Filed under: Creating Green Behavior Change
Quick: which of these two statements makes a better headline?
“If every American household installed a WaterSense labeled toilet, we could save more than 640 billion gallons of water each year.“
“If every American household installed a WaterSense labeled toilet, we could save enough water to equal 15 days of flow over Niagara Falls.“
Niagara Falls, right? That thing is huge! Translating abstract numbers into tangible examples is a core tenet of our approach to inspiring behavior change. It’s basic human psychology: the more real the consequences of our actions are to us the more likely we are to tweak them.
But there’s nothing new under the sun, and we aren’t the first to hit on this particular tactic. Check out this fabulous ad Humble Oil (now Exxon) ran in a 1962 Life Magazine:
Image available in a 1962 Life Magazine on Google Books
Yup, that’s right: Back then Humble Oil supplied enough energy every day to melt 7 million tons of glacier. Vivid! And who says there isn’t truth in advertising?
Curious to know just how many million tons of glacier Exxon can melt every day right now? Check out Pablo Paster’s excellent analysis on Treehugger.
Filed under: Creating Green Behavior Change
Word on the street is that the Copenhagen climate change talks will not result in a treaty this year. Most of the reactions I’ve seen tend to fall into two camps: “this delay is the triumph of Evil Corporate Interests™ over the common good” and “this is a victory of economic rationality over Tree Hugging Hippies™.” Needless to say, these are not especially useful frames. So what are we to make of this delay?
The most important thing to remember is that the world has moved from a scientific debate about whether or not climate change is happening to a policy debate about what we’re going to do about it. It may not always feel that way when polls show that Americans are getting more doubtful about the existence of climate change, but when the Pentagon, Desmond Tutu, and the World Bank are working on the same problem that’s a good sign that action is in the offing.
Politics, however, is the art of the possible. According to the NYT, Yvo De Boer, the Dutch diplomat who oversees the negotiations, thinks hammering out a good agreement will take at least another year: “There isn’t sufficient time to get the whole thing done. The form I would like [the session] to take is the groundwork for a ratifiable agreement next year.”
Do we have another year to burn on this? I think we do. The interests and issues around managing climate change are complicated in the extreme, and we need to get this treaty right. Let’s take a look at some of the key issues that need untangling:
Social:
“The reality that we face is that the cause of the fundamental emissions which result in global warming are to a large extent the responsibility … of developed countries,” Alf Wills, South Africa’s top climate negotiator, according to the NYT.
If there’s one thing all the major players agree on, it’s that climate-change triggered drought, disease, and displacement will disproportionately affect the residents of the countries that contributed the least to the problem in the first place. The leaders of developing countries are keenly aware of this injustice, and are determined not to agree to a treaty that would require them to limit their economic growth to meet CO2 reduction targets.
In fact, India and China just signed a pact to unite against a climate treaty that requires developing countries to adhere to binding emission limits. Their united front will lend serious negotiating strength to the Group of 77 developing countries who are all striving to balance their responsibilities towards creating economic growth with the imperative to mitigate climate change. However, this anti-binding cuts stance is not sitting well with developed countries.
Economic
“We don’t want to close a steel mill in Canada and import steel from China. We don’t want to close a coal- powered generating station in Ontario and then import dirty coal- fired electricity from Michigan.” Canadian Environment Minister John Baird, according to Bloomberg
China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest emitter of CO2, with India on track to become the third largest emitter by 2015. A treaty that places no binding emissions restrictions on developing countries would not only hand a strong economic advantage to two of the biggest contributors to the problem, it also opens the door to a scenario in which rising emissions from developing countries negate all the cuts developed countries make. That is a risk that developed countries are unprepared to take, especially in the midst of an already painful economic downturn. This is the reason President Bush refused to push for the ratification of the Kyoto treaty, and President Obama has signaled that he may not accept a treaty that doesn’t include binding limits.
Environmental
“Maldivians have lived in these islands for over 2,000 years; and we don’t want to trade paradise for an environmental refugee camp,” President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed.
