To hire a car for a day and drive to Liverpool next Tuesday will cost me around £75-£80, while a second class return rail fare is £77 plus the cost of a taxi home late at night, and the risk of missing the last connection in Reading. Last time I did that journey it it was only the Guard recognising my sprinting form on the bridge and his charity in holding the train, that avoided my spending a difficult night on Reading station. So even for one person its more economical to damage the ecology. The only advantage is a few hours work, but even that is disrupted by no less than three changes (hence the risk on the last train back) and with the hire car I can use my iPod to catch up on various podcasts. This isn't freakonomics, it's just plain stupid.
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Comments (3)
Hi David,
We can blame others (the government, businesses, etc.) for not making it easy for us to minimise our impact on the environment, but can we afford to use this argument at this point in time?
Since you used the word stupid, have you seen the movie "The Age of Stupid"? I'd be very interested to hear your views on it.
Posted by Luc | April 10, 2009 2:34 PM
Posted on April 10, 2009 14:34
Hi Dave,
Your story presents another all-to-familiar case of perverse incentives. I'm curious to know if the Cynefin framework has even been applied in any sustainability-related projects.
It would be interesting to see how it could be used to map the interaction between the "natural" complexity of biological systems (climate, ecosystems etc.) and the multiple domains (Cynefin quadrants) in which an organization wishing to move towards sustainability operates.
Posted by Peter Sims | April 11, 2009 6:33 PM
Posted on April 11, 2009 18:33
Your use of the word stupid is interesting. It is stupid but much more than that too. Stupid for some (and doubtlessly the system), but not car manufacturers (who show up to Congressional bail out meetings in their private jets).
It's the result of a long series of policy decisions, governance take-overs, blah blah blah, and evolving 'social' behaviours which lead us to a place where locking ourselves alone in metal boxes and ranting at others in other metal boxes (who can't hear us) has become the norm. It's warm, dry, you're in *control*, you don't have to rub shoulders with kids waving their mobile phones around etc. etc. etc. We have become fully separated in the name of 'efficiency'.
But you do get to work on time without added stress of delays, or other frustrations including discovering that your seat reservation is booked on a seat that doesn't exist (an interesting conflict we see nearly every day on the trains - strangers negotiating with eachother over booked but possibly non-existent seats - wouldn't happen in a nice hire car)... But also I'm chortling at your relaying of your train misfortunes in the winter - which really wasn't funny (for you anyway).
Bewildering I would say. Enough to make you weep.
And as a rep for Transition Network, on our web project, we're wondering how we can convince someone to let us use Sense Maker and your related techniques to provide relevant bridges between our network of people trying out all sorts of projects to bring us all back to something a little more clever...
Posted by Ed | April 14, 2009 12:35 PM
Posted on April 14, 2009 12:35