A true boondoggle is a marvelous thing. It's more than just a mistake or a normal swindle. It is a burst of misguided energy and activity that completely fails to accomplish was it is supposed to -- but which serves the purposes of the boondoggler perfectly well.
The case of corn ethanol is classic boondoggle. We'll turn our corn into fuel and in one fell swoop we support our farmers and screw the Saudis. Of course, the corn ethanol boondoggle was so transparent that they almost couldn't get it launched before its logical and thermodynamical incoherences became too obvious.
To launch a boondoggle you have to have a starting point (Point A) and some ending point (Point D) that people really, really, really want to get to (because wishful thinking is a crucial element to a good boondoggle). Then you have to tell people that your plan will get you from A to D. And you ignore the fact that the causality doesn't make sense and the plan really looks like it's going to take you out to J or K-land rather than toward D.
Those of us given to scrunching up our brows and thinking about what people are saying -- and who are interested in causes, causal chains and are reflexively skeptical about the stupifying power of wishful thinking -- are familiar with the pungent smell of boondoggle. When they told us that HMO's were going to solve our healthcare problems or that media deregulation was going to lower prices . . . "Hey, but that doesn't make any sense at all!" many people shouted or at least muttered under their breath -- or maybe they just wished they could have as much faith and optimism as their neighbors.
Just close your eyes and trust us that we're going from Point A to Point D even though you can't see how. And when most people smile and close their eyes, you have a boondoggle.
My problem on this sunny Saturday afternoon is that our civilization at the moment has all the reek of a great boondoggle. My brow is scrunched up and I don't see how we get from here (Point A) to a very important (Point D) where we hand off this civilization to the next generation. In other words, something that we ought to be able to count on -- handing things off to our children and grandchildren -- sets off my boondoggle alarm.
They say that global climate change won't be a problem because we'll deal with it -- yet we do next to nothing at all, much less act on at the necessary scale. The Peak-Oil doomsayers howl from the margins. Their bar graphs and trend lines are ignored, but somehow their arguments never really get refuted. The Economists say that economies can continue to grow indefinitely on finite resources -- all common sense to the contrary.
On this sunny Saturday, I do want to have the faith and the optimism of my neighbors that it will all work out and we can hand a civilization off to our kids. But wishing don't make it so, and I can't dislodge the smell of ripening boondoggle from my nostrils.
I hope this will stimulate a few comments -- pessimistic or optimistic.