General Stanley McChrystal and the 'sprawling spaghetti diagram'

The media seem unable to deal with the systemic complexity encompassed in a large systems dynamics causal loop model as this recent article demonstrates. On the other hand, as we have known for some time from our 30+ years of teaching Systems diagramming techniques to Open University (UK) Systems students, a diagram produced as part of an inquiry/learning process is not the same as one used for communication purposes. Perhaps McChrystal fell into a common trap that some of our students do?

That said the US is unlikley to extract itself from Afghanistan unless it understands the systemic complexity and acts in relation to that understanding. This is much more than slick powerpoint presentations.

China, governance and prospects for systemic change

Copenhagen in some ways could be regarded as China's coming out party. By this I mean that it has become either through choice or inescapable circumstances the key to any global-decision making. According to some reports this has caused tensions - did the Chinese Premier really in Copenhagen miss key meeetings because of the potential loss of face? Or was it a simple misunderstanding about invitations as other sources report?

Having visited China for the first time last year I am left feeling concerned with this shift in the global realpolitik, unavoidable though it is. China's emergence will present and exacerbate many systemic challenges, not least within China itself. Climate change is inextricably linked to sustainable water supply and river functioning which is in turn related to how those in poverty or ethnic minorities are treated and enabled to create livelihoods for themselves as research in the UK-based Ecosystems Services for Poverty Alleviation Program (ESPA) is demonstrating.

In many parts of the world and in China in particular, water is in a crisis characterized by scarcity, drought, sanitation problems, occurrence of extreme events and changes in rainfall patterns and run-off. China has only one quarter of the average world water resources per person and, in some strategically important areas, such as the North China plain is exploiting its water at unsustainable rates. These pictures taken in Beijing and in the Lake Baiyangdian Catchment in Hebei Province reflect some of the contrasts that are China.

Claims made for the top 50 sustainability books

The material that follows is from the publisher. What do you think?

‘These are the Top 50 Sustainability Books as voted for by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership's alumni network of over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. In addition to profiles of all 50 titles, many of the authors share their most recent reflections on the state of the world and the ongoing attempts by business, government and civil society to create a more sustainable future.

THE TOP 50 SUSTAINABILITY BOOKS

Written by Wayne Visser on behalf of the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership

Published 7 December 2009, 200 pp

This unique title draws together in one volume some of the best thinking to date on the pressing social and environmental challenges we face as a society. These are the Top 50 Sustainability Books as voted for by the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership's alumni network of over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. In addition to profiles of all 50 titles, many of the authors share their most recent reflections on the state of the world and the ongoing attempts by business, government and civil society to create a more sustainable future.

Many of these authors have become household names in the environmental, social and economic justice movements - from Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader and E.F. Schumacher to Vandana Shiva, Muhammad Yunus and Al Gore. Others, such as Aldo Leopold, Thomas Berry and Manfred Max-Neef, are relatively undiscovered gems, whose work should be much more widely known.

The profiled books tackle our most vexing global challenges, including globalisation (Globalization and Its Discontents, No Logo), climate change (Heat, The Economics of Climate Change) and poverty (The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Development as Freedom). Some of these featured thought-leaders are highly critical of the status quo (e.g. David Korten, Eric Schlosser and Joel Bakan), while others suggest evolutionary ways forward (e.g. Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, Paul Hawken and Jonathon Porritt). Some place their faith in technological solutions (e.g. Janine Benyus, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker), while others are upbeat about the potential of business to be a force for good (e.g. John Elkington, Ricardo Semler, William McDonough and Michael Braungart).

By featuring these and other seminal thinkers, The Top 50 Sustainability Books distils a remarkable collective intelligence - one that provides devastating evidence of the problems we face as a global society, yet also inspiring examples of innovative solutions; it explores our deepest fears and our highest hopes for the future. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to tap into the wisdom of our age.

