about half an hour and seems complete.

All of the links in Glen's posting are worth checking out, but you may not find too much new in Leggett's lecture if you're familiar with basic arguments about climate change and peak oil.

I do encourage you to watch the entire Al Gore segment, though. What I find important there is his careful, passionate, and, yes, somewhat optimistic reframing of the issues we face. Do check it out, and then let me know what you think.

LTG redux

Just one more short posting on LTG (Limits to Growth), at least for now: in looking for something else, I found The Limits to Growth: Abstract established by Eduard Pestel. A Report to The Club of Rome (1972), by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis l. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Behrens III, which is well worth the time it takes to read, especially if you haven't read one of the original versions of LTG. It summarizes in very readable prose the essence of the entire LTG argument in just eight short pages.

Even though this was written 36 years ago, it seems very up-to-date. Or, perhaps better put (as Ugo Bardi did), because it was written 36 years ago and we've learned more, it seems more pertinent today than it did then. For a review of the changes since the original publication, see Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update or Matthew Simmon's review linked from my prior posting.

Grow or die

The title is a rough quotation from an interview I read by a CEO recently. It doesn't matter who it was; it's a common business notion, I sense.

I understand the sentiment, really I do. There is a real fear that, if we don't grow, we'll be overtaken by those who do grow. Or that we'll become stagnant and stale.

Yet I'm mindful that, if we all grow, we'll surely die (or at least suffer), too. Read Limits to Growth, if you're uncertain about my statement. Note that "limits to growth" in that book is not a statement of an environmentalist's hope; it's a statement of fact. We will face limits to growth. We can choose the nature of those limits (or at least we have had the chance), but stop growing we will. You can't exceed the carrying capacity of an environment forever.

So, if it's true that we all (or most all) want to grow (our companies, our houses, ...), and if it's true that we will face (and are already facing) real limits to that growth, what do we do?

I've written about growth a number of times, but I admit that I don't have all or even many of the answers yet. Perhaps I'll find out more in the next few months, for I'm co-teaching a systems thinking course at Bainbridge Graduate Institute.

If you're not familiar with BGI yet, their vision is "To infuse environmentally and socially responsible business innovation into general business practice by transforming business education," and they've got a good reputation in this area.

As I did when I taught system dynamics at the University of Washington, I suspect I'll learn a lot here, this time with a distinct focus on sustainability and business. I'm really looking forward to this experience. (And, as I did last time, I will refrain from telling you anything that goes on in class unless I have explicit permission, but I may tell you a bit about how I grew.)

System dynamics in practice: lessons learned

Drew Jones, Don Seville, and Dana Meadows of the Sustainability Institute wrote Resource Sustainability In Commodity Systems: The Sawmill Industry In The Northern Forest. That provides a good example of a way to use system dynamics models (it's of course not the only way).

I like that paper for several reasons. The model seemed good (at least from the explanation; I haven't explored the model yet), and the explanation of the model and its implications seemed good. What may be especially interesting to some is that they spent the last third of the paper talking about what they learned about the human side of the equation: how people responded to their work, and what they learned from that. The top of page 26 seems noteworthy, although you'll probably have to read the preceding 25 pages to make good sense of it.

How It All Ends and John Sterman

Some time ago, I posted a note linking to a John Sterman comment about global climate change. This morning, thanks to a randomly found posting, I discovered How It All Ends, a video that says something quite similar.

Greg Craven, the creator of the video, has put together a monster series on risk management, our role in the world, and global climate change. The first video is not quite 10 minutes long, and it presents the basic idea. It leads to an index video, which presents a few more ideas and leads to the menu video. While those last two seem like they might be boring and useless, you might find they add more value and are thus worth watching (perhaps the index more than the menu), even if you eventually find Wondering Mind 42, his Web site that has the list with links to each of the videos.

So at least go watch the first and perhaps the second video now, and see what you think. You might discover it's worth watching more. You might learn new ways of thinking ... and acting. Learning new things is almost always good, right?

And don't forget to read John Sterman's comment, if you haven't already.

