Chapter
5 Free Response: System Traps and Opportunities
All of the solutions to systems
traps that are outlined in this chapter are summed up in this quote: “But
system traps can be escaped – by recognizing them in advance and not getting
caught in them, or by altering the structure – by reformulating goals, by
weakening, strengthening, or altering feedback loops, by adding new feedback
loops. I was thinking about “reformulating goals” while I was mountain biking
this morning. See, I have the worst mountain bike around – it has no moving
suspension, the tires are basic, and it’s basically just a bike that I found
for free and fixed up. But I took it out to Signal Peak this morning, and had a
good time. Most people wouldn’t go near my bike if they were going mountain
biking, and I don’t blame them. But I set my goals low! I said to myself, “Ok,
if I can just make it out there without wrecking my self or my bike, it will be
an accomplishment.” And I did fine! I didn’t fall into the trap that so many
recreationists fall into – having standards for how well your gear works that
are too easy to fall short of.
It seems to me that many people don’t
want to work for sustainability because they set the goals too high. “The world’s
going to end someday anyway, why try to fight it?” Yes, the end of the world
will come one day – but that’s not the point. No environmentalist thinks they
can stop the world from ending, we just think it could be delayed by quite a
long time. I can’t remember which one it was, maybe Jeb Bush, but I recently heard
a politician saying something like; “If all we can do is stop the climate from
warming two degrees, why would we make all the changes that are proposed? We
know that we’re going to have warming of two degrees already, what’s the
difference if it’s four degrees?” This is a typical mindset – that if you can’t
stop all environmental disturbances, why try to stop any at all? These people
see a goal for the system as being too high, and throw their hands up and say, “to
hell with it.” Their goals need to be reformulated. Mitigation is better than nothing.
Chapter
6 Free Response: Leverage Points
“Leverage
points are points of power.” How do we leverage for sustainable change? Making
people responsible for their future generations has been mighty successful.
Invoking the extinction of polar bears was somewhat successful, at least in the
beginning of the movement. Economic reasons are hugely powerful leverage, both
when arguing for and against change. The advertisement for the EPA’s new
report, “Benefits of Global Action,” focuses on the monetary advantages to
mitigating climate change: “By the year 2100, we could avoid $10 Billion in
agriculture losses and help to keep the price of food affordable. We can cut
billions in infrastructure costs by the end of the century, and save Americans
approximately $3 billion in annual costs to coastal property and $7 billion in
road repairs.” And while it mentions how many lives would be saved, and how we’ll
all be happier and healthier, the ad really does focus on the monetary
benefits.
Early on, Meadows argues that the
most common changes made to a system, the “parameters,” are the least likely to
change the system – and that we all spend too much time arguing about them. For
example, changing the federal minimum wage to fix inequality does not change
the social stigma of racism or other more systemic causes. This makes sense to
me – with how hard it is to get everyone to agree on something, how could we
change anything like racial views or caring for the environment, from a legal
perspective? All we can hope to do is set limits on parameters, such as capping
CO2 emissions. I’m happy about that. I’m glad no one has the power to tell me
what to think or say. One of her examples is, “After decades of the strictest air
pollution standards in the world, Los Angeles air is less dirty, but it isn’t
clean.” Seems like you’re falling into a systems trap, Ms. Meadows! How can you
hope to solve a problem like Los Angeles air pollution by setting your goal for
100% clean? That’s unreasonable! Being able to change parameters leads to
system change. Like in Los Angeles, maybe Joe Shmoe decides that dealing with
more emissions testing for his vehicle is a hassle, so he invests in a nice
bike. Then he works towards making bike transportation safer by asking his
congressperson to try to fund more bike lanes, and more bike lanes are built.
Parameter change has created a deeper system change!
Chapter
7 Free Response
In this chapter, many broad thoughts
are wrapped up about systems thinking. I particularly like this nugget of
wisdom: “Mental flexibility – the willingness to redraw boundaries, to notice
that a system has shifted into a new mode, to see how to redesign structure –
is a necessity when you live in a world of flexible systems.” From this, I
realize that it’s also not enough to simply be observant. You also have to be
open to the idea that your observations might cause you to have to change basic
assumptions that you have about the world. You can’t be offended by new
information chat challenges those basic assumptions. You can’t have an
emotional connection to them if you want to be able to keep up with a changing
system, which is what the world is.
Another point I like is summed up
here: “It’s especially interesting to watch how the various elements in the
system do or do not vary together. Watching what really happens, instead of
listening to peoples’ theories of what happens, can explode many careless
casual hypotheses.” Knowing about this kind of systems trap is important for
our presidential elections because candidates make these sorts of “casual
hypotheses” all the time. Casual hypotheses get you nowhere, they just distract
from the real problems and opportunities. They seem like a trap that is built
into our democracy, where presidential candidates try to win the favor of a
large, diverse, continent-spanning population. They have to make broad general
statements that are convincing to the average person – and end up being totally
false in reality because wrong assumptions were made about what variables in
the system have an effect on each other. Variables such as prison sentences and
drug use. Casual hypotheses are a basic way that people use systems to make
sense of the world, and are a useful tool – but only when the uncertainty of
them is understood. As the saying goes, correlation does not prove causation
(but it warrants looking into).
Another point that is in this
chapter relates to a thought I was having about urban design the other day. It
seems to me that loads of towns are just plain butt-ugly because of how they
are built. They are a continuous string of buildings of the cheapest
construction possible that are each surrounded by their own parking lot. They
are a paving-over of nature and its systems, and they are ugly to look at and
be surrounded by. The point from the chapter that relates to this is that even
if you can’t quantify something, that doesn’t mean it doesn't play an important part of
a system. What I think is missing from land development systems are the
consideration for an aesthetic appeal, the consideration for nature, and the
consideration for pedestrians. So much development seems to take no other mode
of transportation into account other than automobiles that the consideration
for walkers and bikers is totally left out. You can quantify how many parking
spaces you think you need, but walking convenience isn’t as quantifiable.
It’s always frustrating for me to have to walk across a big parking lot, because
I see it as an inconvenience created by other people’s need to drive a car
everywhere, and I am stuck with development that is twice as spread out as it
needs to be. If I had it my way, I’d make businesses build their parking lots
at the back of the store, so the doors to the store were on the street, and
then people with cars could deal with the extra walking. I don’t want to keep
rambling, so I’ll conclude by saying that I think automotive ease-of-use has a
big unfair advantage over other transportation modes in our current system of
urban development, and it’s the result of the quantifiable cost-benefit
analysis being the only consideration, and that the less-quantifiable elegance of the system of development is being ignored.
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