Leave the Plunger Alone, and Let Your Clover Grow
In the classic Looney Tunes gag, Wile E. Coyote has bought his classic ACME detonator and deployed some TNT to do the Road Runner in. As the bird approaches, the coyote hits the plunger. The plunger jams in typical form, and the harder the Coyote fights it, the stronger it resists. He jumps on it, smashes it into the ground, strains as much as possible. But as soon as he abandons it to its own will, it gently detonates on its own —just as the canine himself reaches the target. The gag works, of course, because we all know how unproductive, and sometimes even counter-productive, a bad plan can be.
In the case of climate change, even some of the best plans we have seem prohibitively, impossibly, difficult. We believe that some of the best ideas to address climate change are yet to be had, and many that rise to the top will be the simplest of all. It can’t all be “low-hanging fruit,” but the most impact will be had by good ideas that recognize points of resistance and predict opportunities for mass-uptake and for scale.
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