At a dinner last night, the young woman sitting next to me, a well intentioned green wannabe, told me how hard it is to keep track of all her daily actions. ‘There is so much to pay attention to. In the end, I usually give up.‘ This morning, again, I had a similar conversation with my friend Anne. She too, is convinced of the necessity of changing her lifestyle. There are two things she is already doing, that she feels good about. She drives a small car and she turns off the faucet when she brushes her teeth. Other than that, where to start? She is at a loss.
In both cases, my friends expressed a feeling of being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the changes expected of them, as implied by the green press. As if to prove their point, I just found ‘A Consumer’s Guide to Going Green‘, a very well researched article in the Wall Street Journal this week, that left me, like my two friends, in a state of ‘Wow! You mean I have to do all this.‘ Too much thrown at me at once. I read it, and saved it for reference, for the time when I will summon the courage to go green all the way. The ‘Green Living‘ folder on my desktop has already 17 such reference articles, not including all the green lists I have written for this blog. Lists are mostly good for the list maker, I realize. They give a sense of mastery, and order. The illusion that things are taken care of. I have done my job, I have told you what to do. Now whether you do it or not, becomes your problem.
Anne is a smart woman. She can handle complexity very well, in her professional life. When it comes to green, however, she wants simplicity. ‘If I were to do only one thing, what would it be?’ I was tempted to answer her question on the spot. Instead, I went home, and started thinking about her request. Part of my problem as a green communicator, is I don’t want to choose. Insulating the house, lowering the thermostat, buying energy efficient appliances, using CFLs bulbs, buying less, driving less, flying less, using less water, using the washer and dryer less, getting a low gas mileage car, skipping red meat, etc. Everything is important, isn’t it?
There are three issues. First, is identifying priorities in terms of the biggest individual contributors to greenhouse gases emissions. Second, is figuring out from that first list, what is the one thing most likely to engage the green wannabe into his or her life greening process. Third, is how to support the person in that process. I will try to address all three questions in a series of subsequent posts.
It’s very true. Often the “green” books focus on trivialities. Here’s my guidelines. They’re presented in descending order of how much useful effect they’ll have in reducing your impact.
Quickest ways to reduce emissions:
– see if your power company offers electricity from other sources. From best to worst it’s: wind, geothermal, solar, hydroelectric, landfill gas or natural gas, waste buring, bagasse. Don’t even think about nuclear or coal.
– If the journey’s under 3 miles, walk. Under 10 miles, bike. Over that, public transport.
– Don’t fly in aircraft at all.
– reduce meat and fish consumption to under 26lbs/year (1/2lb per week)
– from best to worst food it’s – your own grown by you, organic and grown within your state, grown within your state, organic and grown elsewhere, conventionally-farmed God knows where
– if available, use coppiced wood for heating/cooking, otherwise use that wind powered electricity, or if that’s not available, use natural gas
– plant trees – don’t pay someone else, plant them where you can watch them and know they’ll be cared for.
If you follow this it’ll reduce your contribution to greenhouse gases to 25-50% of the average. Overall your bills will be about 10-30% lower than before (eg wind power costs more, but eating less meat saves you money, etc).
It’s really not that complicated to make big cuts in your emissions. It’s important not to get lost in the details. Of course, you can’t write a big book about this stuff without endless details. Do the authours really want to save the planet, or their wallets? 😀
Thanks Kyle, for the short list. I appreciate your last comment about the big fat green book. Actually, there are a lot of those out right now. I would love to know what people actually do with that kind of information.
I think it is very easy to get overwhelmed by it all and think ‘Is this really going to make that much of a difference?’, and of course, it does make a difference. Every little action makes a difference.
I think one way we can support people in taking action is to teach them how to break things down into small chunks. When I think about it, cutting down my carbon footprint is no different from me doing a university assignment. Over the years I have come to tell myself ‘write one word’ instead of ‘write the whole 3,000 word essay’ before starting my assignments. Of course, from that one word I go onto write a sentence, and another and then I have a paragraph and eventually I’ve written a whole page.
So many of us just shut down and end up in paralysis when we look at how much we have to do. I have found that breaking things down can make the world of difference.
Jane,
I totally agree with you. In fact I am going to discuss the strategy you are suggesting in one of my followup articles. This is the same technique that is being used with depressed patients, who are immobilized by their illness. If the prospect of cleaning your house is too overwhelming, just promise me one thing. Take the vacuum cleaner, and plug it in. Then see what happens. And in most cases, they end up vacuuming at least one room. . .
Thanks Jane, for your very thoughtful comment!
