The Titanic sank 100 years ago today. The following was first published on the April 12 Trenton Times opinion page under the title, "Earth's passengers should learn from the Titanic."
The good ship America is steaming full speed ahead towards the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s demise--the biggest symbol of avoidable disaster ever to sail the seas of human discourse. Given concerns about where we are headed, as a nation and as a planet, it’s worth asking what were the ingredients for disaster as the Titanic approached ice fields on a moonless night.
As chance would have it, the anniversary falls on April 15, usually a rallying point for discontent with government and taxes. But the elements feeding the Titanic’s demise, and other disasters in more recent decades, suggest that the reflexive anti-government thinking so dominant today misses the boat when it comes to identifying the dangers we face in the 21st century.
Technological Hubris: Most people associate the Titanic with a delusional belief in infallibility. The Titanic’s Captain Smith said he could not “imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder." Worst-case scenarios tend to get short shrift in an atmosphere of overconfidence.
Inadequate Regulation: Lack of regulation primed the Titanic for disaster. Ships were not required to have sufficient lifeboats. Lax standards contributed to critical breakdowns in wireless communication between the Titanic and other ships.
Ignored Warnings: Warnings came from various ships in the vicinity that were encountering ice fields that night, but the Titanic made only minor adjustments, and continued at nearly full speed.
Don’t Rock The Boat: The Titanic pressed forward despite risky conditions in part because of high expectations that it stay on schedule.
Poor Information Flow: Safeguarding the ship was not the wireless operators’ top priority. After forwarding to the captain several warnings of icebergs from other ships, they went back to their primary role--relaying the passengers’ personal messages--and dismissed additional warnings as an annoyance.
Delayed Feedback: Having ignored warnings, the Titanic was dependent upon its lookouts to spot icebergs in its path. But visibility was limited on a moonless night, and icebergs show little of their true size looming underwater.
Momentum: When the iceberg finally came into view, the ship’s momentum--its sheer mass and high speed--made a last minute change of course impossible.
This list can be applied to most any disaster of recent decades. Warnings from engineers, scientists and other specialists with critical knowledge went unheeded prior to the two space shuttle disasters, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the financial collapse. Pressure to stay on schedule caused NASA to launch the space shuttle Challenger despite weather concerns. Inadequate regulation facilitated the financial meltdown.
But the list is most relevant to a calamity just now unfolding. The assumption is that Earth is infinitely resilient, “unsinkable”. Though warnings are repeatedly sounded that we are taking a very risky path, we feel compelled to move forward, to stoke the engines of the economy, even if it’s an economy based on fatally flawed fuels. Advertisements bathe us in celebratory images of gleaming automobiles that, for all their appeal and utility, speed the destabilization of climate.
Our leaders might be more emboldened to take strategic action if voters were better informed about the tremendous risks embedded in the status quo. But the news media are focused on the day to day political drama rather than relaying the scientists’ increasingly urgent warnings. Consensus for action becomes even more problematic when people feel they have a right to their own facts. Worst-case scenarios dare not be mentioned.
What is particularly important to note here is that the Titanic was just one ship. Other ships eventually arrived to pick up the survivors. Laws were passed requiring more lifeboats and better wireless communication. Despite the tragic loss, civilization could continue, safer for the lessons learned. But with spaceship Earth, there are no lifeboats, no other planets to come to our rescue, no second chances. The momentum of both the human economy and human-caused climate change is huge and will require an immense and prolonged effort to counter.
Before the passengers on the Titanic lost their lives, they lost the comfort of their assumptions. Everything deemed important up to the moment of the fateful collision was suddenly rendered trivial. Maximizing one’s wealth, status and entertainment, staying on schedule--all these urgent priorities dissolved into nothing.
We, too, are steaming at full speed towards a rude awakening, in which the priorities we cling to so strongly now will prove in retrospect to have mattered little. A way of life is not guarded by vilifying government, branding scientific knowledge as elitist, and stripping a society of its regulatory protections. “Every man for himself” are the words of a ship captain who realizes all is lost, not a slogan for progress.
