Operation Cat Drop

You will remember that I promised to continue our discussion and examination of unintended consequences when we have an idea and want to solve a problem. You may have heard the following story—it is not an urban myth! It is true and in many ways, unbelievable.

It was in the 1950’s in Borneo—a tropical island with a terrible outbreak of malaria. To the “rescue” comes the United Nations World Health Organization. To eradicate the mosquitoes carrying the malaria, the WHO used what many all over the world had been using—DDT.

The WHO sprayed the DDT, killed the mosquitoes and the outbreak of malaria disappeared. But soon, the roofs of the homes of the people of Borneo started to cave in. The DDT also was killing parasitic wasps that kept caterpillars under control. With no wasps, the caterpillars were now out of control, so they ate the thatch of the roofs and the roofs caved in! Back came the WHO to repair the roofs with tin. Now, the caterpillars could not eat tin, and people had trouble sleeping for a while, but by and large, the problem was solved. Until another health crisis hit Borneo.

This time it was an outbreak of typhoid fever and the plague. It seems that the DDT killed more than just mosquitoes and wasps—it killed many other bugs. Those now dead bugs were being eaten by lizards, which were being eaten by cats. The DDT now made its way “up the food chain” and killed the cats. With no cats, the rats took over. And of course, rats carry disease—like the plague and typhoid fever.

Now, the solution (again) to the lack-of-cats problem--The UN enlisted the support of the British Royal Air Force who strapped parachutes on 14,000 stray cats and parachuted them into Borneo (except of course the cats that missed dry land and ended up in the ocean). But the problem was eventually solved—some would call it genius, others, well PETA may object.

And, as if that was not enough, a story circulated a few years ago that the state of Chihuahua started posting messages in newspapers requesting cats to be donated for a remote farming village. You guessed it—rats had ingested rat poison, the cats had eaten the rats and the cats ended up dying. So, with a shortage of cats, rats began to take over, and the state requested that cats be donated to the small farming village to deal with the rat infestation.

You may recall my last blog entry, where I articulated the pluses and minuses of growth. This of course has been going on for many years in a lot of communities, and in no way do I have any problems with folks whom have opposing views—in fact, without those views, we could not have this debate. It is in the quid pro quo of the debate that we uncover what and where we might find “common ground”.

The state of New Hampshire has been debating growth recently. In fact, there was a wonderful series that was on New Hampshire Public Radio just a while back (http://www.nhpr.org/node_neighbors/9269) citing various towns and communities all over New Hampshire that were targeted to be limited or “downsized” in their growth. And here is one thing you will discover—when folks in New Hampshire wanted to pass ordinances to limit growth, the unintended consequence was a steep rise in affordable housing. Also, taxes increased and costs of all sort started to get out of control. But you will hear few people willing to discuss this—it is discussing the un-discussable!

Here, then is the basic story: when we begin to work on one problem, for example around sustainability, unless we have the many and necessary minds and vision to look beyond and over the horizon (much like a chess player looks three moves forward, or a billiards player looks three shots out) our initial reaction to that initial problem can put ourselves into additional problems. A case in point with respect to global warming: everybody is saying that global warming is a fait accompli, that the “Science is settled”, and that man is causing it (i.e. anthropogenic global warming). I am not going to address recent news reports about the release of emails that indicate otherwise—let’s wait and see where the data takes us. But, if we do accept global warming as the problem (and, do all kinds of things to make the earth cooler, put cap and trade programs in place, increase taxes on all sorts of carbon users, etc.), then find out later that we are actually going into a period of global cooling, well, we may very well be out of luck—the proverbial horse has left the barn, the water is over the dam, etc. (i.e. unintended consequences).

Solving what we think is the problem, leads us into discovering even greater problems. So, getting enough of the right people (a bunch of minds) into the right place at the right time to work on the right problem is what is required. The downside appears that there may be too many entrenched interests in order to do that. The ongoing debate over global warming, for example, is not as robust as it should be (except perhaps, in dueling academic journal articles). It depends on what you read and whom you listen to. Clearly, from this writer’s perspective, the global warming issue must be urgently debated openly and clearly with more than just a few hundred or even a few thousand scientists.

Another Example

The corporate world has many such stories as well. When Delta airlines laid off or “downsized” thousands of its mechanics to cut costs, mostly the mechanics who had served a long time, it soon found out that it had to hire back a large number of those mechanics at a premium! Delta airlines thought they were solving one problem, but in actuality created much bigger problems for themselves as a result of what it had done initially. Another thing we have learned is that in this current age, individuals need to take control of their careers for themselves. No one is really going to look out for you.

As a management consultant, I have seen a multitude of such actions taken to cut costs, improve performance, increase revenues, etc., but it nearly always is a short-term fix. Very often, a handful of decision-makers will see only part of the “elephant in the room”. If we are going to work on the really big, intransigent problems around the world, I’m not sure that we will ever be able to say, “The science is done”! There must always be planning for contingencies, a welcoming of on-going debate, a delimiting of partisanships and demagoguery, and helping to bring in the light of day with all perspectives to how we examine a problem, how we coordinate meaning from the discussion of the problem and how we prepare others for the changes that solving a problem will inevitably bring forth.

There are many such stories like this in nature and in organizations where attempts to control one thing ends up leading to another even bigger and more expensive problem—an unintended consequence. If we are going to solve the big intractable problems of the world, it is going to take a lot of people working together. One needs to remember the prophetic words of John Muir—“when one tugs at one thing in nature; he finds it attached to everything else”! For my next blog, we will pick up on that particular theme—how everything is connected to everything else. It started (academically speaking) with Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his wonderful treatise on General Systems Theory.