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The Hundred Pound Rule of Motorsports, and of life.
To Panic's rational and valid observations, let me counter-pose a ancient truism from the world of motorsports
The Hundred Pound Rule of Motor Racing states, "There is no place you can take a hundred pounds out of the car. But there might be a hundred places you can take out one pound."
I believe the Hundred Pound Rule to be one of the most widely-applicable and profoundly wise and useful principles going. Hardly any public problem of consequence can be solved with a single big change. In almost every field, from the economy to education, to national defence, to the war on drugs, to whatever topic interests you, the solution requires a great many small steps. This is emphatically true of what we're addressing here: dependence on (expensive) foreign oil, environmental pollution, and the possibility of cllimatic alteration by eight billion industrialized humans.
The Hundred Pound Rule confirms that neither Panic, nor I, nor all of us at this site can solve or even measurably affect these problems. But the Rule says that the problems may still be solvable.
Politicians are utterly oblivious to the Hundred Pound Rule. They think only in terms of big answers, of the big bills that they argue for months, pass in a blaze of headlines, and brag about forever after, while the problems continue, only slightly affected. It will require a major attitude adjustment (possibly spurred by an actual national emergency) to get them to realize that what's called for is continuous small improvements, few of which will be front-page stories.
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