| Muck and Mystery Loitering With Intent |
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Silicon Valley’s technology investors have taken to the ramparts, threatening to tear down the oil and gas industries’ dominance with innovations that use ethanol, solar and wind. . .Sure, but don't do it in the street and scare the ponies. That's what closets are for!For all the boasting in the region about investing in clean technologies, there have also been a smaller number of bets in companies set up to promote the development of fossil fuels — the source of many of the problems their other investments are meant to fix. . .
“High prices of oil facilitate more oil discoveries and more innovations that get more money out of oil,” he said.
In Silicon Valley, there’s a word for that kind of investment.
"It’s called browntech," said Erik Straser, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures. One of that venture firm’s investments is in a start-up called Panasas, which has developed computer storage technology to help oil companies become hyperefficient at finding new places to explore.
Mohr Davidow invests in energy markets, he said, because they are big, and have big profit potential, not foremost because they offer an opportunity to help the environment.
"I’m here to make the kind of green my limited partners can spend,” Mr. Straser said. . .
In the case of Kleiner Perkins, the company has been involved in financing Terralliance to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, according to the venture capital trade group. On the Terralliance Web site, the company describes itself as an oil and gas exploration company that uses new technology to reduce the risk and cost of new exploration.
Mr. Lacob, the Kleiner Partner, declined to specify how the company’s technology works, saying he did not want to tip off potential competitors.
Indeed, the Terralliance investment is not listed on the Kleiner Web site nor has it been mentioned publicly as one of its portfolio companies.
But, speaking generally, Mr. Lacob said that companies that reduce waste associated with traditional drilling are making a contribution.
“If we can improve the efficiencies of the oil and gas exploration, in some ways that’s a green message as well,” he said.
For environmentalists results don't matter. Image is everything.
The environment has little or nothing to do with environmental groups or the environmental movement at this point. It's power junkies leading uninformed zealots. As Dan Daggett put's it:"The Leave-It-Alone assumption . . . has brought us to the absurdity that the actual condition of a piece of land is irrelevant to determining if it is healthy or not."Facts? Environmental groups couldn't care less. Neither do their opponents. It's all spin, hustle and grift, the unspeakable locked in mortal combat with their shadow selves. When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you.
Dagget's comment kind of reminds me of the disconnect in India between Forests and forests. The latter were also often pretty sparse by big stick standards. Arguably in places as much due to philosophical differences in outlook between the forest department and the people who actually lived there. Interestingly enough, the Indian Environmental Movement can more often be perceived as supporting local population interests to _stay_ in an area, not be excluded.
Everything we as a species does to the rest of the planet _is_ management; good or bad, for this purpose or that, even if the choice is to leave it (mostly) alone. I often wonder why that is so hard to understand.
Posted by: zxhrue at March 17, 2007 07:00 AM
(from otherwhen)
"Still, it is worth saying, even if few listen or care. Politics is not the way. The bloated federal government is the problem not the solution. Any concentration of power will attract those who seek power and in the end be corrupted by them. There's no help. It isn't someone else's problem. We each must accept personal responsibility and do what we can, but there are ways to engage society."
Preach it brother. Amen.
So noodle me a society where the feedback loop between concentrations of power and power seekers is disrupted? Of whatever ilk be it state, enviromentalist (insert advocacy group of choice here), or corporate entities? The only problem with local control of local decisions is that it is also corruptable by power, usually in the form of money. Don't get me wrong -- I agree with everything you said -- its just that controlling abuses tends to require Watchmen...then you're back to quis custodiet ipsos custodes, and all _that_ entails. With regard to relying on corporate enlightenment for appropriate management, well let us just say that civic behavior hasn't always been a business strongpoint, and certainly never a core characteristic.
Posted by: zxhrue at March 17, 2007 07:26 AMIt's fuzzy stuff.
Local control is corruptible, no argument. My view is that this is the general condition at all levels. Individuals and any aggregation of individuals however large or small have the same exposures. Some will be bad, some good, and most a muddled mix.
I've no clues about how to disrupt this, and doubt it is possible for humans. Maybe we can evolve or hack ourselves or something in future, but then we won't be people as we understand the term today, and so I can't really comment usefully about them.
What I do have some clarity about is that watchmen don't control abuses, they institutionalize them. That's what I was driving at when nattering about accepting personal responsibility. The job can't be delegated. It is the aggregate scorn of an informed and engaged society that can reduce, though not truly control, abuses. Abuse happens.
If you accept this view then the niggly details need attention. How does a society get informed? What's in it for them to spend the effort to engage? How can abusers be prevented from hijacking the information stream to advance their nefarious purposes?
I've been encouraged by the potential of information and communication technologies. It seems to me that if we are talking directly to one another more than getting our information and opinions through brokers of some sort that broadcast "official, credential or otherwise informed" platforms and agendas, that abuses will be of shorter duration and less severe. It will still be a muddled mess, but the amplitude of excursions from sanity will be smaller.
This may be a naive hope. I'm old enough to hear the laughter of my future self reviewing the ideas of my present self. Been there, got the t-shirt, wore it out. But this is the process. You keep working the problems and failing, navigating a less disastrous course than you would have without all the effort, until you wear out.
I might add that absent peer to peer communication, institutionalized corruption made some sense. It was better than the alternatives. Small societies, tribes, could keep corruption to a low roar since all were informed and engaged as a matter of necessity. But as settlements and societies grew larger that method broke down.
What is changing is that we are in a sense regaining the ability to be informed and engaged, so we can resume our old, perhaps evolved, methods of management. If we can I think we should since it is a better method. Some part of me argues that if we can then we will, that it would take great effort to prevent this and that couldn't be sustained. It is the adjacent possible.
Posted by: back40 at March 17, 2007 08:32 AM