Common Cause Case Studies

Just a quick note to say it's worth keeping an eye out for the Case Studies that the Common Cause guys are pulling together: http://valuesandframes.org/casestudies/

The High Price of Materialism

Alongside 'Psychology and Consumer Culture' and his work on Common Cause, Tim Kasser's 2002 book The High Price of Materialism has had a powerful impact on the sustainability movement. The Center for a new American dream has just released this five minute summary of Kasser's work; it is a great starting point for getting people interested in this most important debate:

Paul Gilding at The RSA - Where are 'we' in The Great Disruption?

Paul Gilding is talking tonight at The Hub Kings Cross on his new book The Great Disruption. Its free, but you need to sign up and is chaired by Ed Gillespie from Futerra. My wife and I went to his RSA talk last night; he's great to listen to!

I agree with a lot of Gilding's analysis, we are coming towards the end of global economic growth, it is a scientific fact. The world's capability to produce enough for the 7 billion of us currently on Earth is diminishing rapidly, I'm in total agreement. The world's economy is going to contract, it is going to be disrupting! I've not read the book yet, but the most interesting thing to me at last night's event was the use of the word 'we' by Gilding and the chair, Martin Wright. They seemed to be talking about the global 'we'; 'we' as a species, and argued that this 'we' will eventually, collectively, act to cope with the great disruption. I admire the optimism.

At the end of the Q&A, Wright asked the audience to put their hand up if they agreed with the following statement: 'We're going to go through a serious shit storm and then we'll eventually emerge, slightly weather beaten, but basically in tact in about 70 years time.' (I'm paraphrasing!) I didn't put my hand up, because I assumed he was talking about the global 'we'. My hand would have (regretfully) shot up if he'd been referring to 'we' the rich 1 billion.

Why? Well I was left wondering if anyone really cares about GLOBAL economic growth; I mean is there anyone out there activitely on a mission to sustain global economic growth? Or, is it just the cumulative result of lots of people autonomously caring about personal, national and corporate economic growth? Surely it is and always will be. The upshot of this is that as the global economy retracts people/politicians/CEOs will do everything they can to delay the death of their most immediate economies, in fact they already do this daily. As these more immediate economies are under threat from increasing oil prices, impacts of Climate Change, new regulations, redundancy or whatever other crisis they face (which many already are) the instinct is to act selfishly to cope with or diminish the emerging threats. There is little incentive to care about the detriment your actions will have on others(1). The rich 1 billion, in its various overlapping guises as nations, corporations and wealthy individuals, has been doing this for decades, most noticeably for us, here in the UK, through the government's ongoing foreign policies. The result of all this is the growth of between country and within country inequality. More threat (and more perception of threat) intensifies this process; fear breeds protectionism, resource grabbing and self preservation. This is one of my concerns about creating a 'fear' of climate change.

But, will individual economies/nations/people/businesses acting in their own self interest between now and 2050 add up to a global collective movement capable of navigating the great disruption with all the estimated 9 billion people in tact? It seems to be a hope some are clinging to right now. But, the consumer culture fuelled demise of our ecosystem services and natural resources suggests it won't. What will probably happen is that the current weakest economies will collapse and the stronger more powerful economies will swoop down to mop up their scraps to keep their economies going as long as possible. It is a frankly terrifying future prospect and one that makes me feel quite ill.

Is there any hope? Yes, I strongly believe, like Gilding that the Earth has the carrying capacity to feed and shelter 9 billion people, in a more equal, less consumerist, world it would be possible. We might even be able to still enjoy some of Robert Tressell's 'benefits of civilisation' too. Part way through his talk last night Gilding said that for this to be possible 'we simply need to change the way we think'. He was of course talking about the need for us all to appreciate that the true ways to wellbeing are found not through shopping, hedonism, celebrity and power, but through giving, caring, connecting and playing. The 'simply' part was an enormous understatement, but I totally agree and it's why I passionately work to do this everyday with Global Footsteps, Becoming Green and most recently Common Cause. It is a far from 'simple' task, but its not impossible and Gilding cites some precedents for this happening. If the global 'we' is successful in doing this I'll be a delighted 80-year-old come 2050, if not I will be able to sleep at night knowing I was one of the those who was trying to make it happen. Paul Gilding, Martin Wright and Ed Gillespie are three others amongst a growing crowd who will also be able to look themselves in the mirror and say 'I tried'.