A rise in world temperatures will have a net negative impact worldwide, but again some regions will be hit harder than others and most of those regions are in the developing world. So who should pay for developing nations to adapt to climate change: the governments themselves or the countries that emitted all the CO2 on their path to robust economic growth? A recent World Bank study estimates the costs for developing countries of adapting to climate change at about $100 billion per year for the next forty years, which is about twice as much as current levels of aid. Developed countries want any aid money to be tied to binding emissions cuts in developing countries, a stance that the G77 strongly opposes.
Cultural
“We’ve been taught, especially in America, that happiness will be at the end of some sort of material road, where we have lots and lots of things that we want,” Peter Whybrow, author of American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, according to Wired.
Successfully adapting to a carbon constrained world will ultimately require a shift in how we think about some of our deepest values and associations. How many of us equate a big juicy steak with celebration? How many of us see soft, air-dried toilet paper made from old growth forests as a non-negotiable comfort? These things may seem trivial, but they are symptomatic of a strong strain in American culture of equating success with consumption. That’s a mighty hard mindset to change, and it’s a very easy one to export to other countries. The negotiators hammering out that treaty are attuned to the willingness of the people they represent to make the changes that an effective treaty will require.
So What Can We Do?
This is quite a list of issues to untangle. In fact, I’d say that the negotiations around hammering out an effective climate change treaty are the most complicated that the international community has ever attempted. We have to get this right. A one year delay is worth it if it results in a treaty that has the kind of buy-in to make it stick.
In the meantime, what can we do? Ultimately the responsibility for tackling climate change rests with all of us: the actions we take every day and the messages we send the leaders who are hammering out solutions at the legislative and corporate level. If you want to see a real climate treaty ratified, the most important thing you can do now is work to create powerful social movements to support action on climate change.
So tell me: what’s your PSP?
Filed under: Chicago Green Businesses
Show trials are way more interesting than EPA reports
By now you’ve heard that Exelon, a Chicago-based energy company, has resigned from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over their anti-climate change legislation efforts. The Chamber’s approach to combatting climate change is to hold a “Scopes Monkey Trial” complete with a judge to rule on whether climate change is man-made or not. I personally can’t think of a better use of my tax dollars than to throw out the findings of the EPA and hold a show trial, but then I’m a native Tennessean and I would be profoundly grateful to pass the crazy torch to someone else.
Exelon is joining a small but growing group of companies to break with the Chamber over climate change. The Chamber of Commerce, of course, is one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in DC – they’ve spent more money to influence legislation over the past decade than their nearest competitors have put together.
So are you sitting down? I hope so, because I have some shocking news. Exelon didn’t break with the Chamber of Commerce out of a disinterested desire to do right by the planet, but because – wait for it – they anticipate that their company will benefit from climate change legislation! I know, I know! Poor Kimberly Strassel, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board, is shocked and appalled that a member of a lobbying organization would want their membership to result in favorable legislation. Why, why that would be RENT SEEKING! The US Chamber of Commerce is very strongly opposed to businesses deriving economic advantage through policy decisions instead of through the production of wealth, which is why they they’ve spent $26 million dollars this year attempting to influence legislation on health reform, the employee free choice act, consumer protection regulation, and a range of other issues.
Leaving aside the fact that lobbying doesn’t mean what Strassel thinks it means, Exelon, Apple, and the other companies breaking with the Chamber of Commerce are simply practicing a new and improved corporate strategy for sustainability. In an ideal world every company could do well by doing good, but the truth is that there are going to be winners and losers when new legislation gets passed. Companies that have a seat at the negotiating table are much more likely to be winners than companies who go in for cheap theatrics.
Filed under: Creating Green Behavior Change
Want to see strong climate change legislation enacted? Look to the health care reform debate for a map to all the obstructions ahead. Corporate money shaping the debate? Check. Regional interests trumping national interests? Check. Public debate centering on emotion rather than logic? Absolutely. Hell, 39% of the country believes that government should keep out of Medicare, which is and always has been a government-run program.