The lessons of the Titanic and more recent disasters are there to be learned from. Take warnings seriously, consider worst-case scenarios, and when there’s trouble ahead, shift course before it’s too late.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Two Sides of Regulation
A January 24 article in my local paper announces that the U.S. Dept. of Transportation is imposing new regulations on airlines to protect consumers from unexpected baggage fees and other hidden costs. With so much anti-regulatory talk in political circles, one would expect an outcry over additional regulations of any kind. But there is none mentioned, except for an airline representative who asks why other industries, such as hotels, are not similarly regulated.
Government regulation, then, is both widely reviled as detrimental and quietly accepted as necessary to protect consumers.
Government regulation, then, is both widely reviled as detrimental and quietly accepted as necessary to protect consumers.
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Tom Brokaw and Recapturing the American Dream
Tom Brokaw came to Princeton University December 6 to give a talk, built around his new book, "The Time of Our Lives: A conversation about America; Who we are, where we've been, and where we have to go now, to recapture the American dream." (Pause for breath.) His low voice with a touch of gravel sometimes caused words to disappear altogether into the resonant woodwork and stone of Richardson Auditorium. He is calling people to a grand cause--America's journey back to greatness--not with soaring oratory but with a deep conversational tone.
Brokaw must be acknowledged for raising the subject that should be dominating national discourse. More than most, he is calling on America to step out of its lethargy and political paralysis. I sympathize with his cause, but also came to his talk with a mischievous question. What does one call a generation that is greater than The Greatest Generation? There really should be a name, because that is what we need right now. By calling any generation The Greatest Generation--as Brokaw famously named those who endured the hardships of the Great Depression, then defeated the Nazis and Japanese in World War 2--the implication is that all generations that follow cannot possibly compare. While conveying an understandable and deserved respect for those who lived through that era, the title implies that America's best days are behind it.
Consider the possibility that our challenges now are deeper than those faced by America in 1941. The Greatest Generation's enemies were clearly the aggressors, and conveniently distinct geographically and culturally. Back then, the country had a full tank of gas (oil extraction from U.S. lands didn't begin declining until 1971), and though we were 16th in military power in 1939, our economic potential loomed larger than that of Germany and Japan. Now, our easy oil--the baby fat of a nation's youth--is gone, and the greatest economic potential lies elsewhere, in China and India. Most vexing, our greatest enemy is not the sort that we can bomb into submission, but instead is embedded in our lifestyles.
Mr. Brokaw mentioned global warming in passing, as part of a list of challenges. That's two words more than most speakers are willing to give the subject. Understandable, one must say. It's hard to imagine a more insidious and spirit-sapping enemy than climate change, an enemy that prospers on our lifestyles and offers no target to shoot at. It manifests as miniscule, invisible, seemingly benign molecules in the air and sea, lies low at first, growing in proportion to our machine-enhanced comfort, endangering not us so much as our offspring, and by the time its menace galvanizes us to action with Pearl Harbor-scale devastation, it will be by then unstoppable. Such an enemy, exploiting our every weakness and blind spot, requires a generation greater than The Greatest to defeat.
Brokaw is best when describing the lack of sacrifice by the many during a time when America has fought its "two longest wars." The term "1%" came up twice--first to describe the primarily working class and lower middle class soldiers who with their families have borne the brunt of those distant wars, and then in reference to the economic elite who gained the most over the past decade while the middle class lost ground. He said that, in a democracy, it is unjust, even immoral, to have less than 1% fight our wars for us.
He stresses the importance of education, and sees it as the stage upon which we must compete with emerging powers. But that raised another question. How can we convince kids that knowledge matters if journalistic etiquette allows our political leaders to deny scientific and economic realities? The political paralysis we all decry is sustained in part by a willful refusal by many politicians and voters to accept a basic understanding of how the world works.
Brokaw described the widespread poverty in America as it entered the Second World War. For many men, military service meant receiving for the first time a new pair of boots. Many trained with wooden rifles. I would speculate that those preceding years of deprivation had much to do with America's ability to win the war. It's easier to get people to sacrifice if they are already conditioned by long economic depression to make do with less. America's prolonged indulgence now, what Brokaw describes as a long period of "taking from the cup without giving back", has been marked by a sense of entitlement, a belief that borrowed money and material abundance are our birthright, and that sacrifice equates with self-denial.
