"Only to the white man was nature a "wilderness" and only to him was the land "infested" with "wild" animals and "savage" people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery". - Luther Standing Bear
"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” Aldo Leopold
"Democracy can also be subverted more thoroughly through the products of science than any pre-industrial demagogue ever dreamed" Carl Sagan
"The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource ... You have to make sure your whole team understands what scarce resource you’re optimizing." Fred Brooks
This note summarises some of the main myths and narratives about "sustainability" that have been promoted in the Holocene. It is strange that such a summary has not turned up in the course of investigations -possibly an indicator that Western society is not able to hold a discussion on the alternatives. For example, this book contrasts fossil fuel and industrial scale renewables as both unviable and notes the limits to current debate: "Renewable energy is not the solution we think it is. We have inherited the bad/good energy dichotomy of fossil fuels versus renewable energy, a holdover from the environmental movement of the 1970s that is misleading, if not false...By highlighting the myths surrounding renewable energy, we also create the groundwork for greater environmental considerations and the enactment of radical ecological alternatives that address the roots of consumer society and its marketed solutions."
A taxonomy notable for its rarity is Steve Fuller's Upwing/Downwing
Black/Green. "UpWingers (or “Blacks”), above all, anticipate futures of
greater energy consumption.They tend towards technological solutionism, their view of the future is in the accelerationism/singularitarian
spectrum. Politically, UpWingers tend to follow the American Right’s libertarian view of freedom, and the Left’s view of transcendent
humanity. Human potential is unlimited and chaos can be tamed. UpWingers might wave away DownWing concerns as being surmountable. Black is the
sky.
DownWingers (or “Greens”), broadly, anticipate futures of reduced energy consumption (through efficiency or destruction, if you’d like). They
tend towards localization/resilience thought, their view of the future can range from declinist to hackstability (and even accelerationist in
some respects). Politically, DownWingers tend to follow the Left’s view of communitarianism and the Right’s sense of natural order. Human nature
is limited and chaos should be avoided. DownWingers might accuse UpWingers as hand-waving away complex problems with the dismissive
answer, “We’ll think of something.” Green is the Earth."
A book that sounds worth reading is: The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World by Charles C. Mann "The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win!"
A"Dryzek-style classification of climate change denial" is here.
Psychology of environmentalism
The psychology of environmentalism is discussed in a penetrating video here.The first 30 minutes are particularly relevant. Specific points of interest to this post are:
06:40 shame and guilt
07:10 apocalyptic environmentalism and depression
07:50 CBT elements and environmentalism
11:58 apocalyptic environmentalism is against solutions that work 13:30 original sin, death of god,
17:40 Jung - not smart enough to create our own values 18:30 guilt at privilege as part of existential burden
20:0 opposed to solutions - destroy
the whole system 21:50 solving the problem gets in the way of the
alarmism - purpose of alarmism 22:30 alarmism is the goal - JP on value hierarchy 24:21 say environment highest value 24:40 - you cannot fight
environment and capitalism at the same time 25:00 MS on insincerity in saving nature; the goal is power itself ('The Great Mother' Eric Neumann
26:30)
27:MS all the optimism ecotopia has gone e.g. ewok village just apocalyptic environmentalism remains.
This places apocalyptic environmentalism as a movement to keep us scared and passive. As such, it is not alone e.g. here.
Finding a way ahead
Of interest in the narratives below are the values and roles assigned to people, technology, and nature. Any assumed (or claimed) universality and/or context-sensitivity is also of interest. The hope is to extract some material of relevance to the Anthropocene. The difficulty of finding any way ahead is rarely acknowledged; Gail Tverberg is a notable exception. Judith Curry has a good summary of the climate narrative. Finding a way ahead is not helped by media polarization of discussion.
There is a line of argument that says that civilization as defined here is inherently unsustainable. See here.
David Wengrow has pointed out that erroneous myths of our past colour our view of the future here and that the present time could be considered an opportunistic moment. Recent cheap money and cheap energy have contributed to us arriving at the strange place we are in. See here.
We are also likely to need some imaginative futurism, on the lines of Peter Frase's Four Futures.
