A central discipline in systems thinking is a rigorous and constant appreciation of context.  Nothing can be understood – really – unless you’ve figured out two things.  The first step in understanding is teasing apart the relationship between the thing you’re studying and everything else in the system. The second step is understanding not only what the thing you’re studying does, but what it does for other components in the system (often not at all the same thing). Once those two things are uncovered, it’s possible to begin truly getting at what’s going on.  This is particularly important now, as global systems have largely replaced local systems.

Ignoring context, and assuming singularity leads to the most frequent expression of analytical failure, what we often mistakenly call the law of unintended consequences. It is true, of course, that regardless of how carefully a system is studied, it’s entirely possible that consequences will sneak in that no one saw coming. More often, however, it’s simply that people weren’t looking in the right place. Systems thinking requires a broad perspective.

Context and consequences are worth paying particular attention to in the emerging debates, discussions, and policy formulae around just what to do about climate change.  Both get fairly narrow play almost everywhere at the moment, a problem exacerbated by the amounts of money at stake and the opportunity that exists everywhere for rhetorical theatrics.

Two recent reports out of many are worth noting. The NYT, in a piece a couple of days ago drew attention to the fact that there are about $60 million worth of projects that are ‘shovel-ready’ for stimulus funding that will almost certainly be underwater in 50 to a 100 years.  ‘Shovel-ready’ has emerged as the euphemism recently for projects that are ready to go the very moment stimulus money reaches state coffers. In other words, shovel ready projects will almost certainly get done (or at least started) because everyone feels the pressure to be seen doing something now.   It is true that stimulus monies are intended to stimulate the current – not the half-century – economy and real people will be working on these projects now, not in 50 years.  But…spending time and money on infrastructure that will cease to exist in half a century ignores the larger context at the expense of the smaller.

The second item is a report out of the Partnership for European Environmental Research (PEER). PEER spent some time looking at policy integration across Europe, particularly as it had to do with climate change.  What they discovered is not all that surprising: climate change is moving up on everybody’s agenda. The real crux of their report was not that climate change is the cause célèbre of Europe – that’s old news – but rather that there is significant disconnect between traditional policy areas and climate change policy. Focusing on climate change policy – in isolation – is actually counterproductive.

This represents an enormous risk for the United States. The first battlefield is – of course – cap and trade. Nowhere are the dangers more acute in moving forward without a deep appreciation for context and consequences. The problem on the table is one that took years and years to develop, will take centuries to solve, and has to be addressed with one eye on the present and one eye on the future.