Following the total fiasco of @theCCCuk's land use report yesterday, I've been doing some thinking. Please bear with me, as this line of thought is new, for me at least, and I would appreciate your feedback.
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@theCCCuk Yesterday I complained that the CCC’s targets – net zero emissions by 2050 and a 10% cut in livestock – are way out of whack with the science. But today I think the problem is not only the particular targets, but that the very notion of setting targets in an emergency is wrong
@theCCCuk When firefighters arrive at a burning building, do they set themselves a target of rescuing two of the five inhabitants? Or do they seek – aware that they might not succeed – bravely to rescue everyone they can? Their aim is to MAXIMISE the number of lives they save.
@theCCCuk In this climate emergency, our aim should be to MAXIMISE both mitigation (leaving fossil fuels in the ground) and drawdown (ecological restoration).
@theCCCuk As soon as you set a target, you pull back from maximisation. Even if you say “this target is the minimum”, as the CCC does, politicians will treat it as the line they need to cross. Once they cross it, they say “job done”.
@theCCCuk Goodhart’s Law kicks in: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." The target supplants the ultimate objective, which is to respond appropriately to the emergency.
@theCCCuk But if the aim is to maximise our response, we never cease to seek every possible opportunity for mitigation and drawdown. Our aim is to rescue every soul we can from the burning building, until there is nothing more we can do.
@theCCCuk Of course triage decisions will be made, but we make them from the position of deploying every useful strategy that lies to hand. The target approach, by contrast, tells us we need deploy only a few of them.
@theCCCuk These are raw thoughts, so please either refute them or help me to refine them. Many thanks.
