Smaller teams in the Tour de France?

Now that the Tour de France is over I have to refine the observation made in my previous post, in which I said that the Tour was dull and that riders should take responsibility to act in the interest of the viewers, who enable them to do what they like and become heroes. Now that the Tour is over, I have completely forgotten the disappointing stages in the second week. I hindsight, I enjoyed this edition very much. What the designers had intended - to keep the battle undecided until the last day - came out quite well. Until the time trial on the last Thursday, multiple candidates were in the race for the yellow jersey. Contador, however, surprised with a magnificent performance and secured his leading position in both the general classification and in his own team. The strongly denied, but evidently rotten relationship between Contador and Armstrong was entertaining drama. The always relaxed and smiling Schleck brothers balanced the tension in the Astana team. What if the Contador-Armstrong story had been one of peace and unity? Had the Tour been as enjoyable? I don't think so. The power of the Astana block would probably have killed the race, despite the design of the design of the trajectory. I still think the balance between the individual attacker and the defending team is skewed too much. It has been suggested to reduce the size to the teams to 5 or 6 riders, instead of 9. I think that would be worth a try. It would be kind of an anti-trust law for cycling. It might help safeguarding the charm and human proportions in professional cycling. With less commercial value at stake, maybe their would be an automatic limit to ever more sophisticated doping, too.

What executives and cyclists have in common

These days I'm trying to follow the Tour de France. Every day I stay up late to see what's happened in the race. It's been a chain of disappointments. Would Andy Schleck have attacked the Astana team of Contador and Armstrong today? False hope each day. It's been boring. Don't the GC (general classification) riders have a responsibility to entertain the public? I asked myself. Shouldn't they at least try to make a real race out of it, even if the profile of the stage isn't suited for attacking? Who are the riding for? Who are the stakeholders? Probably, their family and friends prefer them winning the GC in the end, at the cost of dull stages. Maybe the sponsor, too. The general public, however, doesn't really care who wins, they want to see an interesting race. Cycling as a sport probably benefits from brave riders attacking each other every day. Here's the dilemma: for the individual rider taking his responsibility and attacking, serves the cycling community, but at the cost of reduced chances to win in the end and, hence, reduced market value (assuming that sponsors prefer an end win, which I think likely). With million euro contracts, there's a lot at stake, a lot to lose. Cyclists, like businesses and economies, become risk averse. There's little incentive to experiment, to break out and take risks.

In yesterday's NRC newspaper Johan Schaberg observes the same dilemma in business and politics. He quotes a friend of his saying that a business executive speaking out loud for a cause bigger than his company, taking action on which comes at a cost for his shareholders, is very vulnerable. Such a cause can be a change toward low-carbon production, taking a more sustainable course. Schaberg replies that there's a risk in keeping silence, too. A risk for society as a whole, to which the executive himself belongs. On a personal level, the latter risk is likely a lot smaller. Schaberg says that people in high positions, who have been trusted the power to change things for many people, should use that responsibility. Otherwise, they would be little children at the controls of machines way too big.

I agree. And I would like to direct the same call to the top cyclists in the Tour: entertain me and my fellow fans. Attack! Show us a real, daily battle. One can argue that the daily entertainment is made by the many more non-GC riders in the peloton, that it's the design of the stages that has caused the lack of battle for the yellow jersey. I think that's all secondary. I think tour stage wins are highly overrated. It's the yellow jersey that counts. I recognise that my call is hard to answer. Attacking might be nothing more than suicide. As an individual in a flat stage, there's no chance escaping a team of 9 riders chasing you. Like in business: breaking the power of the incumbents requires something extra, something innovative or special circumstances.

Maybe the last week of the Tour will bring the spectacular theatre I've been waiting for. Today's stage, with a man-to-man fight on the last climb, was promising. Maybe, the boring first two weeks will be forgotten, and because of the delay the satisfaction will be even more intense. How would that translate to the world of business executives and politicians? I don't know, yet.

