Page 69 - The Drucker Lectures

50 [ The Drucker Lectures

a lot of conditions being deplored, yet don’t see us making much
progress in learning how to manage the environment to make
this country and this planet livable for human beings.
And so I have been asking myself just these last few years
not only what should be done but also what should not be done.
Why are we making so little progress despite all the tremendous
emotion and stir?
The first thing to say is that most of the present advocates of the
environment suffer from three major misunderstandings, which
inhibit results. The first misunderstanding, and the one that both-
ers me the most, is that we think that one can live in a riskless
universe, that one can somehow deprive human action of risk. To
believe that one can be safe is a sheer delusion. The real challenge
in the environmental situation is to think through what risks we
can afford and what risks are not permissible and where to draw
the line, and what price to pay for what degree of insurance.
The second misunderstanding is that somehow profits can
pay the costs of managing the environment. Yet we have known
for a long time that there is no such thing as profit anyhow; that’s
an accounting delusion. There are only the costs of the past and
the costs of the future. So it is a gross misunderstanding that
profits can take care of the environmental bill. The consumer
will have to pay it, as in the end he pays for everything, whether
through taxes or in the supermarket.
Finally, there is the misunderstanding that it is “greed” that
explains the environmental crisis. No, it is largely the desire not
to see two out of three children die before they reach age five;
for the poor to have enough to eat; and to have access to job and
opportunity. The environment is a problem of success. These are
the hardest problems. They do not yield to attack by morality;
they have nothing to do with it.
We have succeeded in doing things that I don’t think anybody
would consider the wrong things. No scientist or technologist at