The Germans have a word for it: Schlimmbesserung – literally, a “worse improvement”. You may not recognise the word, but you’ll know plenty of examples of what it means: efficiency drives that reduce efficiency, cost-cutting measures that prove punitively expensive, software upgrades that cause months of downtime.
All businesses can fall victim to such “revenge effects”. A swarm of them is currently casting a shadow over international efforts to be more environmentally friendly. Planting trees, touted as a simple way to offset greenhouse gas emissions, now turns out to have a darker side – literally. Research published last month by scientists in the US suggests that planting trees can make global warming worse if they are grown in snow-covered northern latitudes. The dark surface of the trees reflects less of the sun’s heat back into space than pristine white snow.