Notes

1. Other than pissing them off so much that they rise up against you and even then you can avert that threat by owning weapons of mass destruction

Possible streams of effort to carry Common Cause forward within the education sector

Please feedback by commenting below or by emailing

Morgan Phillips: mail@becominggreen.co.uk

It is my strong personal belief that the sustainability sector¹ is too small and too powerless to create a mainstream shift towards sustainable lifestyles on its own. Such a shift would require a dramatic modification of the values of the entire population and the sustainability movement is only a very tiny shaper of those values. The forces that drive and embed self-interest and therefore consumerism in our society are numerous, complexly interrelated and self reinforcing. This is not to say they can't be challenged, they are and can be; I'll discuss how a little later.

Following on from discussions on March 11^th, 19^th, 20^th and 21^st that I’ve been having in various ‘Common Cause’ meetings I want to suggest two streams of effort that those interested might want to join together to pursue. They are related and mutually reinforcing but need not be pursued in any particular order, I am therefore naming them the RED and BLUE streams.

RED stream - Getting our own house in order

As a sector¹, and as Common Cause points out, what we absolutely must not do is be complicit in reinforcing damaging self-enhancing values. Heaven knows they are reinforced enough elsewhere! So, no longer, for example, should we encourage environmental behaviours by preying on cost and time saving motivators, however tempting such short-cuts can be. There is a very real need for us to get our own houses in order. No matter how difficult and challenging it might be, this must be the path we set out on. We must do this for several reasons, one not least of which being that if we are playing on self-interest to further our agendas, we are in effect - as respected ‘universalists’ - further legitimizing hyper-individualism².

The first task in getting our houses in order is to communicate to the sector as a whole the necessity of actually doing this. Waste Watch’s collaborative Sustainable Lifestyles framework and its initial discussion paper 'Working from values'³ provides a very useful starting point for us. The 'next steps' of that project will explore the issues in more depth and contribute further advice, through research and best practice case studies, to help the sector as a whole to modify its approach. Tim has called for others to come forward to help him develop these next steps; it is up to us to respond to that call.

However, dissemination, I feel, must not be restricted to PDF files and online forums. Face-to-face contact in the form of one-to-one conversations, workshops, action research and ‘work experience’⁴ need to happen as budgets allow. Several networks⁵ exist to make dissemination possible, we should use as many as possible to ensure we reach all corners of the sector.

The shift in practice called for will not happen overnight, there are many obstacles⁶ to overcome. As advocates and consultants⁷ we can catalyse a change in practice - the shift is already in motion, we need to help it gather speed until it snowballs.

Getting our own house in order is crucial not only to improving the efficacy and long term impacts of our own work, but will also allow us to carry out the BLUE stream more effectively.

BLUE stream – Engaging the wider education sector

Formal education in the UK is beset with many difficulties⁸; many argue that it is not fit for purpose. Schools are filled with disengaged students, frustrated teachers and worried parents. The formal education system is ripe for transformation and we need to get along side those calling for change, find common ground and combine with them to become a powerful and irresistible voice.

I may be a bit naive here, but I believe that if you ask teachers and parents what they want their children to grow up to be, they don’t say: image and celebrity obsessed, infantalised, hyper-hedonistic, dependent, conformist, selfish capitalist consumers. They are probably more likely to want them to be: creative, kind, independent, community spirited, mature, intelligent, caring and selfless young citizens. If they do want them to be the latter they have an enormous role to play in nurturing them and making it possible⁹.

As we know children and adults are surrounded by self-enhancing values. Adam Curtis called the 20^th Century the Century of the Self ¹⁰; the 21^st Century shows no sign of being any different. We are taught to look out for number one, to buy large houses and fast cars, expensive holidays and designer clothes. We have status anxiety, debt and boring jobs. Consumerism, for many, is an escape, a temporary relief and a way of life. Self-enhancing values are reinforced constantly, by celebrities, public figures, script writers, musicians, academics, teachers, parents, brothers, sisters and friends. Often it is done inadvertently, it is so embedded in our culture that our ‘natural’ behaviour unwittingly reinforces self-enhancing values.