THE TOP 50 SUSTAINABILITY BOOKS

1 A Sand County Almanac Aldo Leopold (1949)

2 Silent Spring Rachel Carson (1962)

3 Unsafe At Any Speed Ralph Nader (1965)

4 The Population Bomb Paul L. Ehrlich (1968)

5 Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth R. Buckminster Fuller (1969)

6 The Limits to Growth Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers and William W. Behrens III (1972)

7 Small Is Beautiful E.F. Schumacher (1973)

8 Gaia James Lovelock (1979)

9 The Turning Point Fritjof Capra (1982)

10 Our Common Future ('The Brundtland Report') World Commission on Environment and Development (1987)

11 The Dream of the Earth Thomas Berry (1988)

12 A Fate Worse Than Debt Susan George (1988)

13 Staying Alive Vandana Shiva (1989)

14 Blueprint for a Green Economy David Pearce, Anil Markandya and Edward B. Barbier (1989)

15 For the Common Good Herman Daly and John B. Cobb Jr (1989)

16 Human Scale Development Manfred Max-Neef (1989)

17 Changing Course Stephan Schmidheiny and Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD) (1992)

18 The Ecology of Commerce Paul Hawken (1993)

19 Maverick Ricardo Semler (1993)

20 When Corporations Rule the World David C. Korten (1995)

21 Biomimicry Janine M. Benyus (1997)

22 Cannibals with Forks John Elkington (1997)

23 The Hungry Spirit Charles Handy (1997)

24 Banker to the Poor Muhammad Yunus (1998)

25 The Crisis of Global Capitalism George Soros (1998)

26 Factor Four Ernst von Weizsäcker, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins (1998)

27 False Dawn John Gray (1998)

28 Development as Freedom Amartya Sen (1999)

29 No Logo Naomi Klein (1999)

30 Natural Capitalism Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins (1999)

31 Business as Unusual Anita Roddick (2000)

32 The Mystery of Capital Hernando de Soto (2000)

33 The Civil Corporation Simon Zadek (2001)

34 Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser (2001)

35 The Skeptical Environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg (2001)

36 Cradle to Cradle William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002)

37 Globalization and its Discontents Joseph E. Stiglitz (2002)

38 The Corporation Joel Bakan (2004)

39 Presence Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers (2004)

40 The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid C.K. Prahalad (2004)

41 The River Runs white Elizabeth C. Economy (2004)

42 Capitalism as if the World Matters Jonathon Porritt (2005)

43 Capitalism at the Crossroads Stuart L. Hart (2005)

44 Collapse Jared Diamond (2005)

45 The End of Poverty Jeffrey D. Sachs (2005)

46 The Chaos Point Ervin Laszlo (2006)

47 Heat George Monbiot (2006)

48 An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore (2006)

49 When the Rivers Run Dry Fred Pearce (2006)

50 The Economics of Climate Change Nicholas Stern (2007)

Conclusion

Mike Peirce, Deputy Director, Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership

FROM THE INTERVIEWS...

The level of change that is going to be forced on our economies, our value chains, our companies and the people who work in business is going to be both profound, and profoundly exciting. There are few times in world history where I would rather have been alive.

John Elkington

We're going to solve these problems: extreme poverty will end by the year 2025. That's what I said in the book and I think that's what's going to happen.

Jeffrey D. Sachs

The simple truth is that there are no companies that are sustainable in the world today; there are none. What we have are companies that are experimenting with pieces of the puzzle.

Stuart L. Hart

Negligence begins tomorrow, because now we know what to do.

William McDonough

In America they said I was trying to tear down Wall Street and that would suck the juice out of the American dream.

Charles Handy

One tends to forget it's not the oil companies that drive our cars; we drive them and burn the fuel. We don't have to do it, and to entirely blame industry for making a profit from selling us petrol is quite naive. The whole of society is in the game together and to single out industry for attack is quite wrong.

James Lovelock

I always remember, on Donella Meadows' office door was a little motto which said 'Even if I knew the world would end tomorrow I'd plant a tree today.'

Dennis L. Meadows

Will our grandchildren know what a company is? ... it seems that the real institutional challenge is to create a new type of institution.

Simon Zadek

I am very sceptical about a moralistic appeal and I'm extremely sceptical about markets providing sustainable civilisation.