Three outstanding books covering this topic are worthy of note here, and their surface has hardly been scraped (though there is much fine writing within specific approaches):
- Lean Logic by David Fleming - online here (h/t Stranger)
- The Development Dictionary edited by Wolfgang Sachs
- The Great Re-think by Colin Tudge here.
The Blue Marble Evaluation network here is also worth special consideration, e.g. this report. The Orgrad A-Z of thinkers here demonstrates the range and depth of thought being ignored in dominant narratives.
Population, demographics, state of resources
Some resources for Context of Use analysis at this level: The 2 part video by Clint Laurent and Tony Nash of Complete Intelligence here and here on demographics is well worth the time. This analysis of future energy needs complements the demographics. This analysis of copper supply may also be relevant to any proposed electric future.
Fungibility of "resources"
The treatment of Natural Capital .pdf (John O'Neill) highlights claims that distinguish the folk at Davos - especially The Capitals Approach - from indigenous tribal leaders:"I argue that the concepts of natural capital and ecosystem services cannot capture all the dimensions of value that are central to human well-being. "
1. Natural assets and ecosystem services: A basic defining claim that all accounts of natural capital share is that environmental goods, such as wetlands, woodlands and other sites of biodiversity, should be understood as assets that provide benefit streams—ecosystem services—for human well-being.
2. Compensation and substitutability: A second claim concerns substitutability: that losses in one component of capital can be substituted by gains in another, so long as the services they provide maintain or improve well-being.
3. Monetisation: A third claim is that the assets that make up natural capital can and should be assigned a monetary value.
4. Marketisation: A fourth claim is that markets in environmental goods provide the most efficient and effective way of achieving the aim of no net loss in natural capital.
5. Financialisation: A final stronger claim is that environmental goods can be protected by treating them as financial assets.
I am unconvinced that any of the fungibility above is justified other than by limiting the discussion to the limits of economics - i.e. entirely self-serving by that group. David Graeber has pointed out the limits of 'value' in economics. Converting 'natural capital' to 'value' is crass. Some quotes from here h/t Jan Hoglund: "Economics…is about predicting individual behavior; anthropology, about understanding collective differences. …efforts to bring maximizing models into anthropology always end up stumbling into the same sort of incredibly complicated dead ends....All they [maximizing models] really add to analysis is a set of assumptions about human nature. ...The assumption, most of all, that no one ever does anything primarily out of concern for others; that whatever one does, one is only trying to get something out of it for oneself. ...In common English, there is a word for this attitude. It’s called “cynicism.” Most of us try to avoid people who take it too much to heart. In economics, apparently, they call it “science.”…economic anthropologists do have to talk about values. But…they have to talk about them in a rather peculiar way. …what one is really doing is taking an abstraction…and reifying it, treating it as an object…What economic theory ultimately tries to do is to explain all human behavior—all human behavior it considers worth explaining, anyway—on the basis of a certain notion of desire, which then in turn is premised on a certain notion of pleasure."
"The commodification of the commons will represent the greatest, and most cunning, coup d’état in the history of corporate dominance – an extraordinary fait accompli of unparalleled scale, with unimaginable repercussions for humanity and all life." from here.
"Biodiversity offsetting is a regulatory and planning system to ensure that a project with unavoidable negative biodiversity effects requires, as a last resort, carrying out additional measures to compensate these effects. Such biodiversity enhancing compensation measures can be nature based solutions and can include for instance measures to fulfil the remediation obligation under the Environmental Liability Directive(4) or to compensate for damage caused by plans or projects in Natura 2000 sites." From here.
The use of offsets needs careful scrutiny if it is to be in any way
acceptable morally. Nice example here.
"\u221e @hdevalence
Dear Team - Many of you have read some concerning stories about our user tracking. While media characterizations aren’t entirely accurate, we are
listening and learning. Today, I can share some exciting news: we’ve committed to purchasing ethics offsets, to be net ethical by 2030
3:44 AM · Jun 7, 2021"
Our intuitions about environmental damage or energy use are likely to be faulty. Analytical approaches end up in a battle of externalities. So how do we choose between e.g. a coated cardboard milk carton and a reusable glass bottle? There will need to be some principles and morality to bound the process. Some principles are here .
