The story of smokestacks and tailpipes (Abridged version)

So, here’s what happened. A few hundred years ago we decided it was time to create companies. To get lots of people to buy what our companies were selling, we started looking beyond the towns we lived in for a market for our goods. As we sought out bigger and bigger markets for our goods, we had to create more and more powerful and efficient ways of producing and transporting those goods. Camels were better than peoples’ backs. Boats were better than swimming. So on and so forth. Eventually, one thing led to another, companies got bigger, markets got bigger, people got bigger and more plentiful, and we decided to start producing and transporting our goods using artificial energy that comes from burning stuff. Henceforth, there were smokestacks and tailpipes. Fast-forward 150 or so years and we’ve got billions of people doing this along with some global warming.

The thing is, we might have noticed that it wasn’t the best idea to produce and transport everything with this artificial energy that creates ugly smoke if it weren’t for the fact that as we were throwing away resources, we started throwing away people too. As the smokestacks and tailpipes grew and the ugly smoke got unbearable in cities, we decided to start putting the pollution machines in places where poor people lived. So, all the digging up and burning of really dirty rocks and really dirty liquids went ahead as if it were normal for years and years. Occasionally we’d hear about people choking in coal mines or birds dying from oil spills or gas exploding all over the place, but it all seemed like a necessary by-product of having companies and getting more things.

Right. Then there was global warming. Now it made some more sense. All of that smoke and junk that goes into the air when we burn dirty rocks and liquids doesn’t just choke poor people nearby and then disappear. It’s actually pretty thick stuff and it stays in the atmosphere, trapping heat all over the place for a long time. About twenty years ago smart people told the government that this was happening and we’d all have lots of floods and storms and droughts and stuff pretty soon. They thought that was okay though and didn’t do anything. Then we decided to watch Al Gore’s movie and started re-thinking our tailpipe/smokestack strategy.

So, what do we do now? Well, it’s not easy, but it is simple. It could be kind of fun also, especially if you’re into Snoop Dogg and measuring things. Here’s what we need to do. First, we’ve got to get a few big pieces of paper and start writing down where we’ve put all these smokestacks and tailpipes in our town. Then we have to measure how much smoke and junk they’re putting into the sky during the year. At the end of the year we come up with the number of - let’s call it - “emissions”. Then we round up all of the groups of people we’ve got in the town, the company people, the camel people, the boat people, the dirty rock digging people, the school people, the government people, and we bring them into a big building. We tell everybody about this number we’ve come up with of our “emissions” and we remind them about Al Gore’s movie and the fact that nobody wants freaky and expensive storms and floods and droughts all the time. We remind them about the greening and wind mills and stuff that came at the end of the movie. Then we say, “Okay. We got this. All we’ve got to do is take this big smokey number and drop it like it’s hot.”

Everybody gets all excited about dropping the number and starts singing Snoop Dogg lyrics. Amidst their excitement about the greening, a few people start to shout out what they’re going to do to drop it like it’s hot and agree to measure it. Pretty soon everybody’s getting in on the action. People from some groups start figuring out that their smokestacks and tailpipes are related to other groups’ pipes and stacks and they decide to get in on the greening action together. Somebody suggests a big goal for making next year’s number smaller and people get excited and start to party down to that business. Then, somebody says, “Wait a second. While we’re doing all of this greening and dropping, shouldn’t we think about what got us here in the first place?” Ah ha!

This is the moment when we decide that yes, it’s really sweet to measure and drop our emissions with green stuff all over the place, but we can’t just do it the old way. The old way is the one that led to us choosing to go for smokestacks and tailpipes in the first place and sticking with it because we didn’t notice the consequences. This time, we’ve got to do it the new way. That is, the way where everybody matters. So, we start these exciting greening and emission dropping projects in the places where power plants and oil refineries and other pollution machines have made people sick and stolen their opportunities. We make sure the business opportunities and the jobs greening everything in these places and the training for those jobs are going to the people in those communities. With everybody’s help the throw away neighborhoods start to become hope and opportunity centers.

Then of course, a few years down the road when we’ve gotten on track and slowed the global warming, with these once-forgotten people at the center of the green revolution, we’ll know when our companies are steering us toward a bad decision. With everybody paying attention and listening to each other we’ll stop that blasting-nuclear-waste-into-space-idea dead in it’s tracks.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait. I’m off to go buy me a gas-measurer.