But, every time we hold a door open for someone, lend an ear to a friend in need, give our family members a lift to the shops or organise a birthday party for someone close to us we reinforce self-transcendent values, all is not lost! Our learning institutions have a very important role to play in helping children and young people to decipher the world around them. Teachers can help children to celebrate the joy of giving and caring for others. Teachers can help children to understand their emotions and basic material and non-material needs. They can help them to think critically about the things that influence their values. They can marvel at the wonders of nature, science and art with them. They can nurture their creativity and bring stories of self-transcendence, rather than self-enhancement to life. They can do all this through books, films, poetry, photography, field trips, music, art, sport and history. The point is they can do it within their chosen subject, it really is not that hard and it is probably what the majority of them would actually like to do¹¹.

The conversations I have been having with those with several years more experience of working in and around the formal education sector have led me to the following premise: Lasting change in education is more likely to happen from the bottom up. Education ministers come and go; schools and teachers stick around a lot longer (and believe or not do have some autonomy, creativity and pride in their work). Although the thinning out of the curriculum will present challenges¹², it also presents opportunities. Teachers beyond the core subjects of English, Maths and Science will be freed up to express their self-direction and their creativity. They will have more freedom to decide what they teach and the resources they use. We need help them curate these and encourage them to facilitate and celebrate creativity in children. In doing so, we can hope they produce young people who are creative and caring, rather than creative and selfish! ¹³

If change does happen from the bottom up, we need to work out ways to engage teachers, parents and children (and perhaps civil servants). Can we go into schools and ask some fundamental questions? Why are you a teacher? Is the current education system fit for purpose? How can you change it? Are children leaving school with the skills, aptitudes and values that will help them flourish as adults in the 21^st Century? What do we want our children to grow up to be?

The BLUE stream will require us to get alongside other groups who are also interested in asking these sorts of questions. Those in the arts and creative sector, those interested in children’s wellbeing, those interested in bringing New Economics into schools, those interested in introducing philosophy to children, those interested in reclaiming Sport as an environmentally benign and community building pastime. We need to identify these groups and link with them. There are workshops, weekend retreats for teachers and parents, discussion papers, books, documentaries and so on to be made. What will these look like? How can we modify existing approaches and create new ones?

****

I hope this is useful and helps focus efforts. I am keen to hear your feedback, tell me if I am being unrealistic or idealistic! The RED stream may well be the easiest one to navigate, but the BLUE stream is where the real opportunity for change seems to lie, I recommend doing both.

If you can think of a GREEN or indeed YELLOW stream to add to this, please offer it up! I look forward to hearing from you.

Notes

1. The sector I’m referring to here includes all those working in education for sustainable development, development education and environmental education. Most specifically those who engage with schools in the UK.

2. ‘Hyper-Individualism’ is a phrase I am borrowing here from Bill McKibben’s (2007) book ‘Deep Economy’.

3. ‘Working from values’ available from: http://wastewatch.ning.com/group/workingfromvalues I’m sure you can also contact Tim Burns directly tim.burns@wastewatch.org.uk to request a copy.

4. There is no better way to learn about a new approach than to witness it firsthand. I hope organisations pioneering this approach will open their doors to fellow practioners.

5. Networks: Sustainable Schools Alliance, SHED, PRISM, Compass Network, Common Cause, LEEF, HEEN, Project Dirt, Sustainable Lifestyles, IES, The Green Party, NEF etc, etc. [Please add to this list].

6. Obstacles to change within sector: Funding hoops to jump through, Culturally embedded practice, Audience expectations, Time, Resources, Ignorance of funders/educators(!), Heavy emphasis on actions, desperation and impatience.... (I researched this during my PhD studies)

7. As momentum for a shift begins to occur, there is likely to be a role for advocates and consultants who can help organisations and individuals to modify their work. Advocates and consultants will need to be trained and resourced to do this.

8. Problems with formal education sector. For a brief summary just watch Sir Ken Robinson’s RSA Animate: http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/10/14/rsa-animate-changing-education-paradigms/ Please feedback to me with other good critiques.

