In my last post there was an oblique reference to the idea of satisficing (in the Assertion, the bit about “at least satisfactory”). It is now about 6:30 on a Saturday morning and I have a cup of warmed over coffee from yesterday and some cool music from Budapest on the stereo. One of those things is satisficing (barely) and it isn’t the time of day or the music.
Satisficing is a term coined by Herbert Simon in his work on how institutions work. It is part of the bounded rationality stuff and it refers to the idea that decision-makers often move forward with solutions that suffice, that are satisfactory. Compared with the optimal solution, which is unique and maximizing, the satisficing solution is one that gets the current job done and reflects the current preference ordering and information availability. (My coffee reflects my tolerance for bad coffee and my current preference ordering for getting to work rather than making fresh or going out in the cold).
And herein lies a challenge with the Brundtland definition of sustainability - it assumes that we can know things about the future which are unknowable. We cannot know the needs, preferences, or the capacities of future generations (unless your grandfather was Vannevar Bush, he probably didn’t even imagine the internet). But we can project our own values into the future and in so doing imagine a future that we desire for our progeny (Grandpa probably did wish safety and security for you).
So in my view, sustainability is about creating a satisficing future. One that is good enough, hopefully at least a bit better than the present, but certainly no worse. It is a pragmatic vision and it is one that is rooted in thinking about how institutions actually work.
November 12, 2010
Qualia: Sustainability as a Problem of Democracy
I have only a few words, so I am going to jump quickly into the fray and defer some pretty important elaborations to future posts.
Assertion: Sustainability is about maintaining possible futures that are at least satisfactory to the humans currently living on Earth. (After all, we are the ones currently calling the shots.)
Taking that as a starting point, the obvious question is, “how do we decide which futures belong in our global portfolio?” My individual portfolio is probably pretty similar to yours, but it is likely to be very different from that of a farmer in a developing country. Even in very different portfolios, there are likely to be some elements of commonality, but how do we resolve the inevitable tradeoffs and incommensurability?
Given my rearing by reasonably liberal, middle class parents here in the US, complete with public school civics and government classes, I argue that democratic processes should be central to answering this question. And those processes are going to have to be much more sophisticated than “winner-takes all / choose between 2” voting. Further complicating things is Kenneth Arrow’s Noble-winning proof which showed that there is no way to uniquely choose between 3 options under conditions that we take for granted as fair. And even if we ignore Arrow, we are not going to all get together and rank our own portfolios, much less the union of all portfolios of possible futures... This is a very hard problem of values and institutions.
Difficulties aside, I see this challenge as absolutely central to sustainability and much more complex than “paper or plastic?” Current choices matter, but their meaning is greatly enhanced if they are made in the context of collectively imagined futures.
Assertion: Sustainability is about maintaining possible futures that are at least satisfactory to the humans currently living on Earth. (After all, we are the ones currently calling the shots.)
Taking that as a starting point, the obvious question is, “how do we decide which futures belong in our global portfolio?” My individual portfolio is probably pretty similar to yours, but it is likely to be very different from that of a farmer in a developing country. Even in very different portfolios, there are likely to be some elements of commonality, but how do we resolve the inevitable tradeoffs and incommensurability?
Given my rearing by reasonably liberal, middle class parents here in the US, complete with public school civics and government classes, I argue that democratic processes should be central to answering this question. And those processes are going to have to be much more sophisticated than “winner-takes all / choose between 2” voting. Further complicating things is Kenneth Arrow’s Noble-winning proof which showed that there is no way to uniquely choose between 3 options under conditions that we take for granted as fair. And even if we ignore Arrow, we are not going to all get together and rank our own portfolios, much less the union of all portfolios of possible futures... This is a very hard problem of values and institutions.
Difficulties aside, I see this challenge as absolutely central to sustainability and much more complex than “paper or plastic?” Current choices matter, but their meaning is greatly enhanced if they are made in the context of collectively imagined futures.
Writing for Qaulia
There is a new blog on American Association for the Advancement of Science web site called Qualia. It is part of the MemberCentral section of the AAAS web site and I fear that it is not accessible unless you are a AAAS member (do you get Science, if yes, then you are a AAAS member). So that means that pearls of my wisdom recorded there will not be accessible to most of the people of who have internet access.
The other thing about those posts is that they are stripping all of my hyperlinks out. I ask you, what is the point of a blog post that cannot link anywhere? The jokes all go away and in one case the main point of the post was compromised.
So I am going to repost things from Qualia here. That is probably some violation of trust or some agreement to which I am party, but also unaware. Time will tell.
On with the show.
The other thing about those posts is that they are stripping all of my hyperlinks out. I ask you, what is the point of a blog post that cannot link anywhere? The jokes all go away and in one case the main point of the post was compromised.
So I am going to repost things from Qualia here. That is probably some violation of trust or some agreement to which I am party, but also unaware. Time will tell.
On with the show.
March 20, 2010
CO2 clock
(Note the difference in the value between my picture (here) and the picture on their website.)
March 19, 2010
World Energy Technologies Summit
Yesterday, thanks to the organizer's (Jim Clark) generosity, I attended the World Energy Technologies Summit at the Time Life Building in New York City. It was a fascinating day full of very smart people talking about the current state of energy technologies and the challenges we face going forward. In the following I will summarize some of the main ideas that seemed to recur over the course of the day.
Portfolio of Solutions
There was broad agreement that there is no silver bullet. The full menu of renewables was represented as were ideas relating to improved handling of fossil fuels. CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) was present only in the context that it is a long way off and very unlikely to be a significant part of our near-term management portfolio. Combined Heat and Power (CHP) on the other hand was presented as an immediate and easily implemented improvement to a broad spectrum of our energy production facilities. Clearly there will be other views on the details, but there was a strong sense that we need to be working very hard across a very broad spectrum of technologies.