Ernst von Weizsäcker

I was just in Borneo watching 19 square kilometres of lush rainforest that had been recreated from scratch in six or seven years. Nobody knew you could do that.

Amory B. Lovins

Environmental concern is still very much a First World concern. Most of the world are still pretty worried about the fact that their kids can die from easily curable infectious diseases.

Bjørn Lomborg

I think there is unfortunately no level of human suffering that causes policy to change.

Susan George

Sustainability is boring. What would you say if I were to ask you about your relationship with your wife? How would you characterise it? As sustainable? If this is the bigger goal - sustainability - then I feel really sorry because it doesn't celebrate human creativity and human nature.

Michael Braungart

I think the system as a whole is structurally unsustainable. That means it has to be transformed. It can't be patched up.

Ervin Laszlo

Read about When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten (1995) for free

Review copies are available (hard copy and PDF).

List price: £25.00 / €37.50 / $45.00. Offer price: £22.50 / €33.75 / $40.50.

Significant investment in new Systems courses and programs by The Open University UK

The Open University UK has recently approved and developed a suite of new awards and courses to be called 'Systems Thinking in Practice'.

The overall program will comprise three possible awards. The first is a Postgraduate Certificate in Systems Thinking in Practice (C72) of 60 OU credit points. A new course due for first presentation in May 2010, ‘Thinking strategically: systems tools for managing change’ (TU811) is a compulsory 30 point course for this award together with another 30 point OU option, or where credit transfer has been arranged, a partner option.

The second award is a Postgraduate Diploma in Systems Thinking in Practice (E28) of 120 OU points. To be awarded the PG Diploma the PG certificate plus another 60 points of study must be completed. ‘Managing systemic change: inquiry, action and interaction’ (TU812) is a 30 point compulsory course with TU811 (above).

The third award is the MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice which is made up of the PG Diploma plus a further 60 points of study.

As a result of the investment made by The Open University in the new Systems awards four new books have been produced and co-published with Springer. The first, now published, Systems Thinkers, is devoted to the individuals who are generally recognised as systems thinkers. This work presents a biographical history of the field of systems thinking, by examining the life and work of thirty of its major thinkers. It discusses each thinker’s key contributions, the way this contribution was expressed in practice and the relationship between their life and ideas. This discussion is supported by an extract from the thinker’s own writing, to give a flavour of their work and to give readers a sense of which thinkers are most relevant to their own interests.

The second book in the series, ‘Systems Approaches to Managing Change’ due for release shortly, is devoted to the main methodologies that have been developed by Systems scholars and are often deployed as part of systems practice. In their book the five methodological approaches covered are:

1. System dynamics (SD) developed originally in the late 1950s by Jay Wright Forrester
2. Viable systems method (VSM) developed originally in the late 1960s by Stafford Beer
3. Strategic options development and analysis (SODA: with cognitive mapping) developed originally in the 1960s by Colin Eden
4. Soft systems methodology (SSM) developed originally in the 1970s by PeterCheckland
5. Critical systems heuristics (CSH) developed originally in the early 1980s by Werner Ulrich.

The third book, Systems Practice: How to Act in a Climate Change World, due for release in May 2010 deals with a simple logic:

1. What are the situations where systems thinking helps?
2. What does it entail to think and act systemically?
3. How can practices be built that move from systemic understanding to action that is systemically desirable and culturally feasible?
4. How can situations be transformed for the better through systems practice?

The book is introduced against the backdrop of human induced climate change. It is argued that climate change and other factors create a societal need to move towards more systemic and adaptive governance regimes which incorporate systems practice. The systems practitioner referred to in this book is anyone managing in situations of complexity and uncertainty – it is not a specialist role or that of a consultant or hired ‘intervener’. Thus the book is structured so as to build a general model of systems practice.

The fourth book, a reader edited by Chris Blackmore called Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice, also due for release in May, is concerned with how social and critical learning systems and communities of practice can inform future systems thinking in action. Her focus is on practice in multi-stakeholder situations that call for collaborative or concerted action within groups.

