I’ve been drawing analogies between climate change and the civil rights movement lately (here and here), and I’m at risk of overgeneralizing. To reign myself in, here are two ways in which climate change differs from other social problems for which successful movements have been mounted in the past:
- It’s complex – the end goal of the civil rights movement was simple, even if there was resistance to going there. The goal of the climate movement is simple too (reduce carbon emissions), but nonetheless it somehow gets replaced with other, unrelated goals on the way to the public. We often think recycling is a powerful way to address climate change. It’s not. Less than 4% of our carbon emissions originate in waste processing, and the carbon footprint of recycled materials is often the same as that of virgin materials. Recycling is important for a variety of reasons, but it does little to address climate change, at least as we do it now. Same goes for “buying green”: The carbon footprints of green products are often the same as for conventional products, but we don’t know that. The green label on the bottle is vivid and concrete, but the carbon generated in the creation of that bottle isn’t, so we don’t think about it.
- It’s slow - so slow that we have trouble feeling it. The last decade was the warmest in the historical record globally. Children born in the last ten years will know only how it is now. This is their baseline. They won’t remember how much more it used to snow in winter, or how much later spring once arrived. Will they fully appreciate what’s happening? Will they feel it in their guts (I mean, before it gets too late, when they most assuredly will feel it in their guts, in the form of a food-shaped hole there or what have you)
Posted March 11, 2012 in Random Thoughts | 1 Comment
Cities would be better off if bikes replaced cars for short trips for most residents. Bikes need less space and less infrastructure, they don’t emit the combustion byproducts that create both health problems and smelly/gritty air, they save us cash on fuel, they save us even more on health care costs (a Portland study found that the city saves 5 dollars on avoided health care costs for every dollar it spends on bike infrastructure), they cut noise pollution, and as most people who experiment with bike commuting find out, they’re just pleasant. When bike to work I arrive more alert, happy, and relaxed than when I drive, which makes sense because you know, exercise.
Bike advocates see bikes lanes as key to getting us on our bikes, because the huge metal cockroaches of our cities (some people call them cars – is my bias showing?) are dangerous to bicyclists and bike lanes provide a critical buffer.
I’m not sure though. The way bike lanes are usually set up, they cause problems, because they leave cars and bikes in close proximity where they get in each other’s way, especially if there are a few drivers or bicyclists who don’t take care to respect each others’ space. A few morons can ruin everything.
So I have an idea: a way to experiment with an alternative way to accommodate bikes in cities. I emphasize experiment. It’s something that a city can try for a week or two and abandon at minimal cost if it doesn’t work out.
Here’s the idea in a few easy steps:
- City government identifies a two-way street that runs the length of the city and doesn’t have too much traffic.
- It places a temporary barrier down the middle of the street.
- One side of the street becomes a one-way street for cars.
- The other side becomes a bicycle highway.
- Caveat: the city has to put gaps in the barrier so that people who normally park their cars in parking garages or whatnot on the bike-side of the street can still get out. Choice of street is probably critical here. There also needs to be some traffic management so that the flow of bikes can be stopped when a car needs to get out. For the experiment, it could simply be volunteers who are interested in the experiment managing traffic manually. Maybe. I don’t know. Getting this part right is the trickiest part and I hope the good traffic engineers of the world will know what to do.
I’m not smart enough to know whether it’ll work, but it’s worth trying. If it fails, it won’t have cost much and city planners will probably learn stuff. If it works, then we have a new, validated method to accommodate bikes that keep cars and bikes more separate than our current system does. Low cost experimentation is the bomb (says this former scientist).
Notes on marketing
- When presenting the project to residents, cities should emphasize its experimental nature so that residents know that they can kill it if it sucks.
- Cities should also run “get out the bike” campaigns so that residents actually use the bike highway during the experiment.
Good idea? Terrible idea?
Alternative bonus idea: if Chicago can put a whole train on elevated tracks, it seems within the realm of possibility to make an elevated bike highway. Is it? I would give up my firstborn child for such a thing, and my mother (sorry mom).
-From the Sea
Posted March 10, 2012 in Smashing Ideas | No Comments
A new study (summary from USA Today here, original pdf paper here) suggests that the world recession is driving climate change skepticism. If true (I haven’t scrutinized the research because this morning I feel more like editorializing than thinking – hey look I just summed up everything that’s wrong with the blogosphere), it would:
- …be a great illustration of how irrational climate change skepticism often is. Our wallets have nothing to do with climate change and yet they affect our opinions about it. Let’s never forget how faulty our brains are. The capacity to reason is a new evolutionary development and we’re still in the middle of evolving it even as we’re using it. It’s like using a computer before Intel has installed all the transistors on the processor. Good luck with that.
