"To carry out a timely response to warning ... two conditions must be met: we must not only receive warning, but also take the decision to respond. The first task has long been recognised; it calls for strong intelligence capabilities. It is the second task that has been neglected. We cannot expect that the enemy, if he plans to attack, will furnish warning that is unambiguous. Military history reminds us that we ought to expect a massive and skillful effort at deception." Captain W Weinberger, US Secretary of Defence, addressing Congress, 1982.
This is how planet earth and mother nature are at the moment. Loads of warnings, shots across the bow, earthquakes destroying nuclear reactors, fracking gasses entering drinking water, etc. We are getting the warnings, but we are ignoring them. By we, I mean governments.
And all the solutions are at hand, but they take money away from monopolies (governments) and put the money in the hands of local communities.
Surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility, but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost. It includes gaps in intelligence that, like a string of pearls too precious to wear, is too sensitive to give to those who need it. It includes the alarm that fails to work, but also the alarm that has gone off so often it has been disconnected. It includes the unalert watchman, but also the one who knows he'll be chewed out by his superior if he gets higher authority out of bed. It includes the contingencies that occur to no ne, but also those that everyone assumes somebody else is taking care of (in Malcolm Gladwell's books re burglar alarms). It includes straight-forward procrastination (South Africa's curse, according to David Lipschitz: "waiting for the future, whilst blaming the past"), but also decisions protracted by internal disagreement. It includes, in addition, the inability of human beings to rise to the occasion until they are it is the occasion - which is usually too late. Thomas C Shelling, in the forward to "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision" by Roberta Wohlstetter, 1962. (Notes in brackets by David Lipschitz.)
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