PublicOrgTheory

Carl’s Corner, Texas, population 134, occupies a unique place in the history of climate change. Founded by the owner of a local truck stop in 1984, the establishment of the little municipality was a legal sleight of hand to enable liquor sales in an otherwise dry county. The truck stop aspired to serve truckers as an oasis on the hot, tedious runs between Dallas and Austin. A woman named “Treasure Chest” called out to the truckers on their CB radios to come have a drink, a soak in the swimming pool, a visit to the girlie bar… all of the delights a tired, thirsty trucker might want. Somewhere along the way, though, Carl’s Corner took an interesting turn.

According to local legend, Carl lost the truck stop on a losing hand of poker to his friend Willie Nelson.

Willie and Carl had been close before the card game and apparently remained so afterward. Carl’s had been the site of the country singer’s famous Fourth of July parties, and somewhere along the way Willie had begun selling biodiesel fuel there under the brand “BioWillie”. Biodiesel is very similar to traditional diesel fuel, but it is made from vegetable or animal fats rather than petroleum. Although Willie thought biodiesel might make wars over foreign oil less attractive, the fuel has been more commonly embraced by environmentalists as being more “green” because of its lower pollution. This is where the Law of Unintended Consequences pays a visit to Carl’s.

A February 2008 article in the journal Science highlights two studies asserting that growing biofuel crops increases greenhouse gas emissions. Among other findings, the studies claim that biofuel crops push food production to other parts of the world, causing the destruction of forests and grasslands, and that a cornfield for biofuel would take 167 years to begin showing a reduction in emissions. Alarmingly, the studies also claim that farming switchgrass for biofuel in U.S. cornfields increases emissions by 50%. For governments from California to the United Kingdom with targets for integrating biofuels, this is a prime example of how difficult it can be to address climate change. For environmentalists, this is an object lesson in the challenges of addressing changes in a highly complex global climate. For our discussion, it is a symbol of how the Law of Unintended Consequences works.

If you are a part of an organization, why do you care about unintended consequences? You care because the unintended consequences in an organization might very well make your every effort a wasted one.

Think about it this way: logically, an organization should always generate unintended consequences. Individuals try to regulate groups, groups try to regulate organizations, and organizations try to regulate their environment and the other organizations in that environment. Each of these is a simple system trying to regulate a more complex system. It is almost guaranteed that your life in an organization will be awash in unintended consequences.

Recall that we posited the definition of the Law of Unintended Consequences as the effects of a simpler system attempting to regulate a more complex system. In the case of biofuels, attempts to “green” the fuel supply by using fuels with lower emissions appears to have created increased emissions by the effects of farming for biofuel. The displacement of crops, the decimation of forests, and increased pollution are certainly not the goals of governments or environmentalists; in fact, they are the precise opposite of what was intended. While more studies will be needed to confirm increased pollution, crop displacement and the destruction of forests are logically certain. For demonstrating the Law of Unintended Consequences, two out of three ain’t bad.

In hindsight, we probably could have predicted that there would be unintended consequences that would at least mitigate and perhaps even negate the intended outcomes from biofuels. After all, the crops had to come from somewhere, and farming is hardly an environmentally neutral endeavor. An unusual surprise is that oil companies hadn’t already been pushing such a line more aggressively. We have already discussed that unintended consequences need not be unexpected consequences; often our job is simply to figure out whether the consequences can be expected to negate the intended outcomes we seek. In the case of biofuels, the early evidence gives us a good guide in how we might begin to think these consequences through.

It appears, by the way, that many outlets selling BioWillie have stopped doing so, though the reasons are not clear. One could easily look at the tribulations of biofuels and ask, “if unintended consequences are always going to happen, why do anything at all?” It’s a valid question, and one without a straightforward answer. We will attempt in the coming pages to describe how more thinking and less acting in the early stages of an idea might make a difference in the types of unintended consequences we face, and we will look at the popularity of Viagra in describing how unintended consequences might even be positive. First, though, it’s important that we rule out what unintended consequences are not, and that story begins in Washington, D.C. with the resolutely intended consequences of the traffic camera.

[Note: Willie, if you're reading this, I wish you well.]