|
A.
Technical ingenuity is about technical solutions to the problems
we face. It encompasses everything from new grains that can grow
in eroded soil, to water and energy conservation technologies.
Any time we think about a problem and we're thinking about a technical
fix for it, we're thinking about technical ingenuity. Social ingenuity
consists of ideas for how we structure our society and our institutions,
such as government, court systems, and markets. In essence, these
are ideas for how we arrange our social relations among ourselves.
Good institutions are critically important for generating prosperity,
as well as political and social stability. They help create a
humane society. The social ingenuity that goes into these institutions
and the ideas that lie behind them are ultimately more important
than the ideas that go into new technologies. You don't get new
technology unless you have a well-functioning structure of social
institutions in place.
Q. Do you think that the "experts," in their efforts to solve
problems, sometimes lose sight of the delicate balance that exists
between man and the environment, and as result, in trying to create
solutions, actually create new problems?
A. There has been a tendency, although I think this has started
to change in the last two decades or so, to think of Earth's environment
and its ecosystems as being very resilient to human inputs—and
human insults. We're now starting to understand that sometimes
they're resilient, and sometimes they aren't. Frequently, these
systems can be described by what specialists call non-linearities—sudden
changes in their behaviour. They can flip from one mode to another.
A climate system can be benign at one point and then flip into
a state characterized by drought or heavy storms. Biosystems,
such as forests, can suddenly change their character. A blight
or pest can sweep through, in a relatively short period of time,
and dramatically change the ecosystem's whole arrangement of species.
I think that an understanding of the non-linear nature of our
environment and ecosystems is becoming more widespread. We must
have prudence in dealing with our natural world. Once we realize
that we don't know where the thresholds—or cliffs—are in our dealings
with these ecosystems, we should step back a bit and try to reduce
our pressure on them.
Q.
In the west, we seem far too focused on economic success. Statistics
like GNP and GDP are the barometers we use to measure how well
we are doing, yet the numbers ignore so many intangibles that
contribute to an overall quality of life. Do we have to change
our thinking about what constitutes successful growth?
A. In a purely technical sense, we have to rethink how we
measure wealth and economic growth. We have this crazy situation
right now where efforts to control pollution and fix environmental
damage actually turn up as positive entries in a country's GDP
statistics. If a country ruins its forests, or silts up its waterways,
the damage doesn't turn up as a negative thing in its economic
accounts. Instead, all the dredging to clear its waterways, for
example, is added as a positive line item to its GDP accounts,
which suggests that you can actually increase economic growth
by destroying your environment. That's crazy. But your question
is more general than that. It seems to me, fundamentally, that
the problem of The Ingenuity Gap resides at the level of values.
We have to re-think what we value as the "good life" and what
things we feel are important to us as part of our day-to-day well
being. If we insist on having SUVs, large houses with five bedrooms,
and Caribbean vacations, it's not clear that the world's ecosystem
can support the strain that such a lifestyle places on it—especially
if all the ten billion people who will eventually live on Earth
have the same lifestyle. We need to separate the ingenuity gap
problem into two parts. First, there is the rising requirement
for ingenuity, for solutions to our problems; and second, there
is the sometimes inadequate supply of these solutions. One of
the things that's driving up our requirement for ingenuity is
the set of values that define what we think is the good life.
If we want materially-intensive lives, with lots of things in
them— from big cars and house to vacation trips to faraway places—then
our ingenuity requirement is going to be much higher than it would
be otherwise.
Q.
Do you think that the increasing complexity of the world has affected
the quality of our political leadership?
A. We often hear the remark that our current leaders don't
seem to match the calibre of leaders from previous generations.
We often see headlines in the press asking: "Where Have All The
Leaders Gone?" This question is particularly germane right now
with an American election on the horizon. My sense is that it's
not the calibre of our leaders that has fallen. We probably have
leaders who are just as smart and just as well-motivated (or not)
as in any period in the past. The real problem is that our world
has become so much more complex that our leaders look inadequate
as a result of the extraordinary problems they are trying to solve,
or at least manage. They become more like functionaries rather
than the initiators of visionary new policies or proposals. We
end up with leaders who do nothing more than incrementally tinker
with our political, economic, and technological systems, because
that is all that seems feasible. There are several reasons for
this. First, the complexity of our problems is so great that it
is very difficult to understand what policies should be implemented.
Take something like climate change. The global institutions that
we'll eventually create to deal with this problem will be the
most complex in the history of the human species. But there is
so much uncertainty about the nature of the global warming problem
and about what we need to do that ultimately there are contradicting
arguments going on in every direction, so it is exceedingly hard
to make a final decision. Another thing that hamstrings leaders
is the gridlock that increasingly surrounds big policy issues,
resulting in large part from special interests that have been
empowered tremendously by the communications revolution. They
can blast-fax their political leaders and inundate their offices
with email and computer-programmed voice-mail messages. The strength
of these groups has made it harder for leaders to make daring
and difficult policy. There are so many competing and complicating
interests blocking every possible visionary idea. We should have
a lot of sympathy for our leaders nowadays. They have got so much
going on simultaneously. They have to address so many problems,
and the pace of decision has to be so fast. There is so much information
flowing into their offices and onto their desks. Very few people
have the cognitive and intellectual ability to stay on top of
what is happening.
Q.
Are you optimistic about our ability to meet the challenges of
the future?
A. I have been accused of being a doomsayer in the past, and
one of things I really try to do in this book is to show that
it isn't too late and that there are opportunities for change.
I spend a great deal of time focusing on our extraordinary adaptive
capabilities and creativity as a species. There is a whole chapter
on the evolution of the human brain, and on how it developed to
deal with volatile, dynamic and complicated circumstances. Now
we're creating for ourselves another set of very complicated and
potentially volatile circumstances. We have to hope that the problems
we have created don't exceed the capacity of our individual—and
collective— brains. The sense I have is that there is still time.
But we have to recognize that we face a real crisis. There are
a whole range of environmental, economic, and social problems
developing around the world that demand our immediate attention
and require every ounce of ingenuity, will, and creativity that
we can muster. The complacency and triumphalism that we see at
the moment often shuts down our incentive to address these problems.
And that's dangerous. The book is not a story of despair. It's
a wake-up call, a warning signal of some kind. I am trying to
encourage people to redefine their understanding of the world.
We don't have everything figured out yet, and we shouldn't believe,
even remotely, that we do.
Interview
reprinted with permission. Copyright Random House Canada.
|