Having actually looked at some of this technology I can assure you it is a bigger problem than you think. South Africa probably has the most experience with it at the moment.Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny
Too much is indeed based on oil at present. That IS the problem. You can't just plug in the new tech. The examples you give are ones where governments had to intervene and subsizide heavily as military efforts to patch problems. (Weren't gasoline and tires rationed in the US during the war--and we were far less effected than others." Not preparing for the future is foolhardy, but, hey, investing for the future reduces today's profits. The change to very short time horizons in the corporate world is proving rather destructive over the long haul. It creates a vicious cycle that is hard to break. It wasn't this way when I entered industry, but it has accelerated over the past seven years. I have a hard time finding places to invest my own money. Corporate R&D pipelines are now empty, and the longterm returns look poor.
The basic corporate attitude is much as you have stated, apathetic complacency. Until they have a gun pointed at their head or a 100% sure bet, they will do nothing. Their track record over the past few years has been quite poor with regards to making such predictions. It is easier to stay comfortable in the pack and not invest in the future, it doesn't carry risk of short term failure or reduce short term profits. That is why this sort of thing needs to be driven by government through various incentives and/or research--just like other major national/international initiatives have been. And when incentives are done intelligently, the free market system can produce great results. Doing nothing is the one sure path to failure.
In the U.S. right now, corporate research is dying. Why? Quite a few of us understand what sort of things we will need in the next 10 or 20 years, but there doesn't seem to be much desire to invest time and effort to make them feasible. Instead we face complacency and short term profit taking.
Quoting from the original post: "governments tend to feel limited in their ability to introduce new policies for reducing emissions because they fear business resistance, while companies are unable to take their investments in low-carbon solutions to scale because of lack of long-term policies." That sums up the vicious cycle quite nicely. The do nothings are winning the corporate war, and they are doing it in govt as well. I always found it funny that my own company would inevitably support the lobbying efforts of others in their industry to resist any regulatory changes. Why did I think that? Because we did such a good job at complying that it would have given us an advantage if rules were tightened. It is the sleazeballs/fly by nights/and dying dinosaurs that have the most to gain by keeping things the same. Talk about short sighted...
During a strategy session, I was listening to some of my company's execs wail about proposed regulations and the inevitable phase out of some products for various reasons. I asked them this simple question, "If we can anticipate the change, and use our R&D to develop a product that fits the new requirements, don't we walk away winners?" I saw it as an opportunity to embrace the changes and thereby destroy the competition with new high margin products. They saw it as only the loss of their mature low margin products... No leadership coming from that group.
Bookmarks