The Dunce Cap of Inaction — Why Target Trash Talking Hurts Us All
Mark Jaccard has a nice short article here on why target trash talking is detrimental. I somehow missed it in December, but here are the headline quotes,
Environmentalists do not seem to have learned anything from this experience. Their criticisms of Canada’s emissions target — a 20 per cent reduction from 2006 levels by 2020 — may yet convince the Harper government to follow the Chretien strategy of adopting an unattainable target.
Getting this policy in place is a thousand times more important than setting unattainable targets for 2020.
Deeper targets may eventually be the way to go, but the sticker shock is too much to start. Instead, we need to just get going and ramp up in time. Prodding a government’s current policy, or lack thereof, seems better than pushing them to adopt deeper targets. As we have proven so well in Canada, painting ourselves into deep target corners leaves politicians no choice but to wear the dunce cap of inaction.
I completely agree. Once the policy structure is in place and incentives are established to achieve modest targets, we’ll get increasingly robust behavioural change from companies and the general public. We can always adjust the dials later if we start to overperform. Let’s get the dials attached to something first!