He also offered compelling reference to a time when physical labor and the outdoors were more a part of everyday life. He described his father as "a man educated on his own terms," with "a strong back and a good set of hands." At the family's ranch in Montana, when the grandkids were of sufficient age, Brokaw took them hiking off trail to a distant cabin. They saw bear and elk, and slept where no ambient urban light softens the night, and darkness is near absolute. Precious few have the opportunity for such an unfiltered encounter with the land from which America's greatness grew.
There is a tendency to let ourselves off the hook. As each crisis shakes the country--9/11, ballooning debt, the economic meltdown of 2008, and the gathering chaos of climate change--a false refrain sounds, that nobody saw it coming. America has long had people with the training, imagination and insight needed to look into the future and see trouble ahead. Up to now they have been largely ignored. One can hope that Tom Brokaw will be an exception, that his writing and deep voice will not be absorbed into the background rumble of the status quo, but actually reach minds that have not been reached on any other wavelength.
Brokaw must be acknowledged for raising the subject that should be dominating national discourse. More than most, he is calling on America to step out of its lethargy and political paralysis. I sympathize with his cause, but also came to his talk with a mischievous question. What does one call a generation that is greater than The Greatest Generation? There really should be a name, because that is what we need right now. By calling any generation The Greatest Generation--as Brokaw famously named those who endured the hardships of the Great Depression, then defeated the Nazis and Japanese in World War 2--the implication is that all generations that follow cannot possibly compare. While conveying an understandable and deserved respect for those who lived through that era, the title implies that America's best days are behind it.
Consider the possibility that our challenges now are deeper than those faced by America in 1941. The Greatest Generation's enemies were clearly the aggressors, and conveniently distinct geographically and culturally. Back then, the country had a full tank of gas (oil extraction from U.S. lands didn't begin declining until 1971), and though we were 16th in military power in 1939, our economic potential loomed larger than that of Germany and Japan. Now, our easy oil--the baby fat of a nation's youth--is gone, and the greatest economic potential lies elsewhere, in China and India. Most vexing, our greatest enemy is not the sort that we can bomb into submission, but instead is embedded in our lifestyles.
Mr. Brokaw mentioned global warming in passing, as part of a list of challenges. That's two words more than most speakers are willing to give the subject. Understandable, one must say. It's hard to imagine a more insidious and spirit-sapping enemy than climate change, an enemy that prospers on our lifestyles and offers no target to shoot at. It manifests as miniscule, invisible, seemingly benign molecules in the air and sea, lies low at first, growing in proportion to our machine-enhanced comfort, endangering not us so much as our offspring, and by the time its menace galvanizes us to action with Pearl Harbor-scale devastation, it will be by then unstoppable. Such an enemy, exploiting our every weakness and blind spot, requires a generation greater than The Greatest to defeat.
Brokaw is best when describing the lack of sacrifice by the many during a time when America has fought its "two longest wars." The term "1%" came up twice--first to describe the primarily working class and lower middle class soldiers who with their families have borne the brunt of those distant wars, and then in reference to the economic elite who gained the most over the past decade while the middle class lost ground. He said that, in a democracy, it is unjust, even immoral, to have less than 1% fight our wars for us.
He stresses the importance of education, and sees it as the stage upon which we must compete with emerging powers. But that raised another question. How can we convince kids that knowledge matters if journalistic etiquette allows our political leaders to deny scientific and economic realities? The political paralysis we all decry is sustained in part by a willful refusal by many politicians and voters to accept a basic understanding of how the world works.
Brokaw described the widespread poverty in America as it entered the Second World War. For many men, military service meant receiving for the first time a new pair of boots. Many trained with wooden rifles. I would speculate that those preceding years of deprivation had much to do with America's ability to win the war. It's easier to get people to sacrifice if they are already conditioned by long economic depression to make do with less. America's prolonged indulgence now, what Brokaw describes as a long period of "taking from the cup without giving back", has been marked by a sense of entitlement, a belief that borrowed money and material abundance are our birthright, and that sacrifice equates with self-denial.
