I’ve been reading about last week’s meeting in Bali on global warming and what’s to be done about it. The meeting was attended by delegates from 187 nations and was a the beginning of a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol, which happened ten years ago.

After two weeks of raucous debate, the group produced an Action Plan which contained no binding commitments. The boldest thing members of the meeting could agree on was to declare that “deep cuts in global emissions will be required”.

This seemed like the time to point out what is becoming undeniably clear: if the problem of global warming is going to be solved, it will be solved by entrepreneurs, not by governments.

Why? Here are a few reasons:

1. Entrepreneurs look at situations and see solutions. Governments look at situations and see constituents and donors.

Entrepreneurs exist to find problems and solve them in never-before tried ways. Governments on the other hand exist mainly to maintain the status quo - keep people’s jobs, keep companies’ profits up, keep infrastructure functioning, and keep donors’ revenue streams open. So which of these groups is better-oriented to solve the very complex problem of global warming?

2. Entrepreneurs never rely on consensus to get their idea to work.

Any plan that requires global consensus to work is doomed to failure from the start. The Bali Plan got held up for most of the meeting by the U.S. delegates, who refused to play along with the rest of the group. Entrepreneurs plan for adversity, build it into their game plan. They realize that consensus only emerges after the fact, after a particular model is in place and has been proven. Any plan for dealing with global warming will have to take this approach in order to be successful.

3. Entrepreneurs cycle through ideas quickly (governments don’t)

Entrepreneurs are quick to come up with ideas, but also quick to abandon those ideas when they they aren’t panning out. Give an entrepreneur a budget for two years and a small team, and they’ll cycle through a dozen ideas, find the one that works best, and implement that. Governments in the meantime will still be discussing what language to put in the Action Plan…

4. Entrepreneurs know that people have to like whatever they’re selling.

Everything in the world is a pitch, whether it’s global politics, talking to constituents, talking to businesses, or whatever. If people don’t like what you’re telling them, they aren’t going to buy in. You have to find a solution you can sell people on, but that still gets the job done. Entrepreneurs think naturally in these terms - they think it in their sleep.

5. Entrepreneurs trust in their own resources.

Unlike the group of 100 scientists who just wrote to the UN Secretary General pleading with him to accept global warming as unavoidable, entrepreneurs believe in their own abilities and the abilities of those around them. The spirit of NASA’s “let’s get to the moon in ten years even though we have no idea how we’ll do it” attitude is alive and well in the entrepreneurial world. It sure doesn’t seem to be alive in the government these days.

These are just the first few to come to mind. There are probably several more that I’m omitting.

I don’t mean to sound like one of those pro-business/anti-government types. In some ways, governments can’t be blamed for their failure to act on the problem of carbon emissions. At the root of the issue is the need for the world to evolve beyond its current processes, and you can’t legislate evolution. You can only innovate and iterate your way there. People, and governments, need to realize this and do as much as possible to create favorable conditions for innovation to occur and be implemented. That, and not plans and consensus, is how the problem is going to be solved.

I would love to assemble a group of entrepreneurs in the same fashion as the Bali talks that just ended, and see what ideas they could come up with for putting the world on course for lower carbon emissions. I would bet anything that they could do more in one week than the world’s governments have done to date.

Anyone want to take me up on the challenge?

Posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007. Filed under Random.
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