Why didn’t Microsoft, the most powerful technology company in the world in 1995, own the Internet? Why was Barnes & Noble toppled by Amazon when B&N initially had so many more advantages? Because power and advantages and size are also barriers to adaptation. The dinosaur is large but unwieldy. There is a natural inclination to protect what has succeeded in the past even if it dooms the future. But these are mere corporations and it matters only to stockholders which one wins. But what about more important losses? Have we failed to counteract climate change for so long for these same reasons? Are we now the dinosaurs? From Martin Wolf at the Financial Times:

“In brief, humanity is conducting a huge, uncontrolled and almost certainly irreversible climate experiment with the only home it is likely to have. Moreover, if one judges by the basic science and the opinions of the vast majority of qualified scientists, risk of calamitous change is large.

What makes the inaction more remarkable is that we have been hearing so much hysteria about the dire consequences of piling up a big burden of public debt on our children and grandchildren. But all that is being bequeathed is financial claims of some people on other people. If the worst comes to the worst, a default will occur. Some people will be unhappy. But life will go on. Bequeathing a planet in climatic chaos is a rather bigger concern. There is nowhere else for people to go and no way to reset the planet’s climate system. If we are to take a prudential view of public finances, we should surely take a prudential view of something irreversible and much costlier.

So why are we behaving like this?

The first and deepest reason is that, as the civilization of ancient Rome was built on slaves, ours is built on fossil fuels. What happened in the beginning of the 19th century was not an ‘industrial revolution’ but an ‘energy revolution.’ Putting carbon into the atmosphere is what we do.” (Thanks Browser.)