More on LTG

I'll try to stop writing about LTG for a bit, but, before I do, I did find one other interesting paper that some of you might want to read. Matthew Simmons of Simmons & Company International wrote Revisiting The Limits to Growth: Could The Club of Rome Have Been Correct, After All?" back in October 2000. It appears to be a very readable, data-rich analysis of the changes in key parts of the world by someone who has been active in the energy business for decades. Check it out.

Simmons is a prolific writer; he has published a series of speeches and papers online (check the archives and the Oldies but Goodies, too). I'll have to come back and read more later.

Postscript: While I should be doing other things, I'm reading more of his articles. I encourage you to read his PEAK OIL: Is It Real? When Might It Occur? from February 25, 2008. While you need to start at the beginning to get context, check out his recommendations starting on slide 48:

Only viable solution that can work now:

• The solution: TRAVEL LESS
  
  
  
  • Less long distance commuting
    
  • Grow foods at home
    
  • Make goods locally
    
  
  

What do you think?

Tipping points

A few years ago, thanks to a lead by John Sterman, I posted a note about a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) article that attempted to quantify the carrying capacity of this planet. The concept of carrying capacity is important; if you try to exceed the carrying capacity of an ecosystem, you will eventually be brought back. What's even more worrisome is the potential that you might eat up carrying capacity while you're in overshoot: if you do that, the equations suggest you'll eventually suffer a collapse.

There's another concept that's discussed both in the systems literature and the popular press: the tipping point. That's the claim (loosely) that systems may reach a point where a slight addititional change will lead to a qualitatively different state. Often the definition includes something about irreversibility (you can't go back) or at least about the difficulty of reversing a change due to the reaching of a tipping point.

Now John Schellnhuber and his colleagues have published Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system in the February 12, 2008 issue of PNAS. They've also published appendices, not in the printed version, that provide their formal definition of a tipping point, evaluate other potential tipping elements, and describe how they elicited the information for the main article.

Those of you interested in tying systems concepts to the real world (hopefully that's just about anyone doing systems work, although some may be more interested in some applications than others) might find this of real interest. Those of you wondering about the risks of climate change might find it informative.

For a report on Schellnhuber's lecture at the annual meeting of the AAAS, see John Schellnhuber’s Third Industrial Revolution, a New Approach to Addressing the Hazards of Global Warming by Julia Whitty in Mother Jones.

CSIS and climate change impacts

I've written about scenario planning as a way to prepare for the future. I think it's useful when we do it in our organizations; I think it's useful when we read well-done scenarios others have written.

The Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) recently published The Age of Consequences, describing the likely impacts of three different climate change scenarios on "The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change," as it says in the report's subtitle. In a way, it's related to the Schwarz, Gilman, and Randall effort I've mentioned previously; indeed, they refer to it.

I've skimmed or read the first third of the report, including the executive summary, and I've found it worth reading further. Rather than delay letting you know about it while I find the time to finish it, I'll post this today. Rather than making you read more of my words when there are 124 pages in the report, I'll stop and let you start reading.

Thanks to RealClimate for the lead.

The voice of a child ...

I write here about the environment from time to time, for I think there is a significant likelihood that we will face important transitions in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of our offspring that will impact us in multiple ways: personally, in the way we live, and professionally, in the way we produce what we need to live and earn what we need to acquire those things we need to live. (If TIME is right, we may not have to wait that long for those transitions.)

Presentation Zen posted You can learn a lot from "a child", a speech by Severn Cullis-Suzuki at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro. It touched on the big issues I perceive we face: figuring out how to make life sustainable on this planet, and figuring out how to live together. Watch it.

I also write about presentation skills from time to time. As Presentation Zen reports, Al Gore called this "the best speech at Rio."

Transitions

There was a statement in the article about the lack of water in Atlanta that gives me pause:

Scientists have warned of impending disaster.

And life has, for the most part, gone on just as before.

The evidence seems clear that we on this planet are likely facing major transitions in the way we live. Yet, until this year, I still sensed a basic assumption that life would go on as it has been, that we could accommodate all of these transitions without changing the way we do business or the way we live in any significant way. Perhaps technology would save us, perhaps others around us (government, business, utilities) would save us from having to make hard choices.

