Green Project Management -- Isn't

 

Our August theme is Green Project Management, which presented quite a problem for me. While I’m a big fan of the latter, I’m highly skeptical of efforts to further the former. In short, I’m fairly sure that much of the so-called Green industry is based on bad science and what Nassim Taleb referred to as “flawed tools of inference;” yet, “going green” certainly seems to be the rage within management circles these days. I’d like to add a bit of perspective.

On November 15, 2005, the late Michael Crichton presented a talk sponsored by The Independent Institute in San Francisco, entitled “Fear and Complexity: State of Fear + Why Politicized Science is Dangerous.” One of his best (in my opinion) examples of how “scientists” and “experts” can get the notion of advancing or bettering the state of a given environment horribly wrong, and be extremely slow in not only recognizing the error, but ceasing their damaging efforts, had to do with Yellowstone National Park.

Back in the 1890s it was commonly believed that elk were endangered, so their Yellowstone populations were fed and encouraged. At the same time, predators known to attack elk were hunted or driven away from the park. What happened next was entirely predictable: the elk population exploded, to the point that, in 1915, former president Theodore Roosevelt urged a “scientific study” based on his concerns of the dramatically increased elk population. He was ignored as the Park Service continued to encourage the elk. Soon the pastures were over-grazed, driving away the deer and antelope. The elk, having consumed all available grasses, turned to aspen bark, the nominal sustenance of beavers. When the beaver population dropped, they stopped building dams, and, when that happened, the fish populations were impacted as well, since they depended on beaver dam-created pools to spawn. When the fish and beaver population dwindled, the bear population plummeted. Since bears were also predators on elk, the elk population continued to expand as yet another predator was virtually eliminated.

At the same time, lightning-caused fires were contained and put out instead of being allowed to burn. This led to massive amounts of dried pine needles and branches falling onto the forest floor, creating a layer of dense fuel close to the ground. When a large-scale fire finally broke out, as it did in 1988, the amount of fuel and its proximity to the ground led to the blaze becoming so hot that it destroyed virtually all of the organic matter in the soil, rendering it sterile.  Much of these areas still haven’t recovered.

The problem here, of course, is that the Park Service was attempting to manage a hopelessly complex system, and they either did not recognize it as such, or, having recognized it, arrogantly assumed they nevertheless knew best how to handle it.

Now, flash forward to today’s “green” initiatives. One of their more irksome manifestations is in their indoctrination of students into their take on the impacts of every-day industry (read: management) on the environment. One of my younger son’s friends attending a public high school was informed that, for every molecule of chloro-fluoro carbons that escapes into the atmosphere, one square inch of the Earth’s ozone is destroyed. I laughed out loud, but it was clear my son’s friend took this “fact” very seriously. So, I did the numbers.

There are a little more than 4 billion square inches in one square mile (4,014,489,600).  The Earth is almost 197 million (196,939,900) square miles.  Based on the public high school earth science teacher’s ratio, it would take almost 791 Quadrillion (790,613,180,375,040,000) molecules of CFCs to completely destroy the Earth’s ozone layer.  Daunting, no? So, what would it take to push into the Earth’s atmosphere that number of CFC molecules? Well, there are 7.5 * 10²⁴ molecules in 8 ounces of water. A can of car refridgerant – which, back in the 60s and 70s, contained R-13, the ultimate villain of CFC introductions, don’t you know – sells at my local AutoZone for $49.99 (USD) for 20 ounces (and thanks a heckuva lot for that, “green” managers!). If there were a similar number of molecules of CFC in the 20-ounce can than there are of H2O in 8 ounces of water, one shade tree mechanic, by mis-applying the special car air conditioner input nozzle into his 1975 AMC Gremlin, and venting the entire contents to atmosphere, could have destroyed the Earth’s ozone more than 9 million times over. According to the earth “science” teacher’s ratio, of course.

There are actually studies that show that, when you take into account the environmental impact of procuring and transporting the materials needed for construction, a big ol’ V8 Hummer will have a smaller carbon footprint over its expected life cycle than a Chevy Volt.  So, to all you Leaf drivers who refuse to get out of the passing lane when my Cadillac DeVille’s Northstar engine wants to go blasting past you – save your smug “I’m saving the environment” looks for people who don’t know better.

Time and time again, what conventional wisdom – or even “consensus” science – proclaims to be beneficial to the environment turns out to have the exact opposite impact. The overall environment is simply too complex to know with certainty what a particular course of action’s end result will be, and that includes green project management actions.

Or am I wrong?