If You Can’t Beat’em, Join’em
This is not an appeal to reason
Since rational debate is a lost cause, there’s a lively debate over the best way to make a compelling emotional appeal for strong climate change legislation. Ann Danylkiw of World Coloured Glasses has an interesting post up on the role of the media in convincing people to change their behavior in service of the greater good. Ann interviewed a psychologist and an economist on this subject, and she synthesizes their ideas here:
Taking a step back, during and before both world wars propaganda campaigns were waged by governments to aid the war effort. More specifically, during World War II, the British government needed the British population to behave in a certain way: austere behavior in the buying and use of goods. Austerity, green-economic experts like Andrew Simms believe, needs to be revived to make the public transition to the mentality necessary to adapt to climate change and continue to survive on this planet.
It’s an appealing idea, isn’t it? Who doesn’t love those great “Keep Calm and Carry On” propaganda posters from the World War II era! Unfortunately for graphic designers everywhere, that approach will not work to convince the public of the necessity of changing our behavior around climate change. Let’s drill down into that British Austerity example to see why.
Austerity Propaganda: Making a Virtue of Necessity
Well, have you?
The British austerity propaganda campaigns were designed to make a virtue of necessity, not to convince people to voluntarily change their behavior. In 1939 on the eve of war, Great Britain was only 30% self sufficient in terms of food production. The Germans had very nearly starved them out in World War I by attacking their supply ships, so this time the government had the political capital to institute a strict food rationing plan early in January of 1940. Eventually the list of rationed products covered most of the necessities of life: bread, eggs, meat, milk, bread, preserves, sugar, clothes, soap, petrol, and, above all, bacon.
The austerity propaganda campaign worked for two reasons:
1. Rationing was mandatory, not a personal choice. Rationing was a government program that touched every single citizen – pregnant women even got ration books for their unborn children.
2. Rationing was a response to a clear and present national security threat. No one liked it, but everyone understood that rationing food was a specific, high impact action they could take to help win the war.
For better or for worse, the context in which we are attempting to pull off effective climate change legislation is absolutely nothing like World War II era Great Britain. Not only are there no mandatory actions people must take to combat climate change, there are strong pressures against taking voluntary action. How many times has someone attempted to pop your do-gooder balloon by pointing out that no matter how low you set your thermostat the impact you have will be overpowered by the new coal-fired power plants shooting up in China? Climate change as a national security threat is a bit more promising; the pentagon has begun running war games based on climate change scenarios. Alas, even those scenarios are still too remote. Running out of food and being overrun by the Kaiser is much more compelling than the prospect of paying slightly higher taxes to intervene in water wars in Africa.
Dig For Plenty
Plenty: I'm for it!
So if an austerity campaign won’t work, what will? Opulence, of course! Effective messaging emphasizes how much people gain from acting responsibly. The gain can be personal: losing weight, saving money, enjoying a better work/life balance. It can also be abstract: pride in American ingenuity and leadership.
Ultimately, the most compelling way to give people a stake in climate legislation is to show that there will be more winners than losers. No messaging campaign can succeed without practical investment in developing green industries that will create good local jobs. Alas for the ouster of Van Jones! But we must Keep Calm and Carry On developing strong jobs and communicating about them effectively.
Filed under: Green Job Research
I overheard a conversation the other day that went like this: “I can’t believe how cold and rainy it is – guess this pretty much proves that global warming is garbage.”
Now normally I would launch into a pedantic explanation of trends vs. events, but now we’ve got some DATA! According to a new report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) our current craptacular weather puts Chicago right on trend for climate change effects!
Check out this little gem courtesy of David Fahrenthold in the Washington Post: “The heaviest rainstorms have already become 67 percent heavier since 1958 in the Northeast, as warmer weather evaporates more water vapor into the atmosphere to feed storm clouds. Around the Great Lakes, “lake effect” snowstorms could get heavier as ice recedes and exposes more open water.”
Tell your friends: climate change will ruin your bar-b-que!
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has been coordinating and synthesizing federal research on climate change and its implications since 1989. In this report they have dispensed with the pussy-footing and gotten down to brass tacks: this is what we can expect if current trends continue.