Sample of Narratives
The list below is draft and incomplete, but I couldn't find one elsewhere.
Technocratic totalitarianism - managerialism
The alphabet soup of WEF, UN, SDG, ESG, Net Zero, Green Deals, a 'Green Growth Accelerator', etc. This article on Mark Carney sums up the corporatist green narrative, and its financial manoeuvrings are outlined here. The underlying narrative is discussed as doctrine here. If you think the "Deals" are about de-growth, think again and again. In the UK, Net Zero has been 'costed' with an undisclosed dog-ate-my-homework spreadsheet. This piece and its links show that ESG is intellectually bankrupt. See also 'the trillion dollar fantasy' here. This is not about saving the planet. The process of capturing politicians etc. is set out here. The Great Reset is discussed strategically here.
"The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is that it
wasn’t originally a climate thing at all." -- "Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?" -- "Because we really think of it as a
how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.” — Saikat
Chakrabarti, former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y. 14th District)
"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change
provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world." — Former Canadian Minister of the Environment, Christine
Stewart
"The challenge I think we have is for some reason climate change has
become a religion -- a politically induced religion instead of science fact that now we have to embrace and move forward on." — Former EPA
Administrator Gina McCarthy
The dark side of the corporatist approach, such as Fortress Conservation, is discussed here and here. Steven Corry: "No. "Wild" is a word in the English language, and it's used by the movement to mean "untrammeled by man", which is the definition in the U.S. Wilderness Act (1964). The idea starts in 19th century USA and it's profoundly wrong." Iain Provan has discussed these 'convenient myths'. See also this and this.
The myth that human-produced CO2 emissions could lead to catastrophic global warming is still at the heart of the financial system being imposed, despite changing terms to e.g. climate emergency.
There is the hope that the WEF campaign has been killed by Covid - being the old normal. "The Davos crowd seek quick fixes, takeaways, action points and deliverables, rather than dwelling on the thoroughly uncomfortable reality of our condition, for fear of going into depression or becoming paralysed by inertia. The sooner that is ditched, the better....An encouraging number of business and political leaders worldwide are busy trying to figure out how to convince their respective audiences that their corporation, their institution, their political party or their government have understood that ‘going back to normal’ is not an option. It’s far from clear for many of them how they will prove that they have gotten the proverbial memo. But there is a very simple way to show that they haven’t. And that would be to go back to Davos."
People and the environment are treated as fungible commodities - standing resources to be exploited. Technology will be used by the elite to maintain control (Authoritarian technics rather than democratic technics in Mumford's terminology).
The OECD well-being lens here looks appealing but is likely to encounter difficulties in the context of WEF managerialism.
National Development Strategy with human-machine-ecological deep growth
A New Way Forward by UNDP and Dark Mountain here is a fairly comprehensive approach to the political and economic changes required for a more sustainable future. If it were readily feasible, we would not be in the mess we are in. The moral / spiritual approach is not really addressed. The use of the doughnut model (below) would indicate considerable allowance for fungibility.
Human-machine-ecological deep growth is:
- Growth that accounts for all the negative externalities that result from the economic activity causing that growth;
- Growth that is sustainable to the ecological, human and machine systems from which it draws inputs and to which it contributes;
- Growth that maximises the potential of those systems by regenerating and augmenting them;
- Growth that is the result of a regenerative economy, which is not only extracting natural resources, but maintains the natural ecosystem in which society is embedded and helps it thrive;
- Growth that supports the development of foundational antifragility;
- Growth that focuses on developing 21st century human, machine and ecological capabilities;
- Growth that shifts the aim from a winner takes all mentality in structures that hitherto had defined parameters and goals and a foreseeable set of variables, to one where success in an uncertain and interconnected world is assessed on mutual advancement, self-sufficiency and maintenance. In other words, growth that focuses on infinite games instead of finite games
The Good Life - Sufficientianism
One could start this story with 'The Acquisitive Society' by Tawney - a damning view from a different time. Proponents of sufficientianism include: Ivan Illich e.g. on transport,Vaclav Smil, E.F Schumacher, Wendell Berry (farming, technology), Low Tech Magazine, Low Tech Webring, Parrique, Hickel, Slowdown (Dan Hill),Transition Towns / permaculture, Self-Sufficiency, agroforestry (pdf), Michel Bauwens' Cosmo-Local production, Human Scale (Kirkpatrick Sale), Doughnut economics (Raworth), Meeting human needs (JefimVogel) Universal Basic Everything (Tessy Britton), Climate resilient cities (Eliason), Traditionalism (Wrath of Gnon) Distributism (here). Here is the scythe once again beating the strimmer. Bottom-up sensible farming, agroforestry e.g. here. Some of these are pragmatic, some tied to 'emissions'. Much of this literature preaches smallness and decentralisation. Kirkpatrick Sale is perhaps the most forceful, with the Beanstalk Principle, which is that "for every animal, object, institution, or system, there is an optimal limit beyond which is ought not to grow" and the Beanstalk Corollary, "Beyond this optimum size, all other elements of an animal, object, institution, or system will be adversely affected."
