Two cheers for rapid change
Jul. 20th, 2008 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
openspace4life"[Curitiba, Brazil's] municipal government is dedicated to solutions that are simple, fast, fun, and cheap, to what [Bill] McKibben calls 'constructive pragmatism.' [Former mayor Jaime] Lerner, convinced that hope is sustained by visible change for the better, inculcated a culture of speed: 'Credit cards give us goods quickly, the fax machine gives us the message quickly -- the only thing left in our Stone Age is the central governments.' City Hall's credibility in Curitiba comes from its creating a big park in only twenty days, or launching a vast recycling program within months of its conception. . . .
"Conceptual tests of new ideas lead quickly to their application. Risks are taken in the expectation that mistakes will be made, quickly detected and diagnosed, and corrected. When budgets can't support an entire new program, it's launched anyway so that learning can begin while more resources or economies are sought. Failures are frequent, hard lessons constant, struggles to improve unrelenting. . . . Curitiba experiments and improves as assiduously as any startup company."
- Chapter 14 of Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins, which holds up Curitiba as a model of holistic, sustainable design and governance.
Last Thursday, Al Gore called for a similar "culture of speed" by challenging America to switch to 100% clean, carbon-neutral energy sources within ten years. Now, one can certainly quibble that Gore may have exaggerated some details in his case for action, or that a ten-year timeframe is somewhat overoptimistic, but the overall case is strong: We need to act, we will benefit immensely from the resulting new jobs and greater energy security as well as reduced pollution, and what we most need right now is the inspiration to tackle this great challenge in the spirit of the Apollo program, or any of the other massive projects America has embarked on and completed throughout our history.
This is not to say we should throw caution to the winds. With our current global-scale technologies, we're already conducting a vast uncontrolled experiment with unknown results; we must be careful that the new experiments we set in motion are better planned and understood before we bring them to full-scale production. We don't want to face a "hard lesson" in the form of one massive disaster brought on by an overly rushed and incautious attempt to prevent another such disaster.
But be that as it may, we are probably past the time when "take it slow" can be our primary philosophy in working toward solutions to the climate crisis.
"Conceptual tests of new ideas lead quickly to their application. Risks are taken in the expectation that mistakes will be made, quickly detected and diagnosed, and corrected. When budgets can't support an entire new program, it's launched anyway so that learning can begin while more resources or economies are sought. Failures are frequent, hard lessons constant, struggles to improve unrelenting. . . . Curitiba experiments and improves as assiduously as any startup company."
- Chapter 14 of Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins, which holds up Curitiba as a model of holistic, sustainable design and governance.
Last Thursday, Al Gore called for a similar "culture of speed" by challenging America to switch to 100% clean, carbon-neutral energy sources within ten years. Now, one can certainly quibble that Gore may have exaggerated some details in his case for action, or that a ten-year timeframe is somewhat overoptimistic, but the overall case is strong: We need to act, we will benefit immensely from the resulting new jobs and greater energy security as well as reduced pollution, and what we most need right now is the inspiration to tackle this great challenge in the spirit of the Apollo program, or any of the other massive projects America has embarked on and completed throughout our history.
This is not to say we should throw caution to the winds. With our current global-scale technologies, we're already conducting a vast uncontrolled experiment with unknown results; we must be careful that the new experiments we set in motion are better planned and understood before we bring them to full-scale production. We don't want to face a "hard lesson" in the form of one massive disaster brought on by an overly rushed and incautious attempt to prevent another such disaster.
But be that as it may, we are probably past the time when "take it slow" can be our primary philosophy in working toward solutions to the climate crisis.
