I recently found myself in the position of refereeing a ‘debate’ over lunch on climate change between 2 zealots, one from either side.

One who was a passionate advocate of the argument that it was real, and would kill us unless we did some challenging things, the science was in 30 years ago, and we have barely moved. Our public institutions have displayed, and continue to display, criminal negligence in that inaction.

The other, was a passionate advocate of the ‘why bother’ story. As Australia is a tiny contributor to global warming, unless the rest of the world did something, destroying our way of life was an irrelevant act of self -immolation. 

Thinking about it later, three things came to mind, that reflect the barriers to any major change in the way we work and live.

Denial. It is not happening, we cross our fingers and hope it goes away. Through history this has never worked, it is the ‘peace in our time’ solution.

Money.  Making the change will  not make any money, just impose unnecessary and unrecoverable costs. This assumes that tomorrow looks just the same as today, which is always wrong, we just cannot see the potential. Steve Ballmer dismissed the first iPhone as an expensive toy that would  never work,  Blockbuster did not see the potential in Netfliks, and Kodak, who invented digital photography, failed to commercialise it. With the short term  dominant in our institutional and public governance, the immediacy of money being generated  is a powerful argument for inaction, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Optimisation. We have optimised our current organisations, they are good at running exactly what it is now, and change is messy, expensive, risky, and dangerous to the personal advancement of those who advocate for it. In addition, the short term prospect of generating a return on investment is low, so our institutional risk aversion kicks in, often on steroids. Both time frames have their costs and benefits, quantifiable with significantly variable degrees of certainty. On balance, my money is on the ‘do something’ button, as history suggests those who do not change in the face of undeniable  change around them,  get run over by those who take the prizes. IBM and Olivetti used to own the typewriter business, Kodak owned photography, Hoover owned vacuum cleaners, all optimised businesses for the maintenance of the status quo, and none survived.

As I write this, the east coast of Australia, gripped by drought, has been on fire. We are only in the early part of what is usually called the  ‘fire season’, so things could easily get worse, although there may not be much left to burn. I suspect the views of both sides of the debate my lunch colleagues had will not have changed much as a result, a microcosm of the policy problem facing us.

However, every problem is accompanied by opportunity.

Climate change is a problem for everyone, a challenge for policy makers faced with the reality of short term populism to keep their jobs, and an opportunity for the few who see the problems as challenges to be solved.