Thrive! by John Thackara and his 5% energy future fits here. There is a wiki to collect case studies.Also The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking here.
"Our focus should be services and infrastructures that require five
per cent of the energy throughputs that we are accustomed to now. That’s the energy regime we’re likely to end up with, so why not work on that
basis from now on?
Is five per cent impossible? On the contrary: For eighty per cent of the world’s population, five per cent energy is their lived reality today.
Their situation is usually described as poverty, or a lack of development, but there are numerous ways in which the South’s five
percent delivers the same value as our 100-per-cent-and-rising."
This set of definitions of 'green growth' assembled by Timothée Parrique is notable for the absence of the word 'emissions'.
Green Growth Definitions (Parrique)
The issues here are:
- TPTB don't want us to be self-sufficient - they need us to be dependent. "The thing that really contradicts Communism is not Capitalism, but a small property as it exists for a small farmer or a small shop-keeper." G.K. Chesterton (see Distributism)
- The climate alarmists are not interested in practical solutions. It is likely that the alarmist establishment would use 'political technology' to shut them down. See Orlov here.
- What is 'sufficient' in Torbay might be considered 'excessive' in most of the world. Branko Milanowich on the feasibility of reducing inequality e.g. here has been the subject of debate (e.g. Hickel and Parrique). Not easily addressed. The comments on this piece about SER illustrate how many people would not accept "enough is as good as a feast". 'A Treasury official at one of the early meetings responded, “Now I see what sustainability means. It means going back to live in caves. And that’s what you’re all about, isn’t it?”' (from Jackson here)
- Linked to 2 above: Eco-sufficiency and distributive justice (sufficientarianism) are not the same, and the differences need resolving. This piece uses sufficientarianism incorrectly without apology. Kanschik here. "The notion of sufficiency has recently seen some momentum in separate discourses in distributive justice (‘sufficientarianism’) and environmental discourse (‘eco-sufficiency’). The examination of their relationship is due, as their scope is overlapping in areas such as environmental justice and socio-economic policy. This paper argues that the two understandings of sufficiency are incompatible because eco-sufficiency takes an extreme perfectionist view on the good life while sufficientarianism is committed to pluralism. A plausible explanation for this incompatibility relates to two different meanings of the term sufficiency as a limit (eco-sufficiency) and a minimum requirement (sufficientarianism)."
- Given the secular state of Western society, the spiritual aspects will be hard to address. Tim Jackson has discussed this in 'Consumerism as Theodicy' here.
- The right idea at the wrong time gets ignored - like the Chapelon Pacific locomotive here.
- The track record is dreadful. In 'The Enchantments of Mammon', Eugene McCarraher has a chapter on 'Small is Beautiful'. The exuberance of the writing makes for an enjoyable read, but the litany of failure is tragic.
- It is not clear that sufficientarian communities would survive socially in the face of hardship, and could face adverse consequences from eco-gentrification. Orlov talks about community organising here based on hard experience. My own, more flippant, take is here.
