In my mailbox, this morning, news from my friend Luc Hardy, on his latest expedition in the Artic:
An international coalition of children exploring the high Arctic witnessed firsthand the latest dramatic development of climate change on Tuesday, July 22 as a huge chunk of ice was observed drifting off the Ward Hunt Island main ice shelf, forming two ice islands totaling 20 square kilometers. The children, assembled as The Young Ambassadors of the Arctic, are part of the Global Green USA and Green Cross Pax Arctica ’08 expedition.
I have followed from a distance, all the media reports on the Arctic front. My friend’s mail brings that reality closer to me, somehow. Climate change is no longer some abstract, future notion. It is happening NOW, and I feel moved. Turning global warming into a personally relevant issue continues to be a challenge.
This morning’s experience with Luc’s email, confirms the power of word of mouth in persuading people:
Something to consider for the “we” and “Together” campaigns . . .
La Marguerite 
Indeed, social ties are very important. Facilitating relationships – and when possible, friendships – between people from different networks can help in that. Not everyone knows people who are doing arctic expeditions. Issues like human rights and war also become much more real when you’re actually talking to someone in a dangerous place. Opinion pieces from strangers are on a whole different level.
At our high school, we once did a charitable project for Uganda. Yet the thing remained very abstract to me. If I look back, I think it would made much difference if there’d been personal contact between students from my school and abroad.
I think the power of the internet to actually create whole different connections between people has not been realized significantly. Some people might read blogs from all over the world, but that doesn’t mean they take the plunge to actually go talk to someone over there. What helps is writing in an open style. Luring readers out of their passive position, into the start of a relationship.
Some commonality, at least language, but preferably also someone else is still needed to have a conversation though. In that sense, putting your humanity forward is very effective, because most people will recognize themselves in personal stories.
Most readers are human, after all. 😉
Thanks Meryn. Your comments bring up another point. The value of emotions and human connectivity in the climate discourse. Too often, it feels like straight out of a science textbook. Not exactly engaging . . . Same with the mass media campaigns to date.
One-to-one, one-to-several, several-to-several-more, ad infinitum kinds of information exchanges between/among people we’re learning to trust, is now = more than ever = a possibility becoming a reality.
This possibility/opportunity can NOT be seized and yet it can be nurtured and supported. It’s more like allowing a butterfly to alight on to one’s relaxed, still and open palm rather than grabbing for the delicate creature in order to arrest and control its free movement.
Informing one another about the nature of our emergent global climate/energy crises poses a unique challenge that can NOT be met via conventional advertising or campaigning; especially via any approach geared toward the “masses”.
I don’t know anyone, who if asked whether she/he was a member of the masses would respond in the affirmative. The nature of human dignity is such that we want to be respected as individuals. The nature of team-work (social-networking) is such that it uniquely enables an individual’s best.
We also want to feel supported rather than manipulated and the nature of conventional advertising campaigns includes little, if any, genuine human support and a whole bunch of manipulation. Enjoying sufficient self-esteem enables anyone to deliver genuine support to another/others.
I felt severely disappointed when I first heard/viewed the ads for “An Inconvenient Truth” because of their emphasis on fear. Fear is precisely the wrong kind emotional energy to stimulate, if we’re ever going to tap into the creative dimensions of human consciousness that’ll guide us out of these messes we’ve been making.
Marguerite, thank you for producing this post and allowing me this opportunity to express the above because it’s been troubling me for a while and it feels good to get this off my chest. I also want to acknowledge your ongoing efforts here because they embody the kinds of heart-felt passion, humble willingness-to-learn wisdom and good old simple humanity that inspire actual trust and fearless exploration.
Occasionally you refer to yourself as a “green-girl-wanna-be”. Well, I’m referring to myself as a “social-networking-klutz-wish-I-wasn’t” because I’m still learning basic netiquette and sometimes the lessons are dreadfully embarrassing.
Meryn, I hope you’ll consider forgiving me for failing to implement your suggestion to keep my posts brief. BTW, your comments here remind me of the quote “The personal is political”.
Ciao for now,
paul
P. S. – in the book “Marketing Without Advertising” by Michael Phillips & Salli Rasberry, they make an interesting point early on about why so many advertisements are like dog-poop showing up in one’s path exactly when/where they’re not wanted. Michael was one of the founders of The Briarpatch Network: http://www.well.com/~mp/briars.html
P. P. S. – if we could ever have a post that picks up where Nordhaus & Schellenberger left off re: Maslow’s hierarchy and how it relates to our species’ capacity to evolve beyond our current crises, I believe we could have some serious fun exploring that.
Thanks for your comment linking these thoughts to my concerns about the tenuous nature of the emerging political progress on this issue in the U.S.
If that doesn’t show up as a link, go to http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/blog/2040-global-warming-increased-public-acceptance-may-be-tenuous-17159.htm for my concerns that a few years of temperature stability, as some scientists are now predicting, might revive the nay-sayers and derail the climate policies of either Obama or McCain.
Thanks Fred, for your comment. Rather than trying to convince the skeptics and the naives, more important is to comment as you are doing, on the tenuous nature of their involvement, and explain why. This is how consciousness gets raised.
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