We all remember the famous warning in management: whatever gets measured gets done. You can’t manage what you fail to measure.
Why is it that so much of today’s political posturing forgets all this? Can’t they see they are setting themselves up for real trouble.
Take for instance the banning of natural gas for new construction. In almost all cases, the electric grid is far from carbon free, so doing so will have clear consequences that fly in the face of the stated objectives of the laws they are passing.
Don’t they know that this will backfire? Or, do they know something that we engineers, scientists, and accountants fail to recognize. Do they know that the average American will simply ignore these future facts?
What shocks me the most is that the natural gas industry has failed to point out these facts and instead is trying to “green up” its image rather than call out the fact that the emperor is nude.
I admit I am biased by my history in this business. I remember the speed limits being reduced to 55 from 65 because the energy crises in 1973 and 1978 were the moral equivalent of war. I remember banning natural gas in new power plants because we had so much coal and we were running out of natural gas back then. Hmmm … seems strange now in retrospect doesn’t it?
We have made huge strides in the past 40 years since then and we should applaud that. But, perhaps it is time to also take a closer look at what we learned along the way. After all, as the adage goes: if you fail to study history you will be doomed to repeat it.
