The ‘burning platform’ sits alongside ‘the flagpole’ and ‘the box’ in today’s business lexicon and has been used quite a bit in the web marketing and information management arena as a method to move projects forward. It is particularly useful where there isn’t a definitive deadline for something but there is a general consensus that something needs to change. The biggest current example in the web world is ‘social media’ – with many a guru suggesting that if organisations don’t get their act together, the platform they are currently standing on will be burned to a cinder.

The challenge with ‘burning platforms’ is determining to what degree they are contrived and to what degree they are genuine. This last year has given us perhaps the best ‘literal’ example of a burning platform in history – the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. There was no question the Deepwater Horizon was burning, you could see the glow from 90 miles away apparently. There was also no mistaking the tremendous issues that burning platform created – they could be seen from a 1000 miles out in space. This event was also an excellent reminder to those who like to cast predictions on the future (me included) that the biggest stories of the last year were entirely unpredictable – the biggest oil spill in history, earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, a volcanic eruption in Iceland that brought travel chaos across Europe and a bunch of miners rescued against the odds.

So, what about some of the less literal burning platforms? The biggest of these has got to be ‘the end of the world as know it’ – most readily described as ‘climate change’. I share the view, as expressed at various points on this blog, of those who identify ‘climate change’ as the inevitable consequence of a 300 year addiction to fossil fuels and that relentlessly rising population and ever increasing energy demands all contribute to a potential triple whammy of issues – that, all things considered, are simply too big to ignore. However, here I sit shivering in one of the coldest December’s on record at the end of what I’m being assured is the 2nd warmest year on record not really knowing what to believe.

In the last week I have read a very fascinating article in the Times Eureka magazine about ice core drilling in the Antarctic which has a graphic showing that CO2 atmospheric concentrations today are way in excess of anything seen in the data over its 800,000 year span (this appears to be an indisputable fact and I can’t help thinking there’s got to be a downside to it). Conversely, if you spend more than 5 minutes reading this highly Google ranked climatechangefacts.info site you get the sense that there’s nothing to worry about and the most important thing is to carry on living exactly as you are. Then the nagging doubts start to creep in that the interests of this particular site are driven by the US oil, gas and automotive industries. Then again, they could be driven equally by the climate change lobby trying to infer that US big business is trying to muddy the already oil drenched and acidified waters. At times you see why it is so much easier to attach the blinkers and play the dutiful role of corporate wage slave and brain dead consumer and just hope that things don’t get too painful for future generations.

In terms of the climate change ‘burning platform’, 100months.org sent me the latest update email telling me there is now only 72 months left to save the world. It doesn’t seem like 5 minutes ago I was writing Ten Hopes for the Tens – these last 12 months have rocketed by and what do we have to show for it progress wise on the world stage? I can’t believe it’s a year since the Copenhagen Climate Summit ended in what was widely described as a failure and here we are, a year later, with similar commentary being applied to the Cancun Climate Conference. At this rate, we will have reached the 2016 ‘tipping point’ as determined by 100months.org with little or no politically driven progress made.

If  the Deepwater Horizon disaster cost around $3 billion to clear up does this provide a more tangible illustration of what the costs of other ‘burning platforms’ might look like? The Stern report emphasised the potential costs of continuing the Business As Usual approach to energy, population and lifestyle and not taking significant action to address CO2 emissions. On lowest levels of warming, the impact was calculated at around 3% GDP and at the higher levels, around 10%. So, if we look at current levels of US GDP this would mean the lowest level of cost to the US economy alone would be equivalent to 150 Deepwater Horizons and at the higher level, 500 Deepwater Horizons.  Either way, after this last year, more than one Deepwater Horizon seems less than an attractive proposition.