Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
conference to de
ne a successor to the Kyoto Protocol
was a failure. It is clear that getting all
members of the
United Nations to agree is nearly impossible. Starting
with the top
fifteen emitters who are responsible for
% of emissions might work better. It has in the past.
The origins of the problems and what might work in the
future are expanded on compared with the
first edition.
I conclude this Introduction with what I call Richter
'
s
Four Laws of Societal Inertia which make it dif
cult to do
anything about our energy problems. Richter
s Laws may
not get taught in all the introductory science and engin-
eering classes, but they may help clarify why it is so hard
to change something that obviously needs to be changed.
I developed them from my dealings over many years with
politicians, environmental groups, and industry groups.
'
First Law: The future is hard to predict because it hasn
'
t
happened yet.
Second Law: No matter how good a solution is, some
people will demand we wait for a better one.
Third Law: Short-term pain is a deterrent to action no
matter how much good that action will do in the
long term.
Fourth Law: The largest subsidies go to technologies that
deliver the most votes or campaign contributions.
first law is sometimes wrongly attributed to the
baseball player Yogi Berra. It is the excuse for inaction
often used in Washington and other governments because
it is said that if we wait until we know more, we can act
better. Meanwhile we don
The
t have to act at all.
The second law is mostly used by the ultra-greens to
block solutions that are effective though not perfect. Most
'
