Unlike most apparently intractable problems, which have a tendency to go away when examined closely and analytically, the climate change predicament just seems to get bigger and scarier the more we learn about it.
That's because they know it's effective – nothing has done as much to spread the essential truth about our climate change predicament, which is that the world's fossil fuel companies have four times as much carbon in their reserves as scientists say we can safely burn.
This fundamental social and political predicament has not changed since the beginning of the Communist regime.
The investor's predicament hasn't changed in the ninety years since Ben Graham went to 26 Broadway to ask the managers of Northern Pipeline to give the shareholders back their money.
The Giving Pledge may or may not contain, but is consistent with, an implicit recognition that facing the global predicaments of climate change, financial volatility, social inequality and political inertia, neither economic growth based on consumerism nor philanthropy as usual will be sufficient.
The underlying challenge is to convince people that the threats are real and life-changing, and that there is something that can be done to change our predicament.
However, the impact of these techniques does not change the predicament [ 3].
"It's less than $1 million," Bourguet says, adding that the money hasn't changed the predicament of his client.
The two, John Humphreys and Hal Langford, write in Sloan Management Review that "out of inertia, some managers maintain the status quo" until noticeable problems "escalate into predicaments" that require radical change.
Determining the truth of what happened with the EPA's failed investigation and lawsuit against Range Resources won't change the Lipskys' predicament, but it would go a long way towards identifying the grasp of the oil industry's tentacles on Washington.
