Richard Branson’s Learning Curve

Part 4

Transforming climate change from an acute to a chronic problem provides a better frame of reference and more options.

Ocean iron fertilization helps capture carbon and sequester it.

Transforming a stubborn problem from an acute emergency to a chronic challenge does not provide a permanent solution but often the results are indistinguishable from one. The conversion gives us a different frame of reference, a different approach. In a nutshell understanding a challenge as chronic means we’ve found a way to live with it. For instance, we’ve never actually cured AIDS but beginning in the mid-1990s with the arrival of HAART or highly active anti-retroviral therapy, we’ve drastically reduced the AIDS death rate see chart. Treating AIDS today is not hopeless, but it is something a patient must stay on top of daily.

AIDS is only one example and medical science has many others. For instance, while many anti-cancer organizations still fund research for cures, many practitioners are aggressively using a variety of therapies to ensure that cancer is something that their patients die with but not from. The same is true for almost any disease for which patients take daily medicines for years and many have become common maladies rather than life shortening sentences including high blood pressure and diabetes.