Stephen Bush writes about 'Black Out' nights in the US and UK, which are intended to encourage more black people to attend theatre performances by inviting an 'all-Black-identifying audience'. Mr Bush's opinion about this form of segregation is similar to mine (negative), but he is also ...
...struck by an equally important and more widespread problem: that no one involved either has any idea if the scheme works or any plan for measuring it. Even worthwhile causes need a metric for success (paywall), Stephen Bush, 'Financial Times', 11 March
He concludes:
All of us who criticise Black Out nights because we don't like the principle at stake are also guilty of failing to ask the first question we should pose to anyone doing anything, no matter how worthwhile. And that is: how, exactly, will we be able to tell if you've succeeded or failed?
It's a common failing, and one that is most grievous when it's made by policymakers. My previous post refers to an article written 22 years ago by Stephen van Evera, and I don't think things have improved since then. It's one of the reasons that I have posed Climate Stability Bonds as an alternative to the current focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions as the sole solution the climate change problem. We can target emissions fairly accurately, but we cannot reliably link any changes in emissions to changes in the things that matter to us. We need to specify exactly what are those concerns, and set up reliable measures of progress towards addressing them, before imposing heavy regulatory and financial costs on society. That's one reason, I believe, that despite heroic efforts (alongside those costs), nothing in the way of greenhouse gas emission has been achieved.
'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?' From Riding the Climate Toboggan, John Michael Greer, 6 September 2023
It seems that charities and activists are following the government's lead: declaring grandiose, lofty-sounding goals that just happen to be so vague as to resist effective monitoring. Speaking out against initiatives that may well be futile and certainly cannot be shown to be successful, such as Black Out nights or, indeed, agreements to cut greenhouse gas emissions is, in today's politically polarised scene, risky. Potentially even more disastrous for humanity than the climate change circus is the failure to set and reward verifiable goals for eliminating deadly conflicts: wars and civil wars and their consequences. There are well-meaning, hard-working people working for bodies ostensibly aimed at reducing conflict levels, but nobody is in a position to judge how effective are any of their myriad approaches.
A Social Policy Bond regime would not allow policymakers to get away with specifying goals that can't be measured. So, for example, we need to identify what exactly we want climate change policy to achieve. Our goals in that area could be defined in terms of a range of physical, ecological, social and financial indicators, all of which would have to fall within an approved range for a sustained period before the policy would be deemed successful, and holders of Climate Stability Bonds rewarded. That period could be decades long. All of this would be a sharp contrast to today's approach, which has as its sole goal a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which even if it were to be achieved, does not speak to the concerns of ordinary people, which is one reason why it has gained no real traction. Similarly, with conflict. Targeting broad, verifiable, meaningful, long-term outcomes, such as sustained period of a more benign climate or world peace would not only be more effective than any current efforts to solve global problems; it would enjoy more public support and hence more buy-in; essential if we are to successfully meet the huge challenges humanity faces, of which climate change and war are two of the most urgent.
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