I’ve noticed a repeated pattern throughout the world that the people who run organisations tend to be the most extreme of the climate extremists. Why?
Some examples: the Pope, US president, Nurse (former head of Royalist Society), Richard Branson.
Here are some suggestions:
- Those who can do … do. Those who can’t do … become managers. In other words, those who understand how things work in the world, tend to be interested in things that work. After all … it’s no great skill for us humans to interact with other humans. And management is really not that difficult – any decent parent knows how to be a manager, but only a few of us have the skills, education and experience to various aspects of the world.
- Heads of organisations are seldom great thinkers. Instead, they are great at convincing other people to hand over ideas, power, etc. In other words, it is not what you know, but who you know who knows what you need to know – and the head’s ability to persuade underlings to hand over what they know to the heads who don’t know. So, the heads become powerful, by creating a coalition of people to feed them information, rather than knowing the information for themselves. As such they are extremely vulnerable to false information and “group-think”. Particularly ideas of their social grouping which they like … because to put it quite simply, they lack the knowledge/intelligence to know when they are being fed bullshit.
- You don’t get to be head of some big organisation without a great deal of arrogance. And there can be nothing more arrogant than the idea that us humans could significantly change the climate. But also heads of organisations tend to live “consensus” decision making. Not that they seek a consensus, but instead, if they perceive a “consensus” even if all the individuals are cautious about a subject, they will tend to see “consensus” as showing that there is no need for caution. So, often heads, despite their almost total ignorance on a subject, will, if a “consensus” is present, be far less cautious than their advisers on a subject. Which works – when the advisers have all formed their own views – but is a recipe for disaster when they all come to their view from the same source.
- World leaders today have a particular problem with climate. Because unlike those of us, who have pretty much stayed in the same place for decades on end, and whose own experience tells us the climate extremists rhetoric is bullshit, someone who has constantly moved location in their political career and doubtless goes on exotic foreign trips to relax rather than walk out their own front door … they haven’t a clue what is “normal” for even their own “local” climate. That’s because they don’t have a “local” climate.
It can be summed up in a phrase that came from US management ‘there’s no such thing as “can’t”‘. Or another ‘there are no problems, only opportunities’. Both are utter testicles. When my boss interrupted me to say that he didn’t want to hear me say I couldn’t do what he was asking for, I replied ‘ok, I’ll rephrase – which account code do you wish me to book the £1.5 million cost to, for the job that we now agree can be done?’ Too often senior management have either never been on any shop floor or not been on the shop floor of the company they now control. They have little or no knowledge of what can or can’t be done. Take on huge environmental rules ? No problem, just pass the edict on to the drones who will either do the job or be replaced with someone who can. Some people may rise to the challenge but others find different ways to stay on.
The VW scandal is a fine example. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the people at the top were unaware of how their company had ‘achieved’ the low emission standard. While they may not have ordered their underlings to cheat, they set the atmosphere that allows it to happen. They spinelessly will have nodded along when the rules were set. ‘See what a nice environmental company we are’. They will have patted themselves on the back for their green credentials. And now they’re in the poo.
Those claims from people like Oreskes, that big companies have been whispering against green plans are wrong. Companies chose instead to wrap themselves in green. It’s the mere workers who have ‘let everyone down’. It turns out the nasty little devils couldn’t perform miracles after all. \sarc.
I have noticed there is an attitude of “I’ve got mine, who cares about you?” in global warming and in most politics. The managers have golden parachutes, may have made millions or billions off coal and oil, so they care nothing about the rest of the world and what happens due to their new-found environmental concerns. They have what they wanted. They really don’t care beyond that.
That’s a better way to put it!
Yep! They’re rich, what do they care about the cost of living for their underlings?
It’s a feature up and down the heirachy. Governments are doing it as well. They’re merrily signing agreements their countries can’t live up to. They naively look at early reductions and extrapolate them into the future. And if something outstanding happens and they get a big fall, they don’t think ‘boy, were we lucky’ they think ‘see, I knew they could do it with a little push’.
Just as with immigration, crime, and all the other stuff that’s turning to mush, once you’ve done the easy stuff, each improvement needs a bigger push and more resources. Those bigger actions require determination and our current crop of policitians haven’t got it. So they revert to doing small stuff that doesn’t work.
Some really ought to write a book: “People are clever … it’s organisations that are stupid” … because if you are an engineer with a good overall knowledge of how organisations, science and engineering work, it is pretty damned obvious that governments are being completely stupid.
But if you spoke to any individual within the government – they aren’t (mostly) as stupid as the whole organisation put together.
In other words, if you were to give them a suitable “IQ” test, the average score of the employees might not be that much lower than sceptics – say 100/90. But as a whole the organisation must be pretty close to requiring remedial help.
My Dad made a very good living as a management consultant after he retired asking workforces what was wrong with their company. He then repackaged it, added advice how to let the workforce work smarter and presented it to the management. It worked fine until the management reverted to their old ways.