- …suggest a scary sort of feedback mechanism, since climate change is hurting the world economy (via extreme whether and rising food prices) and will likely do so much more in the future. If climate change slows the economy and economic slowdowns make us skeptical about climate change, where does that leave us? F#ck@d, is where.
Posted March 09, 2012 in Random Thoughts | 1 Comment
It’s common advice in climate circles to avoid discussing the risks of climate change and instead to discuss solutions, to maintain a positive vibe. The rationale is that people don’t want to hear dark news and won’t be inclined to listen if you dwell on it.
There’s evidence that this is often true. It’s called “motivated avoidance”
However, I’ve also noticed that most folks who get involved in addressing climate change feed on the negative stuff; they dwell on the risks and act to avoid them.
So it seems the demographic most inclined to produce climate activists needs to know the bad news. To me, that’s strong evidence that we should discuss the negative stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, I think we should discuss solutions as well, and we should strike chords of hope. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things.
But I think the negative and the positive should be tied together, so that we can feel the contrast between where we are and where we need to go in our guts, and so it can spur us to get off the couch and do something already.
Posted March 08, 2012 in Smashing Ideas | 1 Comment
Looking at it, I feel a twinge of hope. It invokes the sun, and blinding light, and its symmetry and geometry sing enlightenment.
It’s pure. It’s beautiful. And it’s a lie.
Only when “Beyond Petroleum” implements a plan to stop selling oil will they have earned that beautiful logo. Until then, they haven’t earned it, it isn’t theirs, and you may feel free to do whatever you want with it.
Posted March 07, 2012 in Random Thoughts | No Comments
I’m not naturally inclined toward activism. I have some British blood and I inherited the stiff upper lip. I keep calm and carry on.
Because of that, along with the standard-issue, lazy self-involvement of first-worlders everywhere, I had never lifted a finger for any cause, until recently.
I haven’t changed. Rather, climate change represents something so threatening that it crosses even my threshold for involvement. It took me a long time to understand how threatening it is, because I’m mostly uninterested in the world’s problems. I didn’t bother to learn. That I did learn was mostly a matter of happenstance.
Few of us understand how great the risk now is. Climate change isn’t just another problem in the long parade of problems that always have and always will beset civilization.
It threatens to undo us. To displace us, to starve us, and ultimately kill us. If the majority keep sitting on the sidelines, there’s a good chance we’re cooked.
I have young nephews, and a niece. They could end up spending the second half of their lives in perpetual suffering, along with most of humanity, thanks to our inaction.
That breaks my heart, every day. If you’re like the average person, concerned about climate change but not personally involved, I’ll be in your grill about your apathy. You’re me two years ago. We can’t afford that.
Posted March 06, 2012 in Random Thoughts | 3 Comments
Racism used to be socially acceptable. Why did it change? Because, as Seth Godin says, we made it shameful to be racist. We changed a norm. We have to make climate denial shameful as well.
How? Consider: when do you feel shame? You feel shame when someone you respect, usually a friend, calls you on your B.S.
If we want to call others on their B.S., we have to make them our friends. That means being kind and respectful and all the other stuff on which friendships are built.
But you ask: what if they don’t want to be friends? Good question, because many won’t. Here’s what you do: you make friends with their friends.
MLK didn’t make friends with many bigots. Instead he convinced their sons and daughters and spouses and siblings that his cause was just, and they in turn called B.S. on the bigotry, around America’s dinner tables and in its backyards.
That’s how it’s going to work for climate change too.
Posted March 03, 2012 in Uncategorizable | No Comments
Our species would be better off if more of us, especially the first-world folk stuffed with power and wealth and discretionary money and time, were more uncompromising about finding and pursuing our passions. Real ones, deep ones. Things we’re willing to die for (i.e. playing Starcraft really really well doesn’t count, for anyone).
If I don’t care deeply about something I won’t do it as well as I can even if I want to, and if I do care deeply, I can’t help but do it as well as I can, because it’ll feel like I don’t have a choice.
In fact that’s exactly how you know when you’ve found your passion: you don’t feel like you have a choice anymore.
But the rub: many of us don’t know what our passion is. A byproduct of that is that we get convinced that we don’t and even can’t have one, so we may as well trudge through life. 16 tons and what do you get?
And worse, we often don’t have the time to figure out what our passions are before committing to spend massive time doing some job or other, whether we like it or not, because we gotta put food on the table.
That’s an inconvenient constraint, so I was thinking: how to use a job search to aid in figuring out what we really want?