He also offered compelling reference to a time when physical labor and the outdoors were more a part of everyday life. He described his father as "a man educated on his own terms," with "a strong back and a good set of hands." At the family's ranch in Montana, when the grandkids were of sufficient age, Brokaw took them hiking off trail to a distant cabin. They saw bear and elk, and slept where no ambient urban light softens the night, and darkness is near absolute. Precious few have the opportunity for such an unfiltered encounter with the land from which America's greatness grew.
There is a tendency to let ourselves off the hook. As each crisis shakes the country--9/11, ballooning debt, the economic meltdown of 2008, and the gathering chaos of climate change--a false refrain sounds, that nobody saw it coming. America has long had people with the training, imagination and insight needed to look into the future and see trouble ahead. Up to now they have been largely ignored. One can hope that Tom Brokaw will be an exception, that his writing and deep voice will not be absorbed into the background rumble of the status quo, but actually reach minds that have not been reached on any other wavelength.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Rethinking News Coverage of Wildfires
The traditional coverage of western wildfires offers a prime example of how consumers of the news are not informed about the underlying forces that drive tragedy. If kept unaware of the underlying forces, people will be unlikely to support changes in policy that would help reduce those tragedies, and so we are destined to have a perpetual stream of articles detailing the latest tragedy caused by wildfires.
Sunday's Trenton Times, 11.20.11, offers a typical Associated Press story about a wildfire in Reno Nevada destroying 32 homes. The article answers the usual questions of what, where, when and who. Victims and damage are tallied, and heroes cheered. The warlike imagery describes a territorial battle between people and nature. "Firefighters made large advances against the blaze that sent nearly 10,000 people from their homes in the middle of the night and sent flames licking the edges of the region's mountain roads."
Where these articles leave readers uninformed is in answering the question "why?". This particular article offers possible causes: a downed power line or a homeless encampment. But though one of these may have actually started the fire, it doesn't explain why so much damage was done.
Most people are unaware that fire is a natural and often beneficial force in nature. Many types of trees, grasses and herbs are adapted to survive periodic fire and even depend upon it. American Indians used fire to create more open, productive landscapes that attracted wildlife with their nutrient-rich regrowth.
Where periodic fire is a natural component of the landscape, home building is a risky proposition, in much the same way that building in a floodplain courts disaster. People compound the risk by building homes with wooden shingles, or allowing highly combustible vegetation to grow close to their homes. In woodlands where natural, low-level fires used to sweep through periodically, consuming dead wood and pine needles, the presence of homes requires suppression of those beneficial fires. Dead plant matter in the woods then accumulates to dangerous levels, eventually fueling the sort of massive, uncontrollable, destructive wildfires we end up reading about.
In the past, one or another news organization would run an article explaining these deeper ecological realities. This was particularly true in 1988, when the summer-long fires in Yellowstone National Park led journalists to dig beneath the default storyline. But, particularly as news budgets have diminished, news coverage has narrowed back to the default storyline, presenting wildland fire as a destructive force victimizing innocent homeowners. It is the repetition of that storyline that powers people's misperceptions, and wastes countless teachable moments.
Back in the 1990's, I sent letters to the Associated Press, alerting them to the misleading storyline that drove their coverage of wildfires. Though one editor responded, there was no change in the approach to coverage. Now, with news budgets greatly diminished, and competition creating ever more pressure to generate dramatic copy, there is even less likelihood of reform.
Reality undermines the simple storyline of evil fire and innocent victims. The failure to convey that underlying reality about some distant fire may seem of little note, but understanding the role people play in magnifying nature's destructiveness is fundamental to understanding the even greater tragedy of climate change.
Traditional coverage of wildfires, then, leaves people unaware of underlying causes and thereby increases the nation's vulnerability to future disasters.