Club of Rome Assembly in Amsterdam

October 26 and 27, the Club of Rome convenes in Amsterdam for its Global Assembly 2009. These two days the conference is open, so come to debate many top sustainability thinkers and achievers from around the world on climate, energy and economic recovery.

Visit the Assembly website for the details.

Solutions

Panic! Friday night I couldn't connect to the internet. Damn, how can that be? Was it the because of the electricity blackout that had put 50,000 households in The Hague back in the Middle Ages for an hour that morning, which immediately refueled the debate on liberalization of the energy market? No chatting with my girl overseas; instead as second best: wine and cheese. Experiment: could enough wine improve one's sleep? Conclusion: hard to say. Surprising data, however: bizarre dreams featuring people I had met recently. Next morning another finding: wine and dreams don't bring back broadband connections. A sense of total isolation, it made me nervous. So I went to the big market (Haagse Markt), for some contacts, and for heaps of fruits and vegetables. I got kind of a holiday feeling there. Really, I couldn't help it, with so many cultures crowding around. Sweet summer fruits piled up everywhere. Why do they get ripe all at once? Strawberries and cherries, plums and peaches, melons and apricots, for a penny I could fill up a truck. I don't have a truck, and I only have one stomach, I just can't process it all. First, I'd be looking at a full basket, squeezing the plums every day, caressing the peaches, checking the progress of the ripening. Then, when the time is right, it's like with blossom trees: an explosion of ripe fruits, most of which risks a quick return into the cycle. The strawberries were nice and sweet, though, ready to eat. However, vitamin shortage was not the problem: still no internet. Close inspection of the modem revealed that it had to be somewhere downstream. Lights in the hub looked irresolute. Reshuffling some of the cables and voilà, it worked! On Friday I had received a letter from the States. "We selected someone else for the position of Solutions Fellow." Had they just known how I solved this connectivity thing....

From quantity to quality

Two tags for this weekend: the late city archive of Cologne and brownie cookies. Two things that do not exactly pop up in my life frequently, but last two days they did.

Yesterday night, I had dinner with two friends of mine, one of whom resides in Cologne. His apartment is just a block away from the ditch where the archive building held the city's written heritage, until some mistakes in construction works for the new subway made the earth swallow it. My friend told that the shattered remains of the building and what it contained have been removed. The other friend's father is involved in trying to save what can be saved of the history records. It's a story about deep freezing, transporting, unfreezing and identifying. Most of the pieces are probably lost forever.

On the train back to The Hague, my friend and me got in conversation with a girl on the bench facing ours. She enjoyed the attention and offered us cookies. She didn't have to, it was clear enough she wasn't annoyed. She did it anyway. In her pouch she had one bag of brownie cookies and one reading chocolate chip cookies. Bought only minutes ago, because she wanted to try them both. The bags were still sealed, because "she wasn't hungry after all," she said while taking a bite from here apple. "You're not hungry, but you're eating an apple? Why?" "Because I'm not hungry." "Huh?" "It's healthy." We didn't quite get it yet. The cookie bags were on the little table in front of us. Allegedly, the brownie cookies were the best. I didn't know, but based on empirical research it can now be confirmed.

A few hours later I was in the train again, to Utrecht, for an open meeting of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) on economic reform for sustainability. Famous economist Arnold Heertje (he kind of is the national teacher in economics) kicked off and remained at bat all morning. Mrs. De Jonge of the national statistics bureau and leader of the parliamentary group, Mariëtte Hamer, didn't get a chance. A passionate plea for an extended scope of the term 'welfare'. The Financial newspaper this morning wrote about the government's intention to temporarily loosen environmental regulations to fight the recession. This very much aroused mr. Heertje. They really didn't understand, our politicians. They want to build for the sake of building, create work for the sake of work itself. Whether we are building the right thing or do the right work no one seems to care about. Fourty-five minutes of passionate discourse on what welfare is about and how it should be dealt with in decision making. Welfare is about many things that have value but cannot be monetized. Good decision making cannot be done based on cost-benefit analyses alone, but requires using your brains to weigh these non-quantifiable elements. That's what politicians are for. If you keep these off the table, they'll return through the back door, via the "informal democracy" of protest groups, etc. And here comes the archive again: what is the point in quantifying the losses of the collapsed archive in Cologne? What was destroyed there will never be recovered.