9. I argue this more fully, but from a Higher Education perspective here: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/6065/Emotional-Wellbeing.pdf

10. Adam Curtis’ BBC Century of the Self documentary series details the rise of Public Relations and is well worth watching, you should be able to find it here and you can often get DVDs of it on EBay.

11. My personal website: www.becominggreen.co.uk is a collection of resources and ideas to be used by teachers of all subjects who wish to explore values, wellbeing and sustainability; it hopefully demonstrates how wide education for sustainability actually is / could be.

12. The core concern I heard raised at the recent launch of the Sustainable Schools Alliance is that schools will become preoccupied in achieving success in the small range of core subjects, therefore lessening the emphasis they put on more peripheral subjects, especially sustainability.

13. I have just written a piece titled: Creative and Caring, or Creative and Selfish: http://becominggreenblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/creative-and-caring-or-creative-and.html

Creative and Caring, or Creative and Selfish? A challenge for Sir Ken

I'm going to do something that is perhaps slighty unwise, I'm going to offer up a criticism of Sir Ken Robinson. 'Really?' I hear him chuckle. 'Well, frankly, Sir Ken, yes I am'. Its not just a criticism though, it is a challenge.

But, I'm starting with a disclaimer. A problem in any criticism we might offer up against academic superstars is that it can be misinterpreted as a dismissal of everything that they say and believe. So I'm starting by saying that I agree with Sir Ken Robinson in very many ways. Most especially, his critique of current formal education and how it homogenizes young people on factory like production lines, is spot on and vital to arguments for educational transformation. Like millions/billions of others I had my creativity passively contained during my years of formal academia, I know what he means. I wonder what I would have become if I hadn't been so consumed with the fear of failing the next test, essay or exam.

So, I agree with Sir Ken, it is of course very important for one to be allowed to flourish, to find one's passion and lead a fulfilling life. To state that this is good for people's wellbeing, is to state the bleeding obvious! But I'm glad Sir Ken is out there doing it because a lot of powerful people in education seem to disagree. Like Sir Ken I would argue for an agricultural model of education that nurtures individual students helping them to flourish and grow. And against industrial models that breeds conformity, standardization and control.

However, individual (individualist?) pursuit of a passion - the finding of our element - is not always necessarily going to be a good thing for wider society and the environment. In the same way that a 'cradle to cradle' designed oil pipe is not necessarily a good thing for the environment. In encouraging people to find their element, do we not need to ensure we are aligning this 'self direction' with a healthy wedge of 'self transcendence'? Tim Kasser posited this at a recent WWF Common Cause weekend I attended and it has hugely significant implications for education. Especially if you believe, as I do, that all education should ultimately be education for sustainability.



Now I don't believe that Sir Ken is indifferent to sustainability, he quipped in the second of his very famous TED talks: 'there is a major climate crisis, obviously, and if people don't believe it they should get out more!' But, in the many examples of people finding their 'element' he uses on stage and in his book, very few (eg. the firefighter he cites at 9m30 here) are working on what Tom Crompton, in Common Cause, calls 'Bigger than Self' issues. He does not choose examples of people who are great humanitarians, environmentalists or simple loyal companions. People who forgo personal gain, and sometimes even safety and comfort, to help others and address issues that transcend them. Where are the generous, kind, selfless, mature people with strong universalist and benevolence values? People like Greg Mortenson and Mohammed Yunus. There are many examples of people out there who are self-directed but also deeply care about bigger than self issues, they need to be championed!

Instead, the majority of examples Sir Ken presents (and the ones that stick in the mind) are fantastically successful and financially wealthy individuals. People like Paul McCartney, Bill Gates, Matt Groening etc etc; the Business and Cultural Elite. These people have risen above the shackles of industrialist education systems to fully exploit their talent and creativity in the field they love, I don't have any major problems with these people they make me laugh, sing and write lengthy blog posts. But, I do have problems with other historical and fantastically successful people, who, in their element, have achieved huge prominence, like military dictators, CEOs of arms manufacturing business, heads of petrochemical firms, bosses of pharmaceutical companies and George Bush junior. Indeed, I'm sure Dr Robert Oppenheimer was in his element when he was developing the atomic bomb. It is not always necessarily a good thing to encourage self-direction in people, you don't know what they might end up creating! However, this is not the main point I want to make and fear of what we might be unleashing should definitely not inhibit us from developing and celebrating creativity, critical thinking and self-direction.