The full report is beautifully organized around the impacts affecting different regions in the US – I strongly recommend taking a few minutes to click around and explore.
Filed under: Creating Green Behavior Change
When innovation goes wild: The Rockland Walmart's Personal Sustainability Float made from all recycled materials for the 60th Annual Lobster Parade. And yes, that is an eight foot long lobster made of coke cans.
“Talking to my colleagues about going green is impossible – I wind up feeling like some hideous combination of the grinch and a nanny. And not the fun Mary Poppins kind, either.” Ah, the lament of the corporate green teamer! How to fix this?
The good news is that sustainability is inherently appealing. Most folks want to be powerful and creative and impactful in their daily lives, and sustainability offers a new lens for approaching problems and ideas. That’s pretty darn appealing to lots of people IF you can frame it up properly.
In my work with companies on developing a culture of sustainability, I follow five rules for effective communication that help me avoid becoming a nanny-grinch:
1. Meet people where they are. Defeat the perception that environmentalists are a bunch of tree-hugging hippies by connecting environmental sustainability to quality of life issues like personal health, community, and professional development and innovation.
2. Aim for finding common ground, not being right. It’s so very tempting to try to win arguments about, say, climate change. But it’s so much more effective to look for an environmental issue you can agree on, like health or air quality, and start the conversation from there.
3. Seek results, not purity of intent. The person who turns down her thermostat to save money on her electricity bill has just as much impact as the person who turns down his thermostat to cut his carbon footprint.
4. Invite, don’t command. All people respond better to enthusiastic invitations to make a difference than guilt-laden commands to stop ruining the planet. A successful engagement program is voluntary.
5. Small steps have a big impact. For every coffee drinker in America, there is a worker somewhere in the world whose livelihood depends on coffee. Switching to Intelligentsia’s excellent and responsibly sourced coffee beans helps the worker depending on your caffeine addiction earn a living wage.
When an organization is able to engage the majority of their people in a conversation around sustainability and strategy, two types of action begin bubbling up:
Innovation: There is no such thing as a sustainability expert – sustainability is too big. Instead, there are thousands of experts at all levels of an organization. Inviting all your people to use sustainability as a tool set to innovate improvements in their area of expertise will lead to dozens of ideas to save money, save the planet, and improve operations. Just make sure to have a channel for those ideas to bubble up.
Ownership: If your employees buy-in to your vision for having a positive impact by using double sided printing and turning lights off when you leave the room, then they’ll take responsibility for implementation instead of staying with their same old habits. And when your strategy for sustainability includes implementing the innovations your people developed, you see even more ownership across all levels.
I’ve seen employees adopt a local grizzly bear refuge, build a parade float out of coke cans, compete over reducing their office electricity bill, organize carpooling, and create green product displays that sell out right away. Once people make that personal connection to the idea of sustainability there is just no stopping the ideas.
Filed under: Green Job Profiles
One of the questions we like to ask people in our sustainability workshops is “What makes you happy?” I have a new answer to that question: awarding $10,000 to a local, sustainable business. This is not something I get to do every day, so I am eternally grateful to Peter Nicholson of the CSBA and Bryan Stubbs of Chicago Community Ventures for letting me feel like Bill Gates for a day as one of the judges of the SustainIllinois competition.
Both the big prizes went to businesses that work in the sustainable food space: City Provisions, a local catering company, and Irv and Shelly’s Fresh Picks, a local organic food delivery service. One of the things I really love about Chicago is the vibrant local food scene, and I’m always interested to learn more about where this local food comes from. So a little while ago I tracked down an urban farmer to profile. Marlin McMonigal, Urban Farms Manager with Growing Home, picked up the phone while on a run to deliver fresh local spinach to Irv and Shelly’s Fresh Picks. Perfect!
Marlin is one of the very few people I’ve met who started a new job in the height of the layoff frenzy this winter. I’m sure this is largely due to his years of experience as a farmer, but as a fellow world traveler I can’t help but think that the same drive that sent him and wife farming on four continents in one year had something to do with it. He’s in his first growing season here in Chicago, so I’ll have to loop back at the end of the season and find out if his answers have changed!
