 |
 |
 |
|
|
        |
| |
|
|
|
If we can go to the Moon . . .
Going to the moon was almost a purely technological project. A single agency had to produce an event for one client who would give the agency almost any budget it wanted.
by Frank N. Laird, Breakthrough Senior Fellow -------
But there's another problem, namely the basic story that Gore's speech is trying to tell. The nature of the story shows up in one of the most overused analogies in public policy: we went to the moon in less than ten years, even though some folks said we couldn't do it, so why can't we solve the energy problem in the same amount of time? Whatever you might like about the Apollo Project, it has turned into the bane of policy analysis: a simplistic comparison that makes Americans think that anything is possible if only we want it enough. By ten years after the first moon landing, commentators were comparing so many social problems to it that Richard Nelson wrote the wonderful book The Moon and the Ghetto. In it he explained why going to the moon was vastly easier than solving the problem of [fill in your favorite social problem here, such as ending poverty, cleaning up pollution, or solving the energy crisis]. The explanation is simple: going to the moon was almost a purely technological project. A single agency had to produce an event for one client who would give the agency almost any budget it wanted. Energy is different. Hundreds of thousands of businesses and governments produce energy that billions of people consume, all with the support of financial, marketing, and training systems exquisitely well-tuned to the needs of the industry and its customers. This means that changing the energy system entails solving economic and social problems, as well as technological and scientific ones. It's a challenge that can form a wonderful aspirational goal for the United States, but it won't be like going to the moon. From the speech, one almost gets the sense that Vice-President Gore picked ten years because he thinks Americans can't focus on a problem in a disciplined way for more than that. The record shows differently. From the interstate highway system to various Cold War systems to a long-term commitment to research in electronics and biomedicine, American government institutions have taken on projects that last for many decades. It's time to do it again. 2 COMMENTS:
In Larry Ruff gem of an article, "The Economic Common Sense of Pollution" (The Public Interest, no. 19, Spring 1970, 69-8) he ends with this:
“If we can go to the moon, why can’t we eliminate pollution?”
This new, and already trite, rhetorical question invites a rhetorical response: “If physical scientists and engineers approached their tasks with the same kind of wishful thinking and fuzzy moralizing which characterizes much of the pollution discussion, we would never have gotten off the ground.”
Solving the pollution problem is no easier than going to the moon, and therefore requires a comparable effort in terms of men and resources and the same sort of logical hard-headedness that made Apollo a success.
Social scientists, politicians, and journalists who spend their time trying to find someone to blame, searching for a magic device or regulation, or complaining about human nature, will be as helpful in solving the pollution problem as they were in getting us to the moon.
Posted by: Pete Geddes
at July 18, 2008 9:54 PM
I'm with you in praising Al's boldness, and I'm also with you in feeling embarrassed by his Apollo Project reference.
Andy Revkin at the NY Times Dot Earth Blog pulls out a beautiful metaphor that shows the ridiculousness of the Apollo Project - Energy Revolution comparison:
Many scientists and engineers have looked to the Apollo program as a metaphor, but stressed that energy transformation is a far greater challenge. Here's what one solar expert told me when I interviewed him: "We already have electricity coming out of everybody's wall socket. This is not a new function we're seeking. It's a substitution. It's not like NASA sending a man to the moon. It's like finding a new way to send a man to the moon when Southwest Airlines is already flying there every hour handing out peanuts."
Just thought you might appreciate that.
Post a comment |
|
|
|||
Privacy : Contact : Site Map |
||||||||