My major concern is this: Sir Ken cites role models who are fantastically wealthy and/or successful. I understand why he does it, it is because audiences can relate to them, look up to them, respect them and even daydream of being like them. Not all of them are hugely famous and therefore instantly recognizable outside of their specific field though. For example, he talks about a female world champion pool player, it does not matter whether we know her name or not, we understand what a 'world champion' is and can appreciate the financial success, power, status and glory that comes with being one. In the same way we can imagine what a Nobel prize winner is and what the lives of FTSE 100 CEO's look like. What his examples do is play with our perceptions of what a fulfilling and meaningful life looks like. This is my criticism, by citing these examples he is reinforcing our self enhancing values. These people have found their element, but they are also often fantastically wealthy, popular, hugely respected, attractive and quite possibly world famous. They have designer clothes, big houses, fast cars, expensive holidays, thousands of air-miles and their own private swimming pools (probably). Sir Ken holds them up as exemplars of a creative life well lived and something to aspire to. In doing this he also, inadvertently, holds up all the luxurious trappings that surround such luminaries as something unquestionably OK. He doesn't question whether material wealth brings happiness or whether the selfish pursuit of one's goals is necessarily good for one's personal relationships and ecological footprint. The emphasis is on the 'self'; find 'your' element and 'you' will be happy.

The high value individuals have come to place on power, status, achievement, hedonism and financial success in modern western culture promotes hyper-individualism and selfish consumer capitalism. But, people who place a high priority on the self are far less likely to care about bigger than self issues like climate change, biodiversity loss and global inequality. That's not just a theory, the evidence can be found in the Common Cause report if you want to look it up. When self-enhancing values are strong, so too is materialism. So not only do people care less about bigger than self issues when they are overly concerned with enhancing the self, they are also the people who are most likely to over consume the world's resources as they buy status symbol after status symbol in their attempts to assert their identity.

The consequences of reinforcing self-enhancing values are not just global and environmental, they are very personal too. Tim Kasser discusses the High Price of Materialism for our emotional wellbeing as do Hamilton and Dennis, De Graff et al., and Oliver James who have all released books under the heading 'Affluenza'. The imperative for individuals and society is clear, lessen the emphasis placed on self-enhancing values, don't expect them to disappear completely, just lower their influence a little in favour of self-transcendence.

Common Cause argues strongly that when Civil Society Organisations inadvertently reinforce self-enhancing values they have a counter-productive impact on the bigger than self issues they are trying to solve. So here is the challenge for Sir Ken and for a transformed education system:

Please do promote self-direction, creativity and critical thinking in education but frame it within the values of self-transcendence and a critique of the cultural reinforcement of self- enhancing values. If we want children to grow up to be creative, kind, generous, community spirited, mature young adults; rather than creative, infantalised, image and celebrity obsessed, selfish consumer capitalists we need to be very careful about how we transform education and which values we promote in doing it.

Follow Sir Ken Robinson on Twitter

Check out his website: http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/

And his latest book: Out of Our Minds

Ecoinomy - Ecosystem - Economics

It is worth taking a look at the Ecoinomy website, they are a company purportedly setting out to help businesses become more 'sustainable'.

The main motivating force they are appealing to to get clients on board is the bottom line: money and profit. Their messaging is so explicit, it is almost painful, they might even fall flat on their face as a result. What particularly disturbs me is their hi-jacking of the word and concept of Ecosystem. Check this out from their website:

The eco.system. What's that? What's in it for me?

For a small monthly sum per employee, we will bring our unique ‘eco.system’ into your workplace. Not only will this help you begin to comply with the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme regulations, it will also repay itself many times over as your employees begin to see the fun in behaving in a greener way, are encouraged to interact with each other (particularly between departments that previously had nothing much to do with each other), and find their morale and motivation growing. As a recent survey observed, a highly motivated workforce is 84% more productive than one that isn’t. Imagine that translated into profits. What a happy manager that would make you, especially as Ecoinomy and our eco.system will also lift an astonishing amount of responsibility from your shoulders.