Restore the Soul of the World
The spirit of 'Hamlet's Mill' lives on, restoring the harmony of the spheres, based on ancient wisdom, Pythagorean thinking, and a world based on cosmological harmony (e.g. Robin and Richard Heath on the evolution of metrology, and John Michell on its spiritual import). It would seem to be a clear winner in ecological terms. The harmony of the spheres, and whole number ratios continue to be relevant - in 'why phi' climate modelling here.
Cosmopolis (David Fideler here) sets out the approach.
The Roman Empire destroyed it first time round, and the Cartesian mechanistic Enlightenment killed the Renaissance. The current imperialists will be just as ill-disposed to 'make geometry not war'. In addition, the established religions will not appreciate having their feet of clay pointed out.
Gaia (Kit Pedler, James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis)
Gaia is the antithesis to the anthropocene; nature is in charge not people. Presumably this is not an excuse for us to behave recklessly, and there is an assumption that rich biodiversity is good for the ecosystem. However, context-specific guidance seems thin on the ground.
"We people are just like our planetmates. We cannot put an end to nature; we can only pose a threat to ourselves. The notion that we can destroy all life, including bacteria thriving in the water tanks of nuclear power plants or boiling hot vents, is ludicrous. I hear our nonhuman brethren snickering: 'Got along without you before I met you, gonna get along without you now,' they sing about us in harmony." Lynne Margulis, The Symbiotic Planet.
“In much the same way as the malignant cells of cancer invade and destroy the normal tissue of the body, so do the affairs and processes of the toymaker technocrats invade and destroy the balanced and stable earth organism”. Kit Pedler, The Quest for Gaia: A Book of Changes
Ecological Economics (Evonomics), Prosocial regeneration
Extended quote from here: "Lisi
Krall: Ecological economics basically derives from the basic idea that
the Earth is a subsystem of the biosphere and therefore some attention
has to be paid to how big this economic system can be. So that’s kind of
the starting point. Ecological Economics has gone in two different
directions — there are two branches. One is this eco sphere studies
branch of ecological economics, and that branch is sort of associated
with putting prices on things that aren’t priced in the economy. That’s
entirely what it’s about. And it is hardly discernible from standard
orthodox economics. It’s the study of externality, public goods, and
that sort of thing. There’s really no difference. The other branch of
ecological economics, which is the more revolutionary branch, is the
branch that talks about the issue of scale. That branch has been very
good in talking about the need to limit or end economic growth. But in
the conversations about how we might do that — and in particular dealing
directly with the problem of whether or not you can have a capitalist
system that doesn’t grow — I think that’s where that branch of
ecological economics has not been as clear as it needs to be.
So this kind of helps us transition into something that you talk about:
ultrasociality. Can you first explain ultrasociality as a concept within
the more-than-human world, within animals or insects. What is it in the
more ecological sense?
First of all let me just say this that I don’t think that there is an
agreement about the definition of ultrasociality, either on the part of
evolutionary biologists, or on the part of anthropologists and
economists like myself. So I think that it is word that’s used by
different people to describe different things in the broader sense. I
think it refers to complex societies that have highly articulated
divisions of labor and develop into large scale — essentially city
states, and practice agriculture. That’s the definition that’s used in
our work, the work that I’ve done with John Gowdy. We have adopted that
definition. And so ultrasociality I would say is a term that has meaning
other than in human societies. To talk about those kinds of societies
that occur mostly in other than humans: in ants and termites that
practice agriculture."
...And from here "When seen in this light, the economy is entirely self-subsistent, whose workings are understandable quite independently of society or the political system. ...Once we abandon the circular flow framework, however, and recognize the economies are embedded in value-laden societies, our values come to play a central role in understanding the purpose of economics. Just as societies are human constructs that are meant to serve the individual and collective needs of their members, so economies should serve these needs as well. In this light, economics can be reconceived as the discipline that explores how resources, goods and services can be mobilized in the pursuit of wellbeing in thriving societies, now and in the future."
A more general discussion of society as an organism, and its implications for economics is here.
Prosocial (see here) is a change method based on evolution.
Accounting
It looks like accounting has been instrumental in much of the damage to the ecosphere. Fungibility of resources allows for tricks that mask damage. There are movements to produce accounting that is less damaging. They look promising (of course). Any assessment of their feasibility or potential impact is beyond me. Examples include:- Long-termism - intergenerational accounting here and here.