This is a significant and timely commitment by The Open University. In a research report just released by The Work Foundation called Exceeding Expectation: the principles of outstanding leadership, the first key finding was that outstanding leaders ‘think systemically and act long term….Outstanding leaders achieve through a combination of systemic thinking and acting for the long term benefit of their organisation. They recognise the interconnected nature of the organization and therefore act carefully.’

Citations

Blackmore, C. P. (Ed.). (2010) Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice. Springer: London.

Ison, R.L. (2010) Systems Practice. How to Act in a Climate-Change World. Springer: London.

Ramage, M. and Shipp, K. (2009) Systems Thinkers. Springer: London.

Reynolds, M. and Holwell, S eds (2010) Systems Approaches to Managing Change. Springer: London.

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Simon Caulkin named Columnist of the Year at 23rd Workforce Media Awards

On Tuesday, 19 January 2010 at the Workforce Media Awards Simon Caulkin, former management editor at The Observer, now freelance was named Columnist of the Year “For his gripping, well-written and insightful writing. Simon combines depth of knowledge with an ability to bring alive whatever subjects he covers.”

What could have been added is that he is the best 'systems' journalist in the UK media. Also that this is a fitting rebuke to members of the Scott Trust, publishers of The Observer who recently supported the decision to end Simon's Observer column. It would seem he may have been doing his job too well for some!

Arriving in 2010 - breaking a blogging silence

What do we carry forward into 2010 that has the potential to contribute to, or constrain, systemic transformation of how we humans think and act? In 2009 the latter - constraints - have dominated and driven me into a blogger silence. But societal transformation is closely coupled to personal transformation so after a short holiday in a marvelous setting (see photos) I have regained some of my enthusiasm to seek out and contribute to ways forward. But moving forward involves recognising and negotiating what constrains as much as developing something that is new.

In this spirit I hope to post, over the next weeks, a range of material that points to both opportunities and constraints for more systemic and adaptive governance.

The photos - from the top: (i) The remaining 'apostles' on the Great Ocean Road, south-western Victoria; (ii) 'London Bridge' Great Ocean Road; (iii-iv) Views of the Bay of Islands, Great Ocean Road; (v) view from the lounge, Battery Point, Port Fairy; (vi) 'The Crags' - fossilised roots - what needs to happen to so many of our own institutions!

Web petition in support of Paul Krugman

Geoffrey Hodgson has organized a web petition in support of the following words by Paul Krugman:

"Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy ... the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth ... economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets, this time gussied up with fancy equations ... Unfortunately, this romanticized and sanitized vision of the economy led most economists to ignore all the things that can go wrong. They turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the problems of institutions that run amok; to the imperfections of markets – especially financial markets – that can cause the economy’s operating system to undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers created when regulators don’t believe in regulation. ... When it comes to the all-too-human problem of recessions and depressions, economists need to abandon the neat but wrong solution of assuming that everyone is rational and markets work perfectly." (New York Times, September 2nd, 2009.)


If you agree, please sign and forward to others:
SIGN "Revitalizing Economics After the Crash" ON
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/revitalizing_economics?e

In November 2008 the Queen asked why so few Economists had foreseen the credit crunch.

'Ten leading British Economists write to Her Majesty, claiming that the training of economists is too narrow: “Mathematical technique should not dominate real-world substance.”

During a visit to the London School of Economics in November 2008, the Queen asked why few economists had foreseen the credit crunch. Dated 22 July 2009, she received an answer from Professors Tim Besley and Peter Hennessy. This was widely quoted in the British press.

Ten leading British economists – including academics from top universities, three Academicians of the Academy of Social Sciences, academic journal editors, a former member of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and the Chief Economic Advisor the Greater London Authority – have responded by writing their own response to the Queen. They note that the letter by Professors Besley and Hennessy fails to consider any deficiency in the training of economists themselves.