Note: Another A.P. article termed the Reno fire--more typical of August than a cold November night--the "largest 'urban' wild land fire in Reno's history." As freak weather events become increasingly common in the U.S. and elsewhere, the governor offered what is becoming a cliche, "I don't think anybody ever anticipated we'd have an incident like this at this point in the year." The governor and others might not be taken so much by surprise if the drivers of disaster--home construction in flammable landscapes combined with climate destabilization--were more frequently mentioned in news coverage.
Sunday's Trenton Times, 11.20.11, offers a typical Associated Press story about a wildfire in Reno Nevada destroying 32 homes. The article answers the usual questions of what, where, when and who. Victims and damage are tallied, and heroes cheered. The warlike imagery describes a territorial battle between people and nature. "Firefighters made large advances against the blaze that sent nearly 10,000 people from their homes in the middle of the night and sent flames licking the edges of the region's mountain roads."
Where these articles leave readers uninformed is in answering the question "why?". This particular article offers possible causes: a downed power line or a homeless encampment. But though one of these may have actually started the fire, it doesn't explain why so much damage was done.
Most people are unaware that fire is a natural and often beneficial force in nature. Many types of trees, grasses and herbs are adapted to survive periodic fire and even depend upon it. American Indians used fire to create more open, productive landscapes that attracted wildlife with their nutrient-rich regrowth.
Where periodic fire is a natural component of the landscape, home building is a risky proposition, in much the same way that building in a floodplain courts disaster. People compound the risk by building homes with wooden shingles, or allowing highly combustible vegetation to grow close to their homes. In woodlands where natural, low-level fires used to sweep through periodically, consuming dead wood and pine needles, the presence of homes requires suppression of those beneficial fires. Dead plant matter in the woods then accumulates to dangerous levels, eventually fueling the sort of massive, uncontrollable, destructive wildfires we end up reading about.
In the past, one or another news organization would run an article explaining these deeper ecological realities. This was particularly true in 1988, when the summer-long fires in Yellowstone National Park led journalists to dig beneath the default storyline. But, particularly as news budgets have diminished, news coverage has narrowed back to the default storyline, presenting wildland fire as a destructive force victimizing innocent homeowners. It is the repetition of that storyline that powers people's misperceptions, and wastes countless teachable moments.
Back in the 1990's, I sent letters to the Associated Press, alerting them to the misleading storyline that drove their coverage of wildfires. Though one editor responded, there was no change in the approach to coverage. Now, with news budgets greatly diminished, and competition creating ever more pressure to generate dramatic copy, there is even less likelihood of reform.
Reality undermines the simple storyline of evil fire and innocent victims. The failure to convey that underlying reality about some distant fire may seem of little note, but understanding the role people play in magnifying nature's destructiveness is fundamental to understanding the even greater tragedy of climate change.
Traditional coverage of wildfires, then, leaves people unaware of underlying causes and thereby increases the nation's vulnerability to future disasters.
Note: Another A.P. article termed the Reno fire--more typical of August than a cold November night--the "largest 'urban' wild land fire in Reno's history." As freak weather events become increasingly common in the U.S. and elsewhere, the governor offered what is becoming a cliche, "I don't think anybody ever anticipated we'd have an incident like this at this point in the year." The governor and others might not be taken so much by surprise if the drivers of disaster--home construction in flammable landscapes combined with climate destabilization--were more frequently mentioned in news coverage.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Flushing Outdated Information Out of Public Discourse
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, in an attack on regulation of light bulbs, recently resurrected old complaints about low-flow toilets. In a Gail Collins column in the NY Times, he is quoted as saying, “You busybodies always want to tell us how we can live our lives better. I’ve been waiting for 20 years to talk about how bad these toilets are.”
What we really need is a way to flush unsubstantiated assertions out of the national discourse. Though he should know better, given his leadership position, Mr. Paul is suffering from a common malady--a point of view based on limited and very dated information.
Back in 1997, when the federal government passed a law requiring that all new toilets use a maximum of 1.6 gallons of water per flush, editorial boards and comedians seized on the issue as an example of regulatory excess. I researched the issue and was surprised to learn that the national regulation had actually been requested by the industry, and that many companies had responded by designing effective toilets that conformed to the regulations. In the last couple years, companies have developed designs that use even less water and yet far outperform the pre-1997 toilets.
