Phil Gutis's Blog
The Best vs the Good
June 30, 2008
Posted by Phil Gutis in Living Sustainably , Solving Global Warming , The Media and the Environment
I recently wrote about NRDC's public opinion research program and promised to tell additional tales from the often-humbling land of surveys and focus groups.
In the category of humbling, we were recently told that the American public is deeply skeptical about the environmental movement; folks believe environmentalists, writ large, to be deeply impractical beings.
This finding came from the same researchers who worked on the global warming project I detailed in Pascal's Wager.
In a slide titled "The Best is the Enemy of the Good," the researchers told us that theoretical debate "turns off" large numbers of Americans and that scientific back and forth is inherently considered theoretical and thus impractical.
That opinion is even held by many of what are considered to be "thought leaders," the people who tend to be the most engaged in current affairs and those whose opinions tend help shape public perceptions.
So how do we fix our bad reputation? The researchers told us that environmentalists must talk about concrete solutions that can be quantified and measured. We need to talk about jobs created, dollars saved and lives improved.
They told us that we must make the idea of "practical" our benchmark for success. Its a message that we at NRDC are taking to heart and that is increasingly being reflected in our work.
Take the ads we developed and placed in Washington on behalf of many environmental groups during the recent debate on the Climate Solutions Act proposed by Senators Lieberman and Warner.
As you can see from the sample above, the ads featured the faces of American workers and spoke of jobs that can be created by global warming solutions. And we supported our advertisements with practical analysis such as that presented in a report -- Job Opportunities for the Green Economy -- published by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and in a series of fact sheets by NRDC.
Furthermore, we will work to bring our message of practical solutions to ever broader swaths of the American public. Solutions like those presented by a group formed to give unemployed vets of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the training they need to get so-called green jobs.
NRDC excels in science, law and policy. And our advocacy for the last 40 years has also been deeply rooted in practicality. It's one of the things that most drew me to the organization three years ago and it's what our members constantly tell us they admire most about NRDC.
Our challenge then is to persuade those who are not NRDC members. I shudder to ask, but anyone out there have any ideas how we at NRDC and in the broader environmental movement can shake our bad rep when it comes to practicality?
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Comments
Dan Troutman — Jul 1 2008 12:21 AM
I have a couple of suggestions and comments on how to improve your reputation.
Overall, I believe that most Americans want to be responsible stewards of the earth and its natural resources. I think NRDC has a noble goal, but the problem lays in the execution details.
1. Guilt trips don't work. No matter what the social movement, constant nagging and guilt trips do not help further an organization. Telling Americans that they should feel guilty for living the "American dream" and being a part of one of the most productive societies in modern history puts the average person off. What's wrong with 3 percent of the population consuming 25 percent of certain resources? If we can afford it, why not? Trying to argue that Americans should reduce their standard of living by only consuming 3 percent would essentially make us a 3rd world country.
2. Doing "more with less" doesn't work either. The US military tried this concept and burned people up in only a couple of years. Just saying "NO" to all options isn't reasonable and just adds to a perception of a radical organization based on emotion rather than logic. Running around telling ordinary families that they HAVE to get used to paying MORE for LESS isn't pleasant and won't win you more supporters. (The future shouldn't be pegged to a vehicle that goes only 25mph for 200 miles and costs $100,000.)
3. Realistic global solutions. One country can't reverse so-called global warming alone. Stop trying to penalize America when developing nations such as CHINA and INDIA are either exempt or "puffing away" on the other side of the Pacific. Americans may be willing to sacrifice if done fairly, but they are smart enough to see through such "penalize America first" measures when other polluting nations get a "free pass." You need to work GLOBALLY - especially in developing nations if that's possible.
4. Get behind the next revolution. Decide as an organization which technologies you are in FAVOR of (and be realistic.) Want to get people fired up about something? Show them how it will either save them TIME, MONEY or BOTH. Every modern "revolution" has offered substantial savings in time/money. There are policy decisions that will save Americans time and money (e.g. maglev trains at 300mph). Figure out what is useful to the ordinary American family and stress it loud and clear.
As I've said before, your organization already has a noble cause - you just need to develop an updated "execution" plan that helps not only the environment, American families and the world. (I know, easier said than done.)
Grant Perkins — Jul 3 2008 08:49 AM
Phil,
Did this report cost you money?
It seems that you need a good and believable proposition that chasing down individual carbon usage to third world levels or below (as seems to be required according to some analyses) is going to offer a beneficial outcome to a population of around 400 million persons in the USA (projecting a little into the future).
This reduction in consumption will need to incur no loss of jobs and indeed create additional jobs in the greener economy. Presumably these new jobs would not result in any significant additional carbon output at any stage. So anything beyond human exhalation would be a negative factor. (Remember that the problem is urgent and only immediate action can have any beneficial effect. Work now for results in 20 or 30 years from now cannot be seen as positive. Plant and machinery and raw materials acquisition will negatively affect the outcome.)
I guess this would be the equivalent of turning water into wine or feeding five thousand people with a small amount of bread and a fish or two.
So this kind of suggests that on balance you would be looking at good old manual labour and localising everything to avoid transportation costs. Maybe take what heat can be extracted from the deep earth (dig a deep hole with a shovel?) or the sun (a dark roof to catch the rays?
No wasteful power creation and delivery system. No transportation to speak of (definitely not polluting beasts of burden.)
No refrigerators, etc. Especially no Ford Explorers nor indeed any Honda Civic hybrids. No point - no fuel.
I guess that would also solve the obesity problem pretty quickly and health care could be much simplified with greatly reduced costs.
There you go - two benefits that could be pitched to the punters without any real possibility of precision criticism.
To whom do I send my invoice?
Grant