You may wish to read “Made to Stick” by Heath & Heath. This book provides a really useful framework for communicating ideas effectively.
Also, “Influencer” (by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan and Switzler) contains a good framework for influencing “vital behaviors”: “Even the most pervasive problems will often yield to changes in a handful of high-leverage behaviors.” The first step is to identify these vital behaviors.
The esay-writing analogy is actually very apt.
These Big Green Books are telling us that the best way to avoid bad environmental impacts is to look at endless details of stuff and fuss over it. Likewise, someone might tell you to write an essay by choosing each word with care and thought, so that by the time you write the last word, it’s perfect. But really if you take that approach, you’ll never reach the final words, you’ll give up before a hundred.
Whereas I would say, do these few things and you’ll be halfway to three-quarters there, after that if you want to you can fiddle about with the details to get the rest of the way there. Likewise, if you have an essay to write, just sit down and write the bloody thing, get those thousands of words out – after that, you can go back and fiddle about with it to make it perfect – but the main thing is to get the words written, the basic structure down. Then at least you’ll finish it, maybe it won’t be brilliant but the basic thing will be there.
Wow! I love this discussion.
Meryn, thanks for sharing this concept of high leverage behaviors.
Kyle, I totally agree, perfection is a real sin here. Getting started is the main thing.
Cognitive/behavioral psychology experts need to take a more active part in the formulation of a climate change solution. Other psychological frameworks can be useful as well.
[…] 19, 2007 by lamarguerite My article on ‘The Failure of the Green Media to Communicate Simply‘ generated a very rich discussion amongst readers. All agreed on the importance of not […]
Doing one thing is better than doing nothing. People say they’re too overwhelmed and can’t do it all. I can sympathise. But instead of recommending that they prioritize and do The Most Effective thing, we should be telling them to just do SOMETHING. Pick ONE thing and do it. Figure out how it works best for them to do that, and then only when it becomes a habit, then pick the next thing. Expecting people to change their whole life is bound to fail. Encouraging people to just change ONE THING today, has a much better chance. It doesn’t matter what that one thing is. But in a couple of weeks, or months, you can encourage them to do another thing.
I could not agree more.
(Found my way here by a link at How to Save the World.)
I find analysis paralysis to be a real problem for people – looking at a long list and trying to figure out which thing would be /best/ or make the /most/ difference takes so much time and energy that, even if you end up picking something off the list, the energy you’ve put into the decision may outweigh the benefits. Perhaps one solution (in the break-it-down mold) is to provide a subscription model of “solutions”, rather than a laundry list. This week, you get “build a clothesline”, complete with plans, material lists, and an estimate of how much energy you’ll be saving. Next week, “insulate your hot water pipes”, with step-by-step instructions. This way, you get one thing to do, rather than a hundred, but with a lot more support to do it.
That said, I can’t resist presenting my personal “one biggest thing”. It’s not an easy thing that you can do this weekend, but real change is rarely that easy. Since my background is in land use and transportation planning and policy, I’d say the one biggest change you can make is “the next time you move, choose a smaller home in or near a traditional downtown”. From this one (albeit significant) action, all sorts of other changes will fall into line. With a smaller home, you’ll have less space to heat, less lawn to burn gas mowing, and less temptation to consume and accumulate stuff, because you won’t have space for it. In a dense, walkable area, walking, biking, and transit for jobs, recreation, and shopping will actually be viable options, and perhaps even easier than driving, rather than being something you have to make a major commitment to.
I admit a preference for somewhat more radical change, as in “getting to the root of”. Rather than fiddling around the edges and trying to make a hundred little changes that add up to something, find the very few, larger changes that will lead to the little changes working themselves out.
Murph,
Thanks for your comment.
Starting with your last point, I agree, it is the best option, and I know my husband and I are planning to do just that for our next move, once the children are gone. The problem, though, is what to do with the rest of the population, who are not moving, and are stuck, or perfectly happy in their suburban house, with a lawn and a white picket fence? That’s when the remedial steps come into place.
Staying at a broad, macro level, I would add the other imperative of curbing overpopulation, and educating people on birth control, and giving them incentives for having less children. I realize this is the big elephant some people do not want to acknowledge. Yet we cannot keep multiplying like we do.
Last, and going back to your idea of feeding people one problem/solution at a time, I think it is a great one. I have been thinking about a Green Steps program for some time. Maybe it is steps, maybe it is a catalog of complete problem/solution with lots of support like you are suggesting, maybe something else altogether, . . . But we seem to all agree on the objective. To make the information consumable and friendly, so that people don’t get turned off, but motivated to action instead.
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