There are two stories here. One is that government regulation can challenge industry to innovate in ways it would not have otherwise. The other aspect is that it is foolhardy to base critiques on old information. While falsely criticizing government regulation, Mr. Paul unwittingly casts aspersions on a constituency he likely supports: the many companies who responded to regulation by designing better products for their customers.
What we really need is a way to flush unsubstantiated assertions out of the national discourse. Though he should know better, given his leadership position, Mr. Paul is suffering from a common malady--a point of view based on limited and very dated information.
Back in 1997, when the federal government passed a law requiring that all new toilets use a maximum of 1.6 gallons of water per flush, editorial boards and comedians seized on the issue as an example of regulatory excess. I researched the issue and was surprised to learn that the national regulation had actually been requested by the industry, and that many companies had responded by designing effective toilets that conformed to the regulations. In the last couple years, companies have developed designs that use even less water and yet far outperform the pre-1997 toilets.
There are two stories here. One is that government regulation can challenge industry to innovate in ways it would not have otherwise. The other aspect is that it is foolhardy to base critiques on old information. While falsely criticizing government regulation, Mr. Paul unwittingly casts aspersions on a constituency he likely supports: the many companies who responded to regulation by designing better products for their customers.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Broke......broke......broke
"Broke...broke....broke....broke...broke..." That's my favorite quote from the Stewart/Colbert rally on the Washington Mall this past Saturday. When Stewart shifted from comedy to a heartfelt call for sanity in today's political discourse, he ended one of his sentences with the word "broke", which then could be heard echoing down the mall, as if the government buildings were voicing their concurrence with his sentiment.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
The Government-Business Relationship
I used to think of government's regulation of the business sector as similar to the role of referees in sports. Government lays down the rules, draws the lines within which the game must be played, and then keeps the players honest. Ideally, the rules and oversight will set limits that channel rather than overly inhibit the players' energy.
But the recent government bailouts of the financial and automobile sectors suggest more of a parent-child relationship, in which the offspring object to any parental interference, only to come back for money when the going gets rough.
But the recent government bailouts of the financial and automobile sectors suggest more of a parent-child relationship, in which the offspring object to any parental interference, only to come back for money when the going gets rough.
Mergers and the Public Interest
Now that we've been told that some financial institutions and automobile companies are "too big to fail", leading to vast bailouts at public expense, it's clear that the public has a vested interest in deciding whether corporations should be allowed to attain such a size and pervasive impact. Like trees that grow to tower over a home, the survival of the home becomes increasingly threatened. It may be a fine arrangement until the day when economic winds send the tree crashing down.
It would be interesting to see if this potential impact was even considered when mergers were creating ever larger banks and insurance companies.
It would be interesting to see if this potential impact was even considered when mergers were creating ever larger banks and insurance companies.
Peanuts and the Economic Value of Inspectors
There's no lack of examples these days of how a lack of government oversight can be a business's worst enemy. Seems like anti-regulatory policies don't so much set corporations free to grow as give them the freedom to hang themselves.
According to an AP article, the inadequate number of state inspectors may have contributed to the outbreak of salmonella in a Georgia peanut plant. The Peanut Corporation of America now "faces mounting lawsuits and a bankruptcy filing." A useful question is how frequent were inspections at the plant, when Georgia's 60 inspectors have 16,000 sites to monitor.
The logic of self-interest would suggest that businesses will monitor themselves to avoid bad publicity. But obviously that logic fails here. Self-interest in a highly competitive world means cut corners and do whatever you can get away with.
According to an AP article, the inadequate number of state inspectors may have contributed to the outbreak of salmonella in a Georgia peanut plant. The Peanut Corporation of America now "faces mounting lawsuits and a bankruptcy filing." A useful question is how frequent were inspections at the plant, when Georgia's 60 inspectors have 16,000 sites to monitor.
The logic of self-interest would suggest that businesses will monitor themselves to avoid bad publicity. But obviously that logic fails here. Self-interest in a highly competitive world means cut corners and do whatever you can get away with.
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