Week 5: Managing the Critical Sustainability Dilemmas of Our Times

09/22/2018 20:44

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Last week, we viewed a situation between Exxon Mobil and its multinational contractors that suggested that wealth appears to be the primary value by which that company runs.  While E-M purchased access to precious natural resources from the PNG government, per the Governor himself, “the money is gone.” Problems remain. Studying the Exxon Mobil situation and PNG has opened our eyes to what’s at stake as corporations take from cash-poor people to fill the energy requirements of the world.

Note again that scene from Network, when we heard actor Ned Beatty, playing the Network CEO, tell a terrified Howard Beale:

“You…howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today…We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business.” 

In contrast to this belief, you’ve been modeling what MIT Professor John Sterman says is the optimal approach to managing for sustainability: you’re getting into it, examining, exploring, dealing with options, angles, conflicting ideas and opinions, etc. You are learning the value of an authentic, open-minded approach to learning, and how far real-time crucial conversations, and research, can take us.

Yes, algorithms, statistical decision theories, templates, and so on, are important. But data serves us as a guide; in and of itself it doesn’t tell us what to do.

This week we take the topic further as we consider the overall ecological and human impacts of decisions we make in finding our “eco-balance.” We'll consider how to proceed when we find ourselves without an important resource. Is it truly essential...or not?  

Then we consider energy related policies established without “due diligence” to back up what has been put forth as “the way to do things.”  As always, we strive to keep our minds agile and flexible, and our hopes as high as we can.

To make future conversations more meaningful, please review BP's global prediction of what the energy mix of the future will look like. Is it hype, hope, realistic, not...?

BP projects that the United States will become energy self-sufficient in the early 2020s and maintain its position as the world’s largest producer of liquid fuels and natural gas. See more at www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/uncategorized/snapshot-bp-world-energy-outlook-2018/

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