The linguistics here are appalling. Talk about appealing to and reinforcing damaging 'self-enhancing values'. To learn more about the dangers of this read up on the Common cause report. The rest of Ecoinomics site including this video explains their concept a bit more. Aside from the outrageous abuse of the meaning of the word ecosystem, Ecoinomics seems to me to be a classic example of businesses being encouraged to ask 'what can sustainability do for me', rather than 'what can we do for sustainability?'

‘How to encourage people to be sustainable’

Below is a rough transcript of what I talked about at the LEEF event last night in London, which was really excellent. Includes links to the images I didn't manage to show. There were 5 speakers in all, all of them gave great answers to questions that had been sent to us by Anna Portch, hopefully some of the other talks will appear online too. The question I volunteered to talk about was:

‘How to encourage people to be sustainable’

– crikey why did I pick this topic?! Maybe I was having one of those supremely arrogant ‘Eureka’ moments that us Environmentalists have occasionally, where we suddenly think ‘Yes that’s it, this is how the world works, this is how people think and behave, this is what we need to tell them – take me to the lectern, I’m going to save the world!!’ Hmmm. These moments of self confidence are short lived, quickly I revert to despondency and self-doubt.... why am I doing this? I can’t change the world, I have enough trouble changing my energy supplier.

So, don’t expect that at the end of my fifteen minutes you will have been given the definitive answer to the question of how to encourage people to be sustainable, it ain’t going to happen, sorry!

What I am going to do is this. I’m going to explore a dilemma that currently exists between two different approaches to encouraging people to be sustainable.

John F. Kennedy famously said in his inauguration speech:

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

We can paraphrase this by saying:

Ask not what sustainability can do for you; ask what you can do for sustainability.

This advice highlights two very different mindsets: those with an interest in enhancing themselves versus those more concerned with solving problems that are bigger than themselves.

The reality is that most of us sit somewhere between these two extremes of selfishness and altruism. But asking what you can do for sustainability rather than what sustainability can do for you is what I want to discuss. Part of us of course thinks argh, climate change is a really bad thing, what can I do about it? But somewhere within us we are also thinking what are the costs and benefits of adopting new behaviours? Will it impact positively or negatively on our pursuit of our other life goals?

So we’re interested here in the ways we go about encouraging people to be sustainable. By sustainable I also mean green, eco or environmentally friendly. I am also talking about how to encourage people to give time, money and effort to causes that deal with other ‘bigger-than-self’ issues like: global poverty, child cruelty, homelessness, illiteracy, racial prejudice, HIV/AIDS, animal cruelty, care for the elderly, care for those with mental and physical disabilities and so on.

In the UK today the major trend seems to be that people look at ‘sustainable’ or ‘green’ behaviours and ask themselves what the benefits to themselves will be, if they engage in these behaviours. It is the ‘what’s in it for me?’ mindset. This mindset has come to be embedded in our society. And the campaigns of charities and approaches of environmental educators have adapted to it, they work within this culture. Increasingly, as educators, we focus on highlighting the benefits you will get from being green, from volunteering, from giving and so on. This reinforces that self enhancing mindset.

This is true not just for individuals; it is true for other social actors as well. Businesses, governments, charities, clubs, institutions, political parties as well as individuals, assess the costs and benefits of adopting a ‘green’ behaviour (or of giving to a cause) based largely on the impact it will have on them. Their concerns are with their image, their status, their brand and their nice warm feeling inside.

So new behaviours and products are promoted to us and it is usually quite obvious what we need to give; exactly what we get back is often far less clear cut. So let’s look at the new Toyota Auris Hybrid Car. This is what their website says about it:

The world's most advanced, innovative, compact family car brings low emissions, £0 road tax and stunning fuel economy with over 700 miles on one tank of petrol. Introducing the New Auris Hybrid - a car that defies convention at every turn - the first Toyota hybrid built in Britain, more environmentally friendly than ever before and the latest member of a forward-thinking family.

