Tripod Missions: Five Principles for Solving Society's Most Pressing Challenges

[Celerity]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.13082

Abstract

The COVID crisis has forced policymakers to design new and comprehensive rescue programmes under huge time pressure. This task has required innovative policy thinking and the pursuit of new kinds of collaboration. The handling of the pandemic, however, also provides valuable lessons on how to address some of society's other pressing challenges—above all climate change. ‘Tripod Missions’ provide a framework for turning the pandemic's lessons learned into a guide for tackling other major societal problems.

1 THE COVID CRISIS

The COVID pandemic has brought immeasurable suffering. Loved ones have been lost, dreams scuttled, businesses destroyed, and communities torn apart. Perhaps it is human nature to look for a silver lining in everything, even in a global pandemic. As social scientists, as students of business and public policy, we believe that COVID has given us an opportunity—to experience ‘Giddens’ Paradox’ in something akin to real time. And if we draw the right lessons, maybe we can solve some of society's most pressing challenges, above all averting the worst of climate change. It is time to think through the implications of COVID and what they can teach us about how to approach the future.

2 GIDDENS’ PARADOX IN COVID TIMES

A decade ago, the British sociologist Anthony Giddens defined the paradox that has long prevented forceful action to save the planet: ‘As collective humanity, we might wait until the destructive potential of climate change is irrefutable. But by then it will, by definition, be too late, because—at least so far as we know at the moment—it is irreversible’ (Giddens, 2015). The reason is that incurring certain short-term costs to achieve uncertain long-term gains runs against the incentives of policymakers and CEOs. In fact, many of us deal with forms of Giddens’ Paradox in our everyday lives: how many lung cancer patients wished they had stopped smoking decades ago?

Unlike the natural sciences, laboratory experiments are rare in social science. Yet COVID offers as close to a laboratory setting for Giddens’ Paradox—and how to resolve the conflict—as we can hope to find. Consider the early lockdowns. Because of the often-asymptomatic spread of the virus, lockdowns had to happen before widespread suffering and death occurred. Perversely, when such decisive actions prevented carnage, critics quickly seized on the better-than-feared situation as evidence that the measures were overblown. No wonder that decisive action became harder politically, although the evidence of its effectiveness grew stronger. On the individual level, Giddens’ Paradox is operating even more brutally, as social media timelines in the US in particular fill with the regrets of COVID patients and their loved ones over not having taken the vaccine (Healy, 2021).

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[rampartc]

1. a good article

covid has exposed do many of our systems as ineffective, it is good to see that someone us learning to solve problems.