Clean Energy Standard
The focus of all of the participants was on producing energy with low carbon impacts. There was very little distinction made between renewables and low C fossil. There was a strong case made that there is a lot of natural gas coming on line and that, properly managed, that resource could put a big dent in our (US) current CO2 emissions (to the extent that CCS was considered feasible, it was in the context of natural gas). Hence there was a strong sense that Clean Energy Standards should replace Renewable Energy Standards. (The case was made that by eliminating all fossil fuels from a standard, the perverse case of maintaining coal plants often results.) Our attention needs to be on driving down the amount of carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere in the face of the very real demands for energy that will develop in the coming decades.
Information Technologies
It is clear that information technologies will play a big role in managing (reducing) our energy usage as we go forward. Google is putting a lot of effort here and there was at least 1 other startup present focused on sub-household / sub-building level energy management.
Regulation
The regulatory framework in the US is broadly perceived to be very badly broken. In the context of arguing for Feed In Tariffs, Kevin Parker from Deutsche Bank argued that countries that will compete well for investment funds will have regulatory frameworks that have transparency, longevity and certainty (TLC). In the US we currently have none of these, while Europe and some countries and Asia do. While not explicitly stated, it seemed implied that the floundering about wrt a cohesive energy policy in the US could be worse than not trying at all. While there was broad agreement that we need a "good", systematic energy policy framework and there were many examples of policies that were counterproductive, beyond the need for TLC, there was no discussion of how we would go about designing a "good" policy landscape (not entirely true, see the links to the Breakthrough Institute below).
Finance and Investment
This issue is closely related to the previous point. Many speakers encouraged vastly increased government investment in energy technologies, both on the R&D side and on the market side (e.g. in the form of loan guarantees). It was also clear that the government cannot fill the demand for investment. The notion of a "trillion $ market" came up often and it is clear that private investment will be needed. The absence of TLC in the US policy landscape strongly discourages domestic investment because regulatory risk cannot be quantified; hence investment dollars go elsewhere (e.g. Europe and Asia).
A sense of urgency
Things are happening very fast in this arena. Companies that did not exist 5 years ago are now global leaders in some sectors (e.g. photovoltaics). While the US continues to have strength, Germany and China are rapidly emerging as leaders in energy technology, not only in manufacturing, but also in innovation. While the state of play is not rosy, a presentation by the Breakthrough Institute made the case that with decisive action, the US can maintain its historical leadership role.
Many more bits and pieces, but I will leave it at that.
Portfolio of Solutions
There was broad agreement that there is no silver bullet. The full menu of renewables was represented as were ideas relating to improved handling of fossil fuels. CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) was present only in the context that it is a long way off and very unlikely to be a significant part of our near-term management portfolio. Combined Heat and Power (CHP) on the other hand was presented as an immediate and easily implemented improvement to a broad spectrum of our energy production facilities. Clearly there will be other views on the details, but there was a strong sense that we need to be working very hard across a very broad spectrum of technologies.
Clean Energy Standard
The focus of all of the participants was on producing energy with low carbon impacts. There was very little distinction made between renewables and low C fossil. There was a strong case made that there is a lot of natural gas coming on line and that, properly managed, that resource could put a big dent in our (US) current CO2 emissions (to the extent that CCS was considered feasible, it was in the context of natural gas). Hence there was a strong sense that Clean Energy Standards should replace Renewable Energy Standards. (The case was made that by eliminating all fossil fuels from a standard, the perverse case of maintaining coal plants often results.) Our attention needs to be on driving down the amount of carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere in the face of the very real demands for energy that will develop in the coming decades.
Information Technologies
It is clear that information technologies will play a big role in managing (reducing) our energy usage as we go forward. Google is putting a lot of effort here and there was at least 1 other startup present focused on sub-household / sub-building level energy management.
Regulation
The regulatory framework in the US is broadly perceived to be very badly broken. In the context of arguing for Feed In Tariffs, Kevin Parker from Deutsche Bank argued that countries that will compete well for investment funds will have regulatory frameworks that have transparency, longevity and certainty (TLC). In the US we currently have none of these, while Europe and some countries and Asia do. While not explicitly stated, it seemed implied that the floundering about wrt a cohesive energy policy in the US could be worse than not trying at all. While there was broad agreement that we need a "good", systematic energy policy framework and there were many examples of policies that were counterproductive, beyond the need for TLC, there was no discussion of how we would go about designing a "good" policy landscape (not entirely true, see the links to the Breakthrough Institute below).
Finance and Investment
This issue is closely related to the previous point. Many speakers encouraged vastly increased government investment in energy technologies, both on the R&D side and on the market side (e.g. in the form of loan guarantees). It was also clear that the government cannot fill the demand for investment. The notion of a "trillion $ market" came up often and it is clear that private investment will be needed. The absence of TLC in the US policy landscape strongly discourages domestic investment because regulatory risk cannot be quantified; hence investment dollars go elsewhere (e.g. Europe and Asia).
A sense of urgency
Things are happening very fast in this arena. Companies that did not exist 5 years ago are now global leaders in some sectors (e.g. photovoltaics). While the US continues to have strength, Germany and China are rapidly emerging as leaders in energy technology, not only in manufacturing, but also in innovation. While the state of play is not rosy, a presentation by the Breakthrough Institute made the case that with decisive action, the US can maintain its historical leadership role.
Many more bits and pieces, but I will leave it at that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