So, you buy this car, what do you get? You get monetary savings on your fuel consumption (that presumably you can spend on something else), you get a flashy new status symbol, you get an approving, maybe jealous, look from your eco-conscious neighbour, you spot flashing glimpses of the envious eyes of cyclists and pedestrians as they see you glide by. You might even get approving glances from potential future spouses on the lookout for someone mature and caring, maybe someone who wants to start a family. Or if you are already in a relationship, you are saying to your partner that you are ready to leave behind the hedonism of your Golf GTi, you now need a family car and you care about the future, your children’s future and Britain!

So, by buying this car, you are ever so slightly changing your identity and the way other people see you. You're a bit unconventional, you're intelligent, you're a proper grown up!

And it is not just eco-cars. You might have seen the latest campaign by the charity Action Aid. It stars ‘Silvia’ who also appears on their website exclaiming this: I didn’t just change the world, I changed myself. And what a feeling!’ Action Aid are going really heavy on this approach, their homepage shouts ‘What a feeling! Get yours today!’

In pushing the Big Society, the government are advocating this approach really strongly, this theme runs right through this ‘Giving Green Paper’ where they have picked out evidence of how by appealing to people’s self-enhancing values – their desires for power, image, status, happy feelings, career enhancement etc you can get them to ‘give’ time and money to charity.

In this way, green products and behaviours, as well as the giving of time or money, are sold to us just like any other product or service. Be green, it can save you money, it can make you look cool, it can make you look wealthy and so on. Volunteer, it will make you feel better about yourself, it’ll look good on your CV. Obviously they dont just say that, they do tell you about the problems you're helping to solve. But the emphasis is on you and what you will get out of it. This is quite a big problem.

But, why is it such a big problem? If the result is giving and volunteering, or is sustainable behaviour, don’t the ends justify the means? The responses needed to some of the world’s biggest current problems appear so enormous and so urgent that many in the sustainability movement say we can’t be fussy about how we change behaviour, the need to change behaviour is so pressing, we should use any means necessary! Right now! And, just get on with it!

And it works, well at least in the short term it does, it brings in donations and volunteers and creates observable green behaviour. By focusing mostly on the benefit to the giver with only a passing mention of the benefit to the environment or society the charity or environmental educator or green business can achieve some success.

But what it is not very good at doing is changing the really damaging behaviours associated with high consumption of disposable goods and services. And it is these behaviours that are causing and perpetuating most of the worlds environmental and social problems. If we look at the issues that most major environmental NGOs are dealing with, the problems are getting worse not better.

And there is a long-term danger, which is pointed out in Common Cause, a report published last year by WWF in association with Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, COIN and CPRE. This report argues that if charities, green businesses and environmental educators use the same techniques as the multinational corporations who are trying to flog their products and services, they are ultimately, in the long run, contributing to a process that thrives on creating and sustaining a population of individualistic, infantilised, anxiety ridden, status and image obsessed, selfish consumers.

Charities, environmental educators and truly green businesses should be doing the exact opposite; encouraging people to lead fulfilling and meaningful lives, characterised by generosity, benevolence, community spirit, stable levels of self esteem and a natural instinct to care for and then act on issues that are ‘bigger than themselves’.

But, it is very hard for charities to make that switch, even those who contributed to the Common Cause report like WWF, Oxfam and Friends of the Earth recognise that appealing to people’s self interest works, it brings in the money, their fundraisers ask if it ain’t broken why fix it? And you can certainly see their point, as organisations they are in a highly competitive marketplace and they need to survive, this is why Common Cause argues that they all need to move together on this. But the fundraisers and the sustainability comms people argue that the appealing to people's selflessness, generosity, kindness and universalism just does not work. Are people just too selfish now?

To finish I just want to tell you about a man called Greg Mortenson, some of you may have read his book ‘Three Cups of Tea’. This guy is incredible. He was a mountaineer who after climbing some amazingly high mountain in the Himalayas above one of the remotest parts of Pakistan lost his way hiking back down to civilisation, he was separated from his team and his guide and on the verge of starvation and exhaustion stumbled into a small mountain village. Over the course of a few weeks those villagers nursed him back to health. While he recovered he spent time with some of the children who had no school, a teacher who visited them just once a week, no books, pencils, nothing, they were teaching themselves basic numeracy and literacy by scratching lines in the dirt. It transformed him from being a self-obsessed mountaineer to the man he now is. On leaving that village he vowed to return one day with enough money to build a school for the children and to employ a full time teacher.