Organization: Growing Home, which provides job training through a non-profit organic agriculture business. Check their website to learn where to buy their delicious produce!
Title: Urban Farms Manager
Relevant Training: Degree in Horticulture from Pennsylvania State University, plus lots of farming
What do you do all day?
I manage two urban farm sites with the help of one full time employee, 1 part time and 20 or so interns that go through our employment training program. I am responsible for producing high quality vegetables to be sold at three farmers markets, a CSA and other various outlets.
What did you do before you got this job?
I worked on organic vegetable farms in Pennsylvania and New York. (Note from Kate: my favorite part of our conversation was Marlin’s vivid explanation of how different it is to grow food in hoop-houses on busted up concrete in abandonded lots. I can only imagine!)
What impact do you have on the planet and/or community through your work?
Growing Home is providing employment training to those in need and also fresh, locally grown produce in an area of Chicago (West Englewood) known as a “food desert”. (More after the jump)
Filed under: Chicago Green Businesses
Art or party? For dozens of Chicagoans hosting art galleries in their personal living spaces, there is no distinction. I lucked into a stellar bike tour of west side apartment galleries this weekend and got a window into a way of living I had no idea even existed.
Bill Gross, who hosts 65 Grand, told us that he decided to open a gallery in his apartment because “a lot of the work I liked wouldn’t find a home most places, so I decided to bring it to my home.” Bill first began hosting art and artists in one of the four rooms in his apartment. About a year later, he decided to expand his gallery to half his living space — at the same time that his girlfriend moved in. As an artist and collector herself, she too feels lucky to have the chance to live with incredible work.
Of course, running a gallery means hosting people, not just art. One host described her gallery as an excuse for a bunch of people to get together to look at art and drink. It’s a tight-knit community with the same crew of folks supporting each other in their endeavors. Selling happens sometimes, but drinking happens more.
Corporations, utilities, and professional firms hire my company to build a culture of sustainability. We talk to folks about personal sustainability, which is about aligning your every-day actions with your values. For example, if a healthy planet is important to you, then choose to switch to green cleaners or recycled paper products year-round instead of confining your environmentalism to doing a park clean-up once a year on Earth Day.
Rather than confining their passion to occasional visits to a museum, these gallery owners are opening their homes and lives to art and artists. Their values and their actions are beautifully aligned, and they are living their lives with intention. I am in the beginning of launching PSP with a new client, and I am grateful to have a reminder of how deep personal sustainability can go.
Lucia Fabio, proprietor of Mini-Dutch, is on the verge of moving to LA and closing down her space. Just before she served up a slammin’ good bbq for the hungry crew of cyclists, she talked a bit about what she’s learned from running a gallery in her apartment. “I’ve learned that you have to be passionate about art if you’re going to live with it. I’ve learned about discipline – how to open my space when I didn’t feel like it because I decided to take on the responsibility. And I’ve learned how to open my home to others.” Will she be opening an apartment gallery in LA?
“Absolutely.”
Filed under: Event
The clever and ambitious among us attend conferences for three reasons: to network, to swap ideas and to go back to our organizations with an actionable idea that makes us look like a rock star. And yet many, many conferences are organized around the principle that attendees are there to absorb information like sponges and then regurgitate reports to the boss. Weak.
Fortunately for us,Chicago’s Sustainovate 2009 is an outstanding opportunity to talk shop and develop new ideas into actionable plans. If your company is planning to innovate out of this downturn, here are three reasons this conference is for you:
1. Network with the doers. There are just 100 people attending this conference, and they are all people who are out in the field doing the work of creating sustainable change with businesses. Added bonus: this conference is built around REAL networking – the kind where you build up new ideas with interesting people in your field.
