Bubbles and such
Monday, August 25th, 2008There has been obvious concern with recent financial bubbles: the internet, private equity, housing, food, energy, the list goes on and on. Indeed bubbles represent the communal manifestation of human thought processes. As humans, we take a few data points and extrapolate them into the future, and create predictions predicated on these assumptions taken to their often illogical end. This cognitive process probably arises from the need to avoid a sabre-toothed cat or to prepare shelter for the coming winter months.
But nature works on much more diffusive or mean-reverting processes. After all vacuums get filled, temperatures equilibrate, and there are substantive effects that drive processes that are often occluded from our immediate view. For example that sabre-toothed cat might arrive at the top of that hill everyday at sunset, because it’s being chased by a group of hunters from the village downstream, not because it’s hungry for you or me.
We are working on some cool technologies and products to help our world wean itself off of petroleum based energy (a carbonified form of solar energy). This is a great space to be in: there is significant investor, customer, and political interest, it carries the banner of the environment, and seeks to provide new opportunities to billions of people around the world But we need to remind ourselves that energy from our sun isn’t the only big deal in town. We should not build energy into yet another bubble at the expense of other opportunities. We need to think of our other precious natural resources: our water, land, our wind. The ancient view of our world as earth, wind, water, and fire should serve to remind us that all these ‘forces’ work in concert, and we should nurture them even handedly.
The August 2008 issue of National Geographic reminds us that our soil needs care and constant attention. We’ve become so far removed from the basic source of our food that the bulk of the population neglects the need to reinvest in our earth. We are driven by our idealism, but we are assured by result. Don’t get us wrong, there is serious opportunity here to make our world better for future generations, and to create powerful businesses serving this undertapped need.