America's Long-term Short-term problem

After paying over four dollars a gallon, the economy going into the tank (literally) and an election that was partially fought on the future of energy policy, you would think that it was time to do things differently in our use of resources. We now have the Big Three auto makers pleading for dollars to keep them afloat; you would think that it is irreversible, but not to fast.

Suddenly, oil prices drop and gas prices go down. All of a sudden there are questions about whether or not we can "afford" to implement some of the policies advocated by those concerned about the environment (including Obama) unless oil prices are high. That is what it takes to be economically viable and "worth" it. This highlights one of the major issues that we have in the United States, not that of economic viability, but the belief that somehow long-term solutions are not worth it unless we have short-term reasons to do the right thing.

In the late 1950s and 1960s Oscar Lewis and others introduced the notion of "the culture of poverty" (1959), which he thought characterized the poor, and prominently among them was the idea of an inability to defer gratification. In 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan publishes the now (in)famous Moynihan Report, applying this theory to Black subcultures. These ideas have widely been critiqued and discredited by sociologists and anthropologists, and appropriately so. I would argue further, however, that not only is short-term thinking not a characteristic of the poor, it is actually a characteristic of our dominant culture.

So, basically, we cannot make progress on clean energy, which also gets us off oil dependency, unless it can be sufficiently profitable over another form of energy. Our resolve to do the right thing has to last longer than just during the period of discomfort we feel while gas prices are high. We also need to stop listening to experts who suggest that it is only the market that drives alternative energy in the short-term, rather than long-term viable solutions. One of the major barriers to energy transition is that we need to move beyond the idea of short-term profitability in favor of long-term viability.

The nearing collapse of the U.S. car industry demonstrates the poverty of logic that the industry will do what is best to be profitable. Profitable companies look to the future and make changes which ensure long-term viability and sustainability, but the Not-So-Big Three have long focused on trying to avoid changes. Corporations need to learn that when you sacrifice the longer and sustainable view for short-term, non-sustainable profit, you will lose.