Member-only story
The Economic Law that can End the Climate Crisis
As we run out of time to stop climate change, understanding Parkinson’s Law will fill a crucial gap.
In 1955, The Economist published an essay by Cyril Northcote Parkinson which started with the sentence “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Although initially meant to be humorous, it became respected as Parkinson’s Law.
The principal is simple. Give someone five minutes and they’ll complete a five minute task. Give them a day, and they’ll find a way to drag those five minutes across the whole day. Procrastination, overthinking, resistance, bathroom breaks, confabs around the water cooler, and finally in the last five minutes of the day they’ll get it done.
Businesses have been using Parkinson’s Law for decades to improve efficiency, but you don’t hear about it much in climate circles. This must change. As we run out of time to stop climate change, understanding human nature will play a central role. How efficiently we use our time, like triage, will be more important than how efficiently we use our energy.
It’s a matter of time
In 2008 we said climate change would happen in 2100. We should have known then what would follow. Inaction. If we have 92…