Ok its late and like a lot of people not getting much sleep ....but I have a few questions to see what you think ?
I have seen this meme a couple of times now and am a little puzzled about it , I mean it seems innocent enough ,probebly win a load of votes , but it just keeps nagging me (must be the Columbo in me) ,, do the people who come up with these narratives , really think about engineering or ecology ,or is it just some sort of pleasing sugary type coating to make you feel better?
mmmm Build Back Better is being talked about as a special government job role (rolls eyes) , I mean sometimes governments arnt very good with the maths and then you have problems that make some better ideas difficult to actually do.
Futurologists may be in short supply here , but some of the questions are interesting , and I dont think anyone should be too harsh on anyone having a go , ideally engineers are pretty good people to analyse some things through about the world we have built and engineered so far , some engineers are thinking about the Eco stuff , and I dont think people laugh at swampy and co like they did in the 80s (hard to imagine I thought swampy back in the 80s was wrong un , my apologies swampy), when eco warriors were seen as some sort of blockage to progress , and of course we perhaps all remember "things could only get better " and we went bust .
So Build Back Better seems a high risk meme from the very same people that have let pollution carry on until , the money and finance started burning itself ,in PR terms .
If I was Building Back Better
1) This perfect planet we seem to live on , is really unique , by any measure you might chose , and its run by a set of very large scale natural processes , the Carbon cycle , the Nitrogen cycle , the Hydro cycle , it may be Biology engineering , but it still is engineering in natural systems. So it would seem to me that even the smartest person on the planet , would sort of get the idea , that somehow my living is directly connected to the success of the planets life systems .I mean it gets a little clearer when you start thinking about complex life forms , they need food ,water perhaps shelter , and get this the most complex life forms (including us humans) need Oxygen , very sobering thought , that no complex life forms would exist ,were it not for the work of plants and phtosyntheic organisms.
2) Its just not a vote winner , i mean it should be perhaps , but it isnt , perscribing the lowest or eco safest life for some one of the 6bn humans that use so much of the earths resources so wastefully , so telling everyone they must live in a box , and eat mealy worms every day and ware nothing but itchy sweaters , its a bit miserable , but if we go the other way , you get hyped people consuming everything and , becoming unthoughtful about future generations , nor perhaps given the way pollution can work is there a much of middle road position. I mean theres the physical pressures sea level rise may cause , and then we might get a sort of second class food system , where premium clean agriculture is devoured by tech billionaires and the rest of us , have eat the more risky stuff , that is regulary washed in poluted rain , or even drinking water , if you impair natural enviroments enough they just dont produce the same ammount of stuff , so I dont think we can keep letting stuff get in waters and oceans.
3) I worry about my pension . i mean oh if the stock market crashes its gone .... we ll not quite , before the era of popular casino banking took off , banks played a really imprtant function in capital and flows of money , I know the banker of today is a little different to the banker , i used to see as a kid , but then credit was different thing too back then , so in building back better we perhaps are looking at a financial system , that doesnt just hose down company CEOs with stellar salaries and pensions , and going the other way cant say ime too keen on the Military dictator model either , the PRs good in Military dictatorships , but then so are the vanishing people who fail. The interesting question is how should investments look and can you stop the skilled hustler or rustler from creating investments that are pretty useless , well building back better perhaps does need responsible people running things ,, but if you ask someone a question like "are you a responsible person" they will probebly say yes , but there is no penalty for running a envirocrime company , in most companies you lose your job , when you havent made enough profit , do comapnies need to make profits ??? I think the answer to that question is yes , because you dont really want companies to not have accounts that you can see , a great deal of any stable finance system relies on people being able to see stuff , and not lie about any of the stuff that is in there , so building back better i think will contain some sort of test if you are liar or not before you are leant money , and some sort of accounts system that can show how things have been working.
4) there could be a fight to death by engineers , where one makes challenging claims to another , its not for everyone calling a government minsiter or military dictator , a bit stupid for building that sewage plant , that covers for cheap battery plant and lets loads of water pollution happen , but unfortunatly these things happen , so in some places engineers cant speak out , and pretty soon ,my guess is that some technologies will start winning out and then it will be easier to see which are the rubbish ones , and in a sort of evolutionary way , will be unaturally selected , where they cause eco problems . well at least i hope it goes that way .
5) The good life ... no not the 70s sitcom , well that topic means a whole load of things,probebely to differnt people , and you look around thw orld and some countries , things arnt so good, but they were quite bit more worse in previous centruaries , so perhaps were getting better who knows. Building back better , I think has a bit of way to go as meme , although its the meme that has most engineers attention , and in some ways engineers and investors/finance have a long long relationship , as we have designed so many of the processes and machines that we now use , I do think a change will come for engineers , as the eco problems , require thinking in a different way , one early faller has been the big money behind wind arrays making Ammonia at sea , I laughed ,these were clever people , £2mn to get invested in "green ammonia using renewable energy" said the headline . mmm pity no chemist turned up , but if the Ammonia escaped, even at just 3% by vol , it kills pretty much all life plankton and everything .
Build Back Better mmmm now where was I ? Siri how many idiots does it take to ecologicically impair a planet??? .
