https://mmalc-x-machina.ghost.io/the-cost-of-doing-nothing/
"A planning objection to a solar farm is a document of remarkable precision. It
counts acres. It commissions glint-and-glare studies. It maps skylark
territories, measures the distance to the nearest listed building, and works
out the percentage of Grade 3a agricultural land to one decimal place. About
the costs of building, objections are never vague.
About the costs of
not building, they say nothing at all. The option of
refusal does not appear in the ledger even as a zero. A zero would at least be
a claim — a figure somebody had calculated and could be asked to defend. What
the ledger actually contains is a blank: no information at all. And a blank
cell, in a planning decision as in any other accounting, is silently read as
zero. Nobody ever decides that doing nothing is free; the assumption simply
goes unexamined, because the status quo spreads its costs across people who
will never connect them to a planning committee, and hides them from every
footpath.
This article puts numbers in that blank."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