Following similar complaints by Nobel Laureates Ronald Coase, Wassily Leontief and Milton Friedman, the ten economists argue that economists has become largely transformed into a branch of applied mathematics, with little contact with the real world. The letter by Professors Besley and Hennessy does not consider how the preference for mathematical technique over real-world substance diverted many economists from looking at the whole picture.

The ten economists uphold that the narrow training of economists – which concentrates on mathematical techniques and the building of empirically uncontrolled formal models – has been a major reason for the failure of the economics profession to give adequate warnings of the economic crises in 2007 and 2008.

The ten signatories also point out that while Professors Besley and Hennessy complain that economists have become overly ‘charmed by the market’, they mention neither the highly questionable belief in universal ‘rationality’ nor the ‘efficient markets hypothesis’, which are both widely taught and promoted by mainstream economists.

The ten economists call for a broader training of economists, involving allied disciplines such as psychology and economic history, as well as mathematics.'

Sigantories to this letter included at least three Australians - Peter E. Earl, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia, and author of Business Economics: A Contemporary Approach, John Foster, Professor of Economics, University of Queensland, Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and President Elect of the International J. A. Schumpeter Society and Geoffrey C. Harcourt, Emeritus Reader, University of Cambridge, Emeritus Professor, University of Adelaide, Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Is it too early to acknowledge the timely 'death' of the targets culture?

With the Daily Telegraph on the case perhaps it is not!

'Why were targets introduced? The Government [UK, Labour] would have you believe it was to drive up standards; but in reality they were a means of showing that Labour "cared". They were a political device. Whenever ministers were challenged about high levels of offending or poor levels of literacy they could say: "But we have a target to reduce it/increase it/scrap it, so we must be good." Targets were ostensibly introduced to hold the Government to account, but were used as a means of deflecting criticism.'

What about in Australia though?

Thankfully Melbourne has The Age, but....

In visits to Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane in recent times I have become appalled at the lack of a 'critical' broadsheet in those cities - and appreciate why there is so little real engagement with the global issues of the day by many in these states. The Murdoch press, present in all Australia's cities, does little to provide anything other than a reactionary perspective (except for the odd journalist).

Take for example the excellent articles by Paul Krugman and Paddy Manning in The Age on Monday 18th May. Krugman makes the valid points that 'China will have to help save the planet' and that when 'the US and other advanced countries finally move to confront climate change, they will also be morally empowered to confront those nations that refuse to act'. He is right- but he and others will have to be vigilant in the face of those who might be seen to act, but actually do nothing. Australia is likely to be a case in point.

On this note, despite the many strengths of The Age, it is a great pity it did not have a full, wrap-around colour display of the 5000 or so people who sent a very clear message, in the form of a 350 m sign, to Canberra from St Kilda beach.

New Labour architect attacks government for failing to convince public on climate change urgency:

'Anthony Giddens and Lord Stern have made recent major attacks on Government Policy. The latter has very sensibly criticised Heathrow and Kingsnorth decisions and Anthony Giddens calls for 'revolution in attitudes to politics'.'

I am grateful for John Colvin to alerting me to these posts, if for no other reason than they reflect some positive signs - and signs of an awakening 'intelligence' around these issues. Australia is a good case of how we need a 'revolution in attitudes to politics.' The examples, unfortunately are all too obvous:

* being too slow on creating conducive policy and fiscal settings for 'green infrastructure' (both 'soft' and 'hard') innovation;

* being caught out by US policy moves - e.g emissions limits on cars; secret deals with China on positioning for climate change talks;

* the indefensible $12 billion of subsidies being handed out to big carbon-polluting industries.

Australia's policies seem well designed to create a 'backwater' nation as others gather momentum to do what has to be done.

A meaningful response to climate change will depend on the US and China

For some time I have been boring my friends with this claim. It is therefore encouraging to know that the US and China have been engaged in secret negotiations prior to the Copenhagen summit in December.

It is claimed that it "It will be serious. It will be substantive, and it will happen." Let's hope so!

Universities need to “show more imagination”....

....to create a culture of lifelong learning in the higher education sector, said Sir David Watson chair of the Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning.

Sir David called for universities to set up a more flexible framework to allow learners to accumulate credit towards degrees and other qualifications. He also demanded that universities work more closely with further education colleges.