And then, the other day, I was writing a cover letter for a job. It’s a job I want, but I didn’t know how much until I wrote the letter.
The thing poured out of me. I wasn’t writing a cover letter, I was justifying of my existence, committing my soul to paper. It was unusual since normally writing cover letters feels to me like slowly suffocating inside a rolled up carpet.
Note this isn’t necessarily a wise way to write a cover letter, especially if you’re not gifted with words.
I had to rewrite mine because it read like the end of a Dickens novel (“It is a far better thing that I do than I have ever done before…” barf).
But it showed me something. It made own desires vivid and clear. So maybe here’s an exercise:
Find 10 job ads. Draft a cover letter for each over the course of a week or so. The ones that come most easily to you might tell you something important about who you are.
Posted March 03, 2012 in Random Thoughts | 2 Comments
This is a repost of a piece I originally wrote for CleanTechnica
This is why I wish Johnnie Cochran was a Climateer: he could sell the rhyme in the title of this post. If you don’t know who he was, then a) you’re young; and b) he was the lawyer who got OJ Simpson off the hook for murder. One of his key arguments was “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit!” and it delights me that someone once walked the Earth both brazen and charming enough to rhyme someone’s shackles away. It’s like Dr. Suess conjured a lawyer and it came to life and it was Johnnie Cochran.
Alas the titular rhyme isn’t his. Rather I made it up to convey my view on climate communication and I want it to weasel into your head.
I’ll work up to its meaning. Let’s start with a question which causes much twisting of hair and drooping of heads:
How can we change deniers’ minds?
Here’s the answer: we shouldn’t try. Two reasons:
#1 It’s impossible
If someone doesn’t want to believe there’s a danger, arguments won’t change her mind. Beliefs mingle with emotions and egos in ways that make them impervious to argument. A denier’s more likely to assume the messenger’s an idiot rather than consider the message. Here’s a review of the evidence.
#2 There’s an easier way to create change
Consider other movements, like civil rights. In the sixties, many whites, especially white southerners, opposed civil rights. Let’s call them skeptics (to be generous). Question: did the civil rights movement succeed because skeptics changed their minds? Answer: mostly not. Some skeptics eventually did but that came later. How did the civil rights movement happen then?
Answer: sympathizers got louder (the Volume Theory)
Civil rights supporters started more openly criticizing previously unopposed positions, both in public and private life. As a result, Uncle Cletus stopped feeling so free to wax racist around the Thanksgiving turkey. As the voice of civil rights got louder, Uncle Cletus got softer, until a new norm took hold: it was ok and even good to support civil rights, and increasingly icky not to. It was this new norm that changed the tide.
Civil rights happened not because folks changed sides, but rather because the sides changed volume: one got louder and the other consequently softer. Let’s call this the Volume Theory.
This is how most movements happen. Consider India’s struggle for independence. A few thousand Brits ruled 300 million Indians. Most Indians didn’t like it, but they were silent because they felt powerless. But then Gandhi convinced his fellows of something which in retrospect is silly-obvious: there was no way the British could oppose 300 million obstinant Indians. So Indians got obstinant and the Brits left.
The Volume Theory makes sense in light of what we know about behavioral change. We’re willing to do what we see others doing and unwilling to do the opposite. It’s called Social Proof, and most of us don’t realize the extent to which it holds sway in our lives. If I don’t know any vocal civil rights supporters, I won’t be vocal either. Silence reinforces itself and the status quo along with it.
If you doubt the Volume Theory, do an experiment: gather a group of old white southerners, get them trusting, tipsy, and talking about civil rights. You may hear some ugly sentiments (to be fair it’s not just Southerners. I can turn at least one member of my own “progressive” northern family into a white supremacist with three Manhattans and the right conversation starter). The old attitudes aren’t gone; they’re just quiet and retired.
Let’s circle back to Climate Change. Many are worried about it, as well we should be. But we’re also too quiet. Nearly all of the non-experts I know who care about Climate Change avoid it for fear of feather-ruffling. Even many experts keep quiet.
A key point is that those who want action on Climate Change outnumber those who don’t, and it has been so for years. This means the pro-action side can dominate if we choose. We have only to raise our voices.
So the most important thing each of us, as individuals, can do is speak up and convince others to as well. This goes especially for everyday folks who aren’t already considered partisans. Everyone expects Al Gore to talk Climate Change, so that’s nothing new, but if someone who’s never spoken up before suddenly starts, ears will perk.