An uninspired mrs. Hamer came to tell how sustainability is integrated in the recovery measures taken by the government to fight the recession, but according to professor Heertje, the government failed the exam. Heertje concluded that sustainability is regarded as one of many themes to make policy for. But sustainability should be the umbrella that is leading for policy making in every theme. The Netherlands is hopelessly lagging in the restructuring efforts towards "sustainable economic development (instead of growth)", which elsewhere are in fast-forward mode.

On consumer trust: financial specialists bite their nails when the consumer trust indicator has gone down again. Consumption decreases, how bad! Heertje funnily illustrates: "My wife used to buy a new pair of shoes every day. Now, in recessions time, she only buys one pair every two days. O my god, a disastrous decrease in consumption! For me, however, it's a huge improvement. I suddenly have much more time available, because I had to go shopping with her every time, which requires three hours at least, per session. Now, I can come here and lecture you, because I don't have to buy shoes today."

In the break: coffee, and brownie cookies. It's a hype.

P.S. All participants in the event were hande a copy of Heertje's book "Echte Economie" (in English, my translation: "the real economy"). Having read a few pages, I can say it's nice. Heertje goes back to his childhood and takes you on a tour along his teachers and how they influenced his thinking. At the end the teacher stresses the importance of education and discourse, which he says are eroding before his eyes. It was written in 2006, but reprinted this spring in the midst of the economic recovery plan crafting that is going on.

EnergieCafé

Yesterday night, in café in Arnhem, the air conditioning had a hard time to keep it cool as the heat of the discussion filled the crowded space. Shell had been so brave to invite Greenpeace hard liner Meike Baretta to debate their respective visions on our energy system in 2040. Baretta referred to Greenpeace' Energy [R]evolution scenario, calculated by the German aerospace institute DLR, showing that 50% less CO2 emissions is possible by mid-century without new coal fired power plants and nuclear. Shell's most optimistic scenario 'blueprints' doesn't come anywhere near such reductions. Shell's Hans Peter Calis found himself in defense from scratch, taking the role of a father providing his children with a reality check of their high rising plans. Calis never managed to change the roles that night. Most people in the diverse audience didn't seem to accept the perceived resilience of Shell, not showing any willingness to take responsibility for CO2 emissions reduction. They may have the numbers on their side, but they lost their audience. Me too, I feel disappointed. Why do they always seem to emphasize external factors? In their scenarios Shell points towards "hard truths": rising energy demand that has to be met, and that supply will struggle to keep up. They conclude that fossil energy will remain the dominant source to do so. "There are no easy solutions." Maybe true, and what Shell can do may be limited by shareholders' interests and regulatory regimes, but it is unsatisfactory. The necessity of 80% reduction of CO2 emissions in 2050 should be a "hard truth", too. Why don't I hear: yes, this year we invest € 30+ billion investments in fossil energy compared to 1,7 billion in renewables. In 2050 these respective numbers shall be inversed. Shell can do this, this and this, if you, politicians/consumers, do this and this. A joint letter of business leaders to the Dutch parties in parliament, and a letter by CEO Jeroen van der Veer in Financial Times in January 2007 were hopeful signs. But where is the follow up? Did they lobby for the required regulations with the European politicians? Do they lobby for an ambitious post-Kyoto deal in Copenhagen at the end of this year? With a yearly turnover exceeding the GDP of many nations, Shell is just too big and powerful to define its mission as "surviving as a company, generating profit", like Mr. Calis did yesterday.