Stop shouting!!
If we want things to change we need some calm.
Over the last few decades people have seemed to react to the various crises phase by phase.
1. The ‘chuckle’ phase
A few bits of information start getting around, the response is a chuckle and “it’ll be alright, the governments will sort it out, no problem, no worries.”
2. The ‘Hmmm’ phase
More information starts getting out and people start realising that it’s all maybe a little bit serious. The chuckling is replaced by a fleeting frown and “it’ll be alright, the governments will sort it out, I’m sure it will be ok.”
3. The ‘I hope someone is going to do something about it’ phase
More and more warnings from environmental groups, scientists etc, some direct actions. Extinctions, endangered animals, whale hunting, climate crisis, pollution … more and more information passing into the public domain. People start to change their tune and listen more attentively; before they carry on as if nothing was wrong. “The governments aren’t acting but I’m sure they will, soon.”
4. The ‘seriously? Are your sure it’s true?’ phase
Industry start their usual war-games tactics that worked so well with tobacco and leaded petrol. So the information starts to get distorted. Despite these manipulations people are getting worried, scared even, but now they are confused too. In general they have no idea what to do so leap on the easiest things that are suggested, often by the same industries that are playing war games. Recycling for example. All the while they are still waiting for someone, somewhere to sort it all out.
5. The ‘bad news burnout, business as usual with some slight changes’ phase
The title says it all. Personnally I like seeing the ‘slight changes’ going on around me. The other day, in a railway station, I saw someone buy a plastic bottle of mineral water and pour it into their ecological, sustainable, trendy metal bottle. Then the person threw the plastic bottle into the correct recycling bin. Another person, who works for a company producing plastic products, told me how they cycle to work now, with their new electric bicycle. One person told me that they had quit their job and now worked for a company setting up ecological rooftop urban farms. Based in France they import an ‘aeroponics’ system from the USA and set them up on appropriate rooftops. The imported system is based on plastic towers irrigated with plastic pipes, the plants grow in an artificial substrate.
So everything is going to be fine.
1 - 5 b. The activist phase, for some people
Having passed through one or more of the different phases above these people decide to become militant activists and they set out to “save the planet.”
This principally involves a lot of screaming and shouting, protesting, direct action etc etc All the things that have been shown, over the last few decades, to be pretty ineffective. From Earth First! (1980 and yes they still exist) through to XR (nowadays), same approach, same results.
Stop eating meat, you are destroying the planet
Stop flying, you are destroying the planet
Stop using plastic, you are destroying the planet
Stop driving your car, you are destroying the planet
And on and on
A stream of “stop doing something or other.” Well it doesn’t work. It may change a few people who will slightly alter their behaviour, for a certain period. Most people knee jerk in the other direction. They don’t want people telling them to stop doing the things they enjoy, they don’t want to be given lessons and lectures, it pisses them off.
Imagine someone who works in a job being bossed around all day, everyday. There are moments when they can decide for themselves what they are going to do. So they decide to fly off with their family for a moment, they have some autonomy and control over their life and what they are going to do from one moment to the next. Then some activists block the airport and delay their flight and waste some of their holiday time. How the hell is that going to work out for the activists?
Some of these activists, in fact quite a lot of them, find someone to blame for ‘it’ all :
It’s Governments
It’s Industry
It’s Socialists
It’s Capitalism
It’s Meat eaters
It’s Frequent Fliers
It’s Billionaires
It’s Secret Cabals
And on and on …
The other day I listened to a radio interview with a bloke who regularly writes articles about the ‘state of the planet’. He produces books too. He’s quite well known in a way. In the radio interview he came out with the same old stuff. He ranted about the ecological and social crises, he cried out for a revolution. He pointed a finger at all the usual suspects, governments, industry, black money ... I bleaked out at this point.
Take “Insulate Britain” as another example a group of activists trying to force the British government to act and insulate all the houses in the UK. A completely and totally laudable objective, insulate all the buildings will increase people’s comfort, reduce their bills and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Yes. But being pushed along the road by a 4 x 4 driven by an enraged mother taking her kid to work and her being encouraged to so do by other angry people isn’t working. It would be better thay the protesters become insulaters and return to their community and INSULATE IT! Why do we have this Pavlovian drive to turn towards governments all the time?
Stop! And shut up. Please!
Just a minute! Don’t get me wrong, it is important that the information gets around. There is however a right way to do it and a way that doesn’t work. In fact during the above mentioned interview the interviewer mentioned the work of some psychologists who are clear on this point. If you hammer people with bad news THEY WILL STOP LISTENING. It is an automatic psychological reaction.
Another point, people who are told to stop doing something for reasons they only partially understand THEY WILL STOP LISTENING. And carry on doing the thing anyway.
So, please, STOP the screaming and shouting, stop the protests, the raging on social media, the polemics, the diatribes, they are all making the problems WORSE. What comes out on top each time? Business as usual.
Take 2022 as an example of another effect. The world was hit by extremes of temperature, droughts, storms and wildfires. A lot of people correctly pointed out that these phenomena were made much worse or caused by the changes in the Earth’s climate. So for a lot of people their actual experience coincided with what a lot of experts were saying. This may seem good but there are two problems here.
The first point is to understand the effects of stress. A little bit, some excitement and adventure say , is good for us. When it becomes chronic, lack of money, continual noise, the daily rush hour, for example, stress is bad for us. Subjected to chronic stress people tend to become more conservative, resistant to change and to new ideas. The weather in 2022 plus all the information being hurled around plus economic worries mean people are very stressed and unable to listen clearly to the progressive ideas that we need if we want to get ourselves out of this mess we are all in.
The second point. If say 2023 turns out to be a more ‘normal’ year, rain in the wet seasons, no excessive heatwaves nor droughts in the dry seasons, fewer wildfires etc then people will, in general put what happened in 2022 down as “some funny weather, gosh it was hot!” The climate scientists who are talking sense lose credibility, which is not good and plays into the hands of the climate skeptics.
So what can we do?
It’s all actually quite simple and at the same time complex, but it is also, in a bizarre way, complicated. It is complicated to get anything heard in the storm and hysteria that I have talked about.
There are some people who for some time now have been quietly working out what we need to do, what we can do. But it is difficult for them to get anything done. They are drowned out in the media, trolled by the conspiracy theorists, ignored by policy makers/industry and liked by the general public when they can get a word in. I will have a look some of these “solutions” in following article, to follow shortly :-)
Two things are certain however.
One, if we want to encourage any change which is worth the name. We have to work with people, their individuality, their psychologies and their cultures. We must not shout in their faces
Two, governments of all the different factions do not seem able to encourage the changes we need in the time frame in which we need them. This would seem to indicate that protests and petitions demanding government action are a waste of time and energy.
Lets get on and sort it ourselves.