Finding a Lasting Solution
If you’re going to talk about a problem, the responsible thing to do is to bring a solution to the table.
Throughout human history, we’ve succeeded at replacing or augmenting old technologies, not by rehashing the problem, but by focusing on the solution.
Horse buggies were replaced by cars, which are more efficient at taking us from one place to another. A power grid that was predominantly reliant on coal power was augmented by nuclear, wind, hydro, and solar power solutions. These are not perfect solutions, but modern society as we know it would not exist without them.
Today, we seem to be going about it all backwards. “We need to replace plastic,” we say. But we don’t have any meaningful solutions. We say, “let’s use paper instead.” But paper is only marginally more replenishable than plastic, and we’re repeatedly hearing issues of rainforests going extinct.
We end up wasting precious energy creating new solutions when energy is apparently already a concern. New solutions often come with enormous costs that end up negating their much-touted benefits.
You can’t just stop doing something because it was deemed bad. You need a workable replacement and a strategy for implementation. Ironically, replacements always come with their own issues too. It’s never “the best.” It’s always “the best we have right now.”
What problems are you seeing? Have you identified a meaningful solution? Do you have an implementation strategy? Are you too quick to throw out the best you have right now to expend energy you don’t have creating new solutions that may have their own drawbacks?