Beware: others will try to discourage you, often with good intentions. I recently listened to a marketing pro tell a sustainability group to avoid mentioning Climate Change because it’s too divisive. It’s common marketing advice and it’s wrong. Creating change isn’t like selling widgets. The obstacles to success are different. Pepsi lovers don’t feel pressure to avoid talking about or drinking Pepsi in the presence of Coke drinkers, for example. Marketing pros aren’t aware of the silence problem so they give bad advice.
The silence problem can only be fixed through exposure. Every time I speak plainly, a listener feels freer to follow suit. Our silence allows deniers to advertise their beliefs and implies to the undecided that there’s no problem. It’s Uncle Cletus redux.
Inspire the Choir, Shush the Denier
Now we come to my mantra. When we speak up, we won’t try to change deniers’ minds (because we can’t). Instead we’ll help create a new norm where it’s good to call for action and not good to resist it. We’ll speak to inspire those who already want action to raise their voices too (“Inspire the Choir”), and a side effect will be to shush deniers.
Our ability to pull it off depends on our not looking like mad harpies, which means that, while we’ll be insistent and strong and plain, we’ll also be patient. Don’t back down, but neither fling insults. “Dignified Relentlessness” is a good phrase to keep in mind.
If you’re not used to raising your voice, you may have initial discomfort, but
- It will soon feel better than the powerlessness so many endure. That’s been the case for me, in spades.
- Once we realize how much power we have, we’ll feel great.
A few more words about when, where and how to bring the subject up.
First and obviously, when someone denies that climate change is a problem in the company of others, speak up. You needn’t be an expert. Just say that 99% of all climate scientists agree we’ve got a problem and it’s not a conspiracy and it seems foolish to pretend there’s nothing to talk about. If you want talking points, check this out.
Less obviously, when you’re discussing future, and Climate Change might affect them, say so. Example: in seminars I ask about the effect of Climate Change during seminar Q&A periods. Like a few weeks ago: I went to a forum where my city’s water planners presented future plans. My city gets more than 90% of its water from snowpack, and snowpack has shrunk 15-30% in recent decades. The trend will accelerate with Climate Change but that wasn’t factored into the strategy, so I asked about it and it changed the discussion. I made it easier for everyone to discuss it and was prominent in the rest of the Q&A. This tactic is especially nice because you can influence a lot of people with only a tiny effort.
Another issue to watch out for: Climate Change is so thorny that it triggers something called Motivated Avoidance, which refers to our tendency to actively avoid the most difficult topics because ignorance is bliss. I’m still learning how to counter it but here’s what I’ve learned so far:
- Avoid apocalyptic language. It’s good to insist that we have a serious and urgent problem of the highest order, but don’t say stuff like: “If we don’t act now, we’re all gonna die!”
- Use repetition. Keep bringing it up. It’ll annoy those who are trying to avoid the subject, but don’t worry about that. Keep bringing it up.
- Address the avoidance issue head on. Acknowledge that we don’t want to talk about Climate Change because it’s so difficult, and say you don’t blame anyone for not wanting to talk about it, but that confronting it is healthy and right so you insist on talking. As Churchill said of Germany’s push toward Britain in WWII: “It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour” Make it clear that you’re not going to stop pressing.
- Make confronting the problem the noble thing to do. For guidance, study Churchill, who excelled at preempting Motivated Avoidance by making his listeners feel proud to confront their problems. For example, he famously said in a speech to the House of Commons that “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat”. It made adopting his plan feel like the brave choice (which it was).
- Emphasize hope.
So: talk. It’s critical and anyone can do it. You needn’t be an activist, sit in a tree, lash yourself to a gas pump or lay siege to a congressman’s office. You just need to talk. It’ll ruffle feathers but that’s ok. Change doesn’t happen without ruffling and you’ll be doing it for the best of reasons.
Time is dear, so don’t delay. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.
Posted January 08, 2012 in Random Thoughts | 2 Comments
The world has more problems than it should because too many of us settle. We think we’re incapable of finding a calling and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy which is reinforced by our universal tendency toward cowardice. Ergo…teeming hoards doing work they don’t much care for while our unaddressed problems grow.
I also think that if more of us gave ourselves the freedom to find our passions, many of those passions would lie in helping the world, including addressing climate change, which is why I decided to post this. I can’t count the number of people who’ve told me they’d love to work on climate change but they can’t because they’re busy making a living with [pointless job they don't care about].
My point is that our failure to address climate change (along with all our other problems) is part of a larger, more general human failing: a failure of spirit.
And so, for the second time, I’m posting a stupid diagram to remind us what we already know but put out of our minds.
-From the Sea
Posted January 02, 2012 in Random Thoughts | 3 Comments
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