"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
The origin of this proverb is unknown, but one of its meanings according to Wikipedia is "that good intentions, when acted upon, may have unintended consequences."
In one of his first campaigns to move China into modernity, Mao Zedong declared war on sparrows. The rationale was that flocks of sparrows pilfered grain from farm fields and measurably reduced the total harvest. The campaign of destroying nests and eggs and hunting adult birds was dramatically effective in decimating the sparrow population. However, with no predators to keep them in check, swarms of locusts ravaged the country's grain fields. This resulted in a famine responsible for 45 million deaths.
Uninformed dictators aren't the only ones subject to making bad decisions. In Brazil, scientists crossbred European honeybees with an African species. The European bees were docile and produced superior honey, but at low yields in the tropical climate. The African species produced inferior honey, but, being native to a warmer climate, their output was much greater. The intent was a docile bee with a high output. Instead, they got a highly aggressive bee with mediocre honey.
In 1967's The Graduate, Mr. McGuire famously gave Benjamin a single word of advice: "Plastics". Believe it or not, plastics were once considered a panacea to environmental concerns of the mid 20th century. A very ductile raw material, plastic is light, nearly unbreakable, and lasts darn near forever. No longer would we need to chop down swaths of trees for lumber or paper products. Soon everything from dinner plates and furniture to a good portion of automobiles was plastic. As we now know, while plastic has its uses, its ubiquitous use in everything, particularly single-use items, is now a global ecologic debacle.
After VE day in WWII, allied war planners turned their attention to the Japanese home islands. Based on the Japanese Imperial Army's fanatical defense of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, projected American casualties for such an invasion were starkly grim. Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project team delivered what was touted as a way to save those lives. When his team tested the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, Oppenheimer recalled the reaction of his crew.
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent."
Whether it's reducing our carbon footprint, implementing sweeping changes in domestic policy, or making quantum advances in the sciences, progress is good. The trick is to not be as reckless as a petulant 2-year old. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something.
"The only constant in life is change." - Heraclitus
"I'd Love to Change the World" - Ten Years After
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