PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD As IT people (and tech journalists), we’re generally not supposed to talk politics on the job. But a major goal of Smarter Technology is to promote global progress by thinking in new, and perhaps uncomfortable, ways. As another melancholy anniversary of 9/11 has just passed, it’s worth a brief look beyond our own spreadsheets and offices to the troubled shaper of our shared economic and national futures: government.
Here’s Thomas Friedman, global best-selling author and NY Times columnist, in his Sept. 9 column, Our One-Party Democracy:
“It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.”
In contrast, Friedman says, our own supposedly “democratic” (small "D") government is choked by partisan gridlock, unable to act on climate, health care—you name it. The ironic result?
“China is going to eat our lunch and take our jobs on clean energy—an industry that we largely invented—and they are going to do it with a managed economy we don’t have and don’t want,” said Joe Romm, who writes the blog climateprogress.org.
Eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks, it is hard to say if America is safer or better protected from violent enemies. A disturbing number of recommendations from the 9/11 commission remain unfunded and undone. I travel a lot, and know I sure don’t feel safer, knowing air, sea and rail cargo remains virtually uninspected. Dinner last night with an old friend, a former Army major turned transportation security consultant, didn’t change my assessment one whit.
Blame special interests, partisan bickering, economic meltdown, political cowardice, whatever. The sad truth remains: Here too a great nation is seemingly unwilling or unable to tackle an issue of life-or-death importance. From dinner table to discussion thread, from talk show to Congress, we often seem more interested in fighting ourselves than in fighting serious problems.
Technology, we all know and believe, can do amazing things. It has untapped power to transform and better the world in thousands of ways. But in countries, as in individual companies, technology can only go so far.
I don’t care if you’re Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, apolitical or None of the Above. Take 5 minutes and contact your representatives in the U.S. Senate and House. Ask—demand—that they show new, genuine commitment to what they were hired to do: pass legislation. It won’t be perfect, but it will be forward motion.
And it will be better than laboring hard over hopeful technologies with the terrible knowledge that we could and should have done better. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another 9/11 to restore unity and keep America in the game.
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