In his first major public address since the commission began work in September 2007, and before it publishes its findings in June, he described the current lifelong-learning system as a “jungle of provision” with accountability requirements of “Kafkaesque proportions”.

“The current framework is recognised by almost all participants and commentators as radically unfit for the purposes of effective and equitable lifelong learning. What is more, it has been subjected to violent lurches in policy compounded by serious lapses in policy memory on the part of successive governments,” he said.

Although the UK has the highest percentage of part-time students, the highest average age of participants and the second-highest rate of working-class participation in the European Union, the higher education system still favours the participation of young, full-time students studying away from home, Sir David said.

The commission is calling for a credit framework that will allow people to step in and out of formal education throughout their lives. “The flexibility that a proper credit framework brings will be all the more needed in the light of current economic turbulence and the effects this is having on employment.

“Large numbers of adults will be seeking to improve their qualifications without having to commit themselves to a long stretch of full-time education.

“This is not a technical issue: we have the systems. It is a cultural and moral issue: we fail to use these systems for reasons of conservatism, snobbery and lack of imagination.”

Sir David also warned: “Universities have always tended to use further education as a kind of header tank: a useful source of recruitment when needed; of displacement during periods of rapid expansion; and of collaboration on their own terms. This will not do in the future.”

Source: Open University

Carbon storage an impossible dream

Given my postings earlier this week I was fascinated to read Paddy Mannings G-BIZ column in today's Age. The column is developed around the concerns of Graham Brown aged 57, a former coal miner of 20 years. Some quotes give a flavour:

''He says most people working at the coal face know CCS is "just not do-able. It's never going to get off the ground. The technology's so expensive that it's not going to be economical."

The main problem is the sheer volume of carbon dioxide that needs to be captured and stored. Brown explains it this way: for every tonne of coal burnt there are 2.5 to 2.7 tonnes of carbon to store. A tonne of carbon is about 500 cubic metres, as a gas at sea level at room temperature.

Now, say coal-fired power stations in Australia emit 100 million tonnes of carbon each year. The Government hopes CCS will trap 20 per cent of those emissions. If the gas is compressed 500 times, that's 20 million tonnes a year.

Transporting 20 million tonnes of highly compressed gas is no mean feat. "Look at the infrastructure that needs to be in place to get 80 million tonnes of coal to port," says Brown. "Moving gas is a different kettle of fish to moving coal … because it's got to be stored in an intrinsically safe way — either pipe or trucks or trains".

In other words CCS is a pipe dream!!

Epitaphs for New Labour have a convincing tone...what of our democratic forms?

Reading the demolition of New Labour in Guy Rundle's epitaph today I was left with little satisfaction depite my criticism of New Labour and the Blair government in particular. Within our current democratic system the alternatives (both in the UK and and in Oz) seem like a choice to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. We need more systemic and adaptive forms of governance!

Juxtaposing is a practice that can be revealing

Some claim that the capacity to 'see' emerging pattern is key to systems thinking. There is no doubt that juxtaposing certain things can reveal more than either component seen by itself (an example of managing for emergence?) Perhaps this is part of the editor, or sub-editor's art?

In The Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday April 1st (News 3) the titles of two articles were nicely juxtaposed: 'Scrap coal plan, says Rudd's man' and then 'State owns biggest polluters'. Despite the date the joke is at our expense - for accepting this as 'how things are' or 'how they have to be'.

Good on Peter Newman for taking the stand he has, including his dismissal of the Federal Government's $500 million committment into researching clean coal technology. Compare this with the PM's recent prognostications on 'clean coal'. Go to Guy Pearce's Quarterly essay for reasons why this may be so! Or see why leading scientists have attacked the Wong-Rudd position on Australia's proposed climate response.

Since reading Pearce's essay I have become aware that most reports about clean coal use seemingly big numbers ungrounded (for the average reader) in what these numbers actually mean. In addition the clean coal technology itself is rarely referenced in relation to the total infrastructure development that would be needed to make it a viable CO2 reducing system capable of making a significant and timely impact on overall CO2 emissions.

