How green is your valley?
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How green is your valley? OR methodology ought to be useful in addressing urgent environmental issues
Brian Shorrock
Greenfield's letter, I believe, was constructive. However, I see Ken Gregory's letter as a typical "political" response designed to lull people into a false sense of security. Yes, Ken. I trust that everybody in this country did enjoy the magnificent summer of 1989. But, with the horrors of hurricanes and devastating floods to follow, the prospect of lots of long, hot summers is not so attractive.
Some 12 months ago, as a token contribution to World Environment Day (5th June 1989), ¡ penned a short article
for the monthly OR Newsletter (Exhibit A). Since then, events have sen/ed to convince me that "green' issues are going to feature with ever-increasing prominence, not only in our daily lives but in business and commerce. During the past 12 months, many comprehensive books and papers have appeared on environmental issues, and the media coverage has been excellent. In this short article ¡ cannot hope to cover all the problems involved. However, using traditional OR methodology, I would like to single out some of the main features.
...Sorry, Ken! But with the leader of one well-known political party encouraging us to believe that picking up litter is the key to improving the environment, perhaps you can be excused.
Although my Newsletter article did not specifically call for responses, two were published (Exhibit B). Two letters from some 3,000 members is hardly what one would call
Sadly, whilst one can fool people by pretending that there are no problems, one cannot tool Mother Nature.
overwhelming enthusiasm. From this I would deduce
So, I would say to each and every one of you: beware
that, whilst surveys show that most people are aware that there are environmental problems, not many are currently prepared actively to consider the implications.
the politicians, who glibly assure you that nothing has changed; beware the politicians, who try to denigrate the intellectuals by accusing them of panic when what they are urging is expediency; beware the politicians who call for "further scientific research" as a way of defending their vested interests.
Both the responses were ostensibly supportive, although the fact that they were both from industries with huge vested interests is perhaps not surprising. Stephen
Exhibit A world is now faced with searching for solutions to this problem, in which search OR must play a vital role. In the past, in spite of what Churchman, Ackoff and Arnoff established back in 1957, namely that "OR tries to find the best solutions relative to as large a portion of a total organization as is possible", we have made mistakes and produced sub-optimal instead of optimal solutions.
The term "the greenhouse effect' must surely rank as one of the most ill-conceived descriptions ever devised. 'The holocaust effect" would be more appropriate. I feel sure that most of you are by now well aware of the fact that this is not merely something that is going to
enable us to enj
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