If Present Trends Continue, That’ll be the First Time
Posted by Scott Dunn on July 16, 2008
Trends are fickle. They seem unstoppable, but something happens. They end up falling by their own increased weight, they get tired, or someone comes up with a better idea. They aren’t irresistible forces after all. They get overtaken by events.
The ancient Persian proverb says, “Even this shall pass away.” The smart money says, long term bet against the trend.
Up until now, I agreed with that. Americans’ nature, fearlessness and ingenuity will find a way to thwart any problem.
But there’s a current problem that I don’t see an answer for, short or long term.
I haven’t heard of the solution for rising oil and food prices. Have you? I don’t have faith that our politicians will find a way out.
If there were a way to harness all the talents of our private sector’s entrepreneurship and creativity, we would come up with brilliant, breakthrough answers.
Imagine you were on a team whose mission was to stop those rising prices. You have no restrictions, no boundaries. Turn your imaginations loose. And imagine if you could tap into all the greatest brains in history—Edison, Newton, Bill Gates, Lincoln, and all those hidden inventors working in their garages. What would they come up with? Ethanol and wind power won’t do.
We can’t just muddle through. Some people out there are out to get us. We must have ideas and will power.
So will this be the first time that present trends will continue? They can’t. Three hundred million Americans can’t let that happen. Twenty years from now will we be able to look back and say we rose to the occasion, or that we went quietly into the night? Your ideas?
Elaina said
It might be one of the few long-term trends that continues, but the longer it lasts, the more workarounds will arise. For Atlantans, maybe it means that we actually consider working on the same side of the city as we live. As for food prices, maybe it means we stop filling ourselves with overly processed, overly marketed junk food and start focusing on quality, not quantity.
As I watch the politicians fight about “solutions,” in the meantime I must figure out how my business model needs to adapt to the changing environment.
John Alderman said
There are two levels of response to the energy crisis: The short term (0-5 years) and the Long term (5 + years).
In the short term the only solution we have available is ‘conservation’. This means that we will have to voluntarily and individually cut down on energy usage by changing lifestyles. There are many forms of this, but they all are rooted in changes in current behavious to result in current savings. The question is how to educate our entire population in how to change behavior to save energy. We have done similar things before when we had an ‘oil’ crisis, and it will work again, at least to a limited extent.
In the long term, our American Ingenuity will provide technological answers to help us reduce our energy consumption. This will include renewable energy sources, regulated and incentived conservation practices, using local rather than foreign sources. All this will take a long time, and a lot of money, but it will pay off big.
We HAVE to do this. The world consumption of fossil fuels is going to grow regardless of our conservation efforts. We can avoid being at the effect of this only by changing our behavior and technology to make our standard of living independant of fossil fuels.
What can you and I do about it? We can educate our leaders so they will stop trying to pander to the narrow special interests and begin to see the value of energy independance as a national security issue.
The difference is startling! Consider the influence of Gore vs Bush in this context. It’s time Americans became a nation of Greenies in order to save our civilization!
Larry Logan said
Sad to say, but the price of food and oil must go up. In fact, it’s been going up since the beginning of time. Today it hurt YOU but to an Amish farmer, it matters not. Not that I subscribe to that lifestyle, but rather I suggest that a dependance upon oil must cease. Americans eat too much as well. We consider the abundance of food a necessity and do little for world hunger. In the world economy, we trade food for oil you know. Here’s someting else we take for granted, money and prosperity. I can assure you this, in 100 years this will not only not matter, but pail in comparison to the challenges of the day. We’re just getting to the other side, painfully. It’s that life?
George Lemmond said
Elaina, John and Larry all make good points. It’s hard to imagine how we will solve today’s problems, yet alone predict what technology, enemies, and natural disasters hold for the future.
I’m not ready to become a greenie, but I think the next couple years will be critical.
George