2. Swap ideas with the pros: You know who I’m looking forward to talking with at Sustainovate? Saravana Balaji Jayaseelan, the Director of Sustainabilty for Newell Rubbermaid. According to their website, Newell Rubbermaid is building a “culture of sustainability” by engaging their employees. I’ve spent the last two years doing just that with Walmart USA, Walmart Canada, a major utility company, and now a prominent law firm – and there is nothing I love more than talking shop with the pros!
3. Develop actionable ideas: The conference is built around deep dive sessions where participants can collaborate and build out ideas relevant to their businesses. If you are looking for some fresh insights on how you can tackle a specific problem at work, bring it with you. You’ll have 100 doers on tap to help you move forward.
Register now – there’s only a few spots left. And I’ll see you there – I’m one of the featured attendees!
Filed under: Green Job Profiles
Ariel Diamond and I dropped out of the same business school, and she is now on the path to building a career as a chef working with local, sustainable food. Ariel is one of the most interesting people I know, and I learned a lot about what it takes to make our restaurants sustainable from this profile. I recommend reading it through, but here’s the money quote:
It has been quite an experience to go from offices and suits to chef pants and clogs. I feel much better suited to tackle these problems now that I can relate to people who do the labor. It makes me want to run a manual labor retreat for greenies to try to get them (us) to break that elitism that we’re so famous for. Greening the world will take a lot of WORK, work that requires you to use your body, and is sometimes helped, sometimes hindered by the educated, privileged mind.
Current Title: Line Cook/Truffle Maker. I am currently a line cook at La Tache in Andersonville and by the time this is published, I will be cooking at Green Zebra restaurant, a seasonally-focused mostly-vegetarian restaurant. On the side, I make truffles and caramels with a tiny local sustainable chocolatier, Katherine Anne Confections, with whom my biggest claim to fame – besides making over 1000 truffles by hand in a day – is that I developed our awesome white chocolate carrot cake truffle. -
Relevant training: I took a knife skills class at Kendall College and I have a newly minted sanitation certificate! I’m going to frame that and send it to my mom. No culinary school over here – I’ve been learning on the job. I walked into a French-influenced restaurant last March, got a job, and have been training (while getting paid) ever since!
What do you do all day? I prep food, cook food, plate food, and then clean up. I am currently one of two line cooks in a four-person kitchen, so I am fortunate in that I get to work directly with my chefs and be carefully trained by them. I am also fortunate that they ask me for ideas and let me develop some specials — you often have to wait years for that in bigger kitchens. This week I made the soup du jour and a dessert special, into which I integrated my value for seasonal, local food, which isn’t a high priority of the restaurant otherwise.
What did you do before you got this job? Starting at the beginning, I have a degree in Environmental Studies from Wellesley College and an uncompleted Sustainable Management MBA from the Presidio School of Management — just like you, Kate! After college, I started working on environmental issues with the Chicago city government, then worked for a while for a food-related non-profit.
A little over a year ago, I quit offices for good and after taking odd jobs for a while – much to the chagrin of my mother – and finally came to terms what I actually want to do every day, which is to get my hands all over that food I kept talking about! I walked into a kitchen off the street and asked for a job last March. I got it. I’ve been working in kitchens — some sustainable, some not — ever since.
What impact do you have on the planet and/or community through your work? While at The Land Connection, the sustainable ag org I used to (and still occasionally) work for, we used to talk about the missing link of a good local food distribution system. Now that I’m in restaurants watching my chefs put in orders, I see that problem in living color, realizing that ultimately it is light years easier and cheaper to order from Sysco and United Foods. Chefs are overworked as it is and getting food has to be easy, reasonably priced, flexible, consistent (while in accordance with seasonal availability), and FAST. Say what you will about Sysco, but you can order something on Friday night at 11 pm and get it at 2 pm on Saturday. Local foods have to be able to compete with that, but you can’t ask a farmer to quick drive up two cases of eggs.
We need some new infrastructure and new players before happy food can really compete. As I build my skill base and eventually be the one setting menus and ordering, I plan to not only stock my walk-ins with ethical food but also support any efforts towards developing a sustainable food distribution system.
Ariel’s essential skills and personality traits for success – not to mention her reading list – after the jump.