- Commodity based currency, social currency (Chris Cook) here and here.
- Commons accounting here and here.
Solarpunk
Solarpunk is a literary movement (here), and thus under no obligation to produce costed transition plans, planetary impact assessments. Of course, nobody else does these, and so it is not surprising that Solarpunk has found practical application e.g. here, and in the Indian Swadeshi movement.
Ecomodernism
'More from Less' (McAfee), 'Apocalypse Never' (Shellenberger), 'Golden Age' (Scott Adams), the 'Abundance Manifesto' (Wood), all argue that prosperity and technical advance are good for the planet as well as for people. The optimism contrasts so strongly with the wave of apocalyptic noise, I guess it gets labelled "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is".
The climate alarmists are not interested in practical solutions. It is likely that the alarmist establishment would use 'political technology' to shut them down. See Orlov here.
Return to our roots - Indigenous wisdom
There is much truth in this approach (e.g. forest gardens) but also some myths (Iain Provan here and here). Persuading Westerners to live like "natives" won't be easy.
Collapsitarianism
Not surprisingly there is much talk of ecological collapse, Malthusian ecofascism etc. If that is a threat that needs to be addressed now, then the case needs to be made, and we need to recognise that 'middle class gardening clubs' won't survive. The hype from the climate alarmists will make it difficult to be heard. Perhaps best known is Tainter's approach to collapse caused by complexity e.g. here,
Gail Tverberg sets out the scene for a coming collapse based on increasing complexity and lack of energy here.
Dmitry Orlov has written on communities that survive e.g. here and here.
Ecosophy, Deep Ecology, Three ecologies (Guattari, Naess)
Wikipedia on Ecosophy here says: "Guattari holds that traditional environmentalist perspectives obscure the complexity of the relationship between humans and their natural environment through their maintenance of the dualistic separation of human (cultural) and nonhuman (natural) systems; he envisions ecosophy as a new field with a monistic and pluralistic approach to such study. Ecology in the Guattarian sense, then, is a study of complex phenomena, including human subjectivity, the environment, and social relations, all of which are intimately interconnected."
From here, we learn that "The
concept of the three ecologies; three interconnected networks existing
at the scales of mind, society and the environment, was originally
formulated by influential theorist Gregory Bateson in Steps to An
Ecology of Mind, however Guattari seeks to elaborate and refine the
concept in more detail, while additionally adding a more radical form of
poststructuralist Marxism to Bateson’s ecological system.
Pre-empting the global networks of power and resistance described by
Hardt and Negri in Empire and Multitude, Guattari argues that ‘The only
true response to the ecological crisis is on a global scale, provided
that it brings about an authentic political, social and cultural
revolution, reshaping the objectives of the production of both material
and immaterial assets.’ "
The Rizoma Field School here is based on ideas from Deleuze and Guattari.
Pluriverse
The Pluriverse Post-Development Dictionary here " offers critical essays on mainstream solutions that ‘greenwash’ development, and presents radically different worldviews and practices from around the world that point to an ecologically wise and socially just world." The word is explained here as "The West’s universalizing tendency was nothing new, but it claimed a superior position for itself. The pluriverse consists in seeing beyond this claim to superiority, and sensing the world as pluriversally constituted. Or, if you wish, pluriversality becomes the decolonial way of dealing with forms of knowledge and meaning exceeding the limited regulations of epistemology and hermeneutics. Consequently, pluriversality names the principles and assumptions upon which pluriverses of meaning are constructed. ... Thus conceived, pluriversality is not cultural relativism, but the entanglement of several cosmologies connected today in a power differential. That power differential, in my way of thinking and doing, is the logic of coloniality covered up by the rhetorical narrative of modernity. Modernity—the Trojan horse of Western cosmology—is a successful fiction that carries in it the seed of the Western pretense to universality"
To conclude
How do we navigate the ways ahead? If we are allowed to debate the alternatives to Net Zero, how do we assess them?
Remember Orgel's Second Rule: "Evolution is cleverer than you are."
Good intentions are certainly inadequate - they can be thwarted by system dynamics, see Dietrich Dörner here.
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