Juxtaposed to these issues, the biggest polluters (in NSW) include, according to the report, Qantas Airways, Caltex and NSW government owned power stations in Lithgow and the Hunter. The details come from a report 'Hidden Costs of Electricity' which estimates the health costs of coal and gas generators were $2.6 billion, about the same as vehicle pollution.

PS Good to see that Minister for Finance, Lindsay Tanner was prepared to launch the 'Hidden Costs' report.

Maynard Keynes is supposed to have said...

what exactly? In my previous posting Robert Skidelsky ended his article by quoting Keynes:

'John Maynard Keynes wrote that "practical men who believe themselves to be quite immune from intellectual influences are usually the slaves of some defunct economist".

I have seen this quote and variations of it attributed to Keynes in several places. Does anyone know what he actually said and where? Or perhaps he said the same thing, more or less, several times in different places?

Perhaps starting a search here might help!

Robert Skidelsky mounts another attack on 'Chicago school'- tainted economists

This short article gives a very readable account of why the financial system has gone into systemic failure. Skidelsky contrasts his own analysis with that of 'the "money glut" school. In their view, there was only one cause of the crisis: excessive credit creation that took place when Alan Greenspan was US Federal Reserve chairman. .. This view draws on the "Austrian" theory of booms and slumps, and also Milton Friedman's explanation of the Great Depression. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now.'

Unlike many political leaders who have learned to use the phrase 'systemic failure' Skidelsky is able to point to key influences which have given rise to the failure: i.e. economists and economic theory that 'assumes that markets are perfectly efficient. If they go wrong, it must be because of policy mistakes. This view is also self-contradictory, for if market participants are perfectly rational and perfectly informed, they would not have been fooled by a policy of making money cheaper than it really was.

This suggests a more fundamental reason for the economic crisis: the dominance of the Chicago school of economics, with its belief in the self-regulating properties of unfettered markets. This belief justified the deregulation of financial markets in the name of the "efficient-market hypothesis". It led to the spread of financial risk-management models, which grossly underestimated the amount of risk in the system.'

Some of the best coastline and beaches in the world?

Bemagui on the far south coast of NSW proved a delight and visits to Tathra and Wallagoot Lake revived memories from years ago. Seeing for the first time many of the beaches and inlets as we drove south, including two nights at the marvelously situated Marlo Hotel overlooking the mouth of the Snowy River, it was hard to imagine better beaches anywhere else.

There were also many new birds to be seen on our Easter 'circuit'.

Worth a listen from 'Background Briefing' - MBA: Mostly Bloody Awful!

'Something happened to management culture decades ago and now being a Master of Business Administration, especially from Harvard, is rather on the nose. MBA, it's being said, can also stand for 'Mediocre but Arrogant', or 'Management by Accident'.

This report by Stephen Crittenden features Henry Mintzberg:

'McGill University Professor Henry Mintzberg says what we call a financial crisis is really at its core a crisis of management, and not just a crisis of management, but a crisis of management culture.'

And quotes Russell Ackoff:

'In 1986, when Russell Ackoff, a pioneer of management education, retired as Professor at the Wharton Business School, he was asked what were the benefits of a business education. With savage irony he replied that there were three. The first was to equip students with a vocabulary that enabled them to talk with authority about subjects they did not understand. The second was to give students principles that would demonstrate their ability to withstand any amount of disconfirming evidence. The third was to give students a ticket of admission to a job where they could learn something about management.'

The following references provide further background.

Title: The Puritan Gift: Reclaiming the American Dream Amidst Global Financial Chaos
Author: Kenneth Hopper and William Hooper
Publisher: I.B. Taurus 2009

Title: Managers not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development
Author: Henry Mintzberg
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2004

Title: From Higher Aims to Hired Hands:The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession
Author: Rakesh Khurana
Publisher: Princetone University Press, 2007

Title: Business Schools Share the Blame for Enron
Author: Sumantra Ghoshal
Publisher: Financial Times, 17 July 2003