I don't think that's prudent. Whether we think of it as business risk management or business continuity planning, we need to think of what these changes might do to our businesses and our societies, and we need to make the appropriate preparations.

What will your business do if some of these predictions come to pass? What will my business do? Here's an Australian view.

Oil

Yesterday I wrote about water; today it's oil. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) just concluded a conference in Houston, and The Oil Drum has published a series of reports:

• Houston ASPO - the Workshop day
  
• ASPO Houston: Day 1, part 1
  
• Houston ASPO Day 1 part 2
  
• Houston ASPO Day 2 part 1
  
• Houston ASPO Day 2 part 2
  
• ASPO Houston - a comment
  

It's also been covered in the news.

If you're not careful, you can get to feeling depressed by reading all this, or you can get overwhelmed, decide it can't be as bad as this, and ignore it. I don't think either are useful. Perhaps one way out is to listen to an interview with T. Boone Pickens' at ASPO. He clearly thinks we've passed peak oil, and yet he's not gloomy and depressed. He does point out some of the adjustments we'll need to make in business and in our personal lives (e.g., natural gas for transportation instead of heating while we search for alternatives).

What's your take on all this? If these sorts of changes come to pass, will they affect our businesses? How? What are we doing in our businesses to prepare for the sort of shocks mentioned here yesterday and today? What can we do? What should we do? What opportunities do these changes open up?

Water

Climate change is in the news, as is peak oil. On Sunday, the New York Times reminded us that we need to think about water, too. In The Future Is Drying Up, Jon Gertner has taken an in-depth look at water and the American West.

If you think this pertains only to the American West, check out Monday's Atlanta Shudders at Prospect of Empty Faucets, also from the New York Times. As the BBC's Why world's taps are running dry points out, it's a global issue, too.

Why did I tag this business as well as environment? Because business will be affected, and business can make a difference.

We must be doing something right!

For the last seven and a half years, I've rarely seen a client. That doesn't mean I've been sitting idle in my office; it means we've been finding other ways to work together than getting into a car or onto a plane so we can sit in the same room.

I did that because I saw a need: companies who were spread out geographically, who needed to work together in groups, and who didn't have the funds or the time to get on a plane every time they needed to collaborate wanted alternatives. I also saw an opportunity: I could help more organizations more quickly and at less cost, because I could implement quick changeover in consulting and facilitating processes. Besides, when I'm working in my office, I have all my resources available to me, including any that aren't sufficiently portable to be carried to meetings.

Now WebEx is running a free promotion, focused on the amount of carbon dioxide emissions such an approach can eliminate. Sure, it's designed to sell more of their services, but they do seem to have a point (and they do plant trees!). Now if we only had an unbiased evaluation of the cost of, say, meeting, including the cost of running IT services in all the different alternatives. Their assessment may be fairly accurate, though; it's likely many of us would bring our laptops to meetings, and so travel would provide incremental, not substitute, emissions.

Give it a try, or look for another tool that meets your needs.

Thanks to Chief Learning Officer for making me aware of this promotion.

What else can we do to speed up our work and improve the environment at the same time?

Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems

Jay Forrester's (new: link to several of his papers) Counterintuitive Behavior of Social Systems (new URL) is another classic worth reading and re-reading. The article offers food for thought, not final answers. If you start, I encourage you to keep going to the end (I'm saying that, because I know it's 28 pages of text and everyone's time is short). As a bit of encouragement, here are two quotations. First, from p. 24:

Figure 8 shows the world system if several policy changes are adopted together in the year 1970. Population is stabilized. Quality of life rises about 50 per cent. Pollution remains at about the 1970 level. Would such a world be accepted? It implies an end to population and economic growth.

Then, on page 27, he writes, "Our greatest challenge now is handling the transition from growth to equilibrium."

Start at the beginning to get the context for both quotations, and see what you think by the end. These are important issues; don't blindly accept his admittedly somewhat preliminary ideas (see section XI), but don't blindly reject them, either.

Thanks to the HPSIGWiki for the reminder.