He returned to America, to his job as a hospital porter, decided to save as much money of his own as he could and to try to raise the rest from others. He moved his most essential possessions into a storage box and lived in his car, spending all his spare time telling people his story and persuading them to donate money to his cause. He worked incredibly hard and eventually raised enough to go back to Pakistan to fulfil his promise.

But he didn’t stop there, he recognised that the people in those remote parts of Pakistan needed so much more, more schools, hospitals, bridges, roads etc, etc. He has dedicated his life to raising the funds needed to make this happen, he has even crossed the border into Afghanistan where he is building secular schools for boys and girls. He is an incredibly selfless man.

The book ‘Three Cups of Tea’ has been in the top 50 of the bestsellers list in the USA for over 5 years, he now regularly talks about his work to audiences in arenas to up to 30,000 people all paying $20 per ticket. His generosity, courage and selflessness is massively inspiring, his story inspires these values in others and his charity is incredibly successful at raising money.

OK, we can’t all be like Greg Mortenson, but we can all tell stories like his. Who here knows the story of how Oxfam started, or Friends of the Earth, or WWF, or Greenpeace, or the NSPCC? Who started them and why, what were their stories? I bet they are powerful stories too and I bet there are people still working for those organisations who are generous, selfless and concerned almost entirely with 'bigger than self' issues (if there aren't we're in big trouble). We need to be telling these stories, they inspire people and create much need role models.

So in encouraging people to be sustainable can we get them to follow that advice?

Ask not what sustainability can do for you; ask what you can do for sustainability.

Bill Shankley and Benevolence

Saw this in The Independent yesterday. Liverpool are (were?) a club of with commendable values.

Former manager, Bill Shankley, is revered, not just because of the success he brought, but because of the man he was; his values. This quote exemplifies it. 'I would like to be remembered as a man who was selfless, who strove and worried so that other could share the glory...' Stirring stuff, what's it got to do with Sustainability? Well, it reinforces self-transcendent values, a commitment to things 'bigger-than-self'. In a world in which much messaging (not least from Premiership football) reinforces 'self-enhancing', self centred values, it is nice to reminded of great men like Shankley. He lived and breathed for his beloved club, he put it before himself at all times.

This quote highlights Shankley's Benevolence values, he was concerned with 'preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom who [he was] in frequent personal contact (the 'in group') (Crompton, 2010, p. 31). In Common Cause, Tom Crompton draws on Tim Kasser. Kasser's empirical studies have produced data showing how those with benevolence values are more likely to be concerned with 'bigger-than-self' issues than those who value personal achievement, status and power. I listened in on a conversation between Kasser and Andrew Darnton last week at the Common Cause workshop last week. They were discussing the potential for 'bleed over' between benevolence and universalism. Universalism: 'Understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature.' (Crompton, 2010, p. 31) Those who value universalism are even more likely to be concerned with 'bigger-than-self' issues. But, universalism (where concern is with abstract 'out groups') is probably less common in most people than benevolence (where concern is with those closest to us, our 'in groups') . The 'bleed over' suggests that benevolence can provide a step up to universalism and that they are mutually reinforcing. Common Cause argues for stronger reinforcement of benevolence and universalism. The sort of benevolence displayed by people like Bill Shankley and more recently by current Liverpool heroes like Steven Gerrard, and Jamie Carragher is good to see, but rare. Benevolence does not necessarily predict universalism, but it is a better value to champion that 'achievement, power and hedonism'. Sustainability educators can search out and amplify cultural examples benevolence, they don't need to mention the environment.

WWF's Common Cause - The Debate

Ever since I read 'Psychology and Consumer Culture' edited by Kanner and Kasser, Tim Kasser has been one of my hero's. 'Psychology and Consumer Culture' is dark, it literally made me weep as I read it. My Wife and I call it 'The Bad Book'. It is however incredibly important to read if you are serious about addressing the core problem at the heart of our unsustainable development; consumerism. Kasser also wrote The High Price of Materialism, less dark, equally compelling and has since teamed up with Tom Crompton of WWF UK to produce two very important pieces of work. 'Meeting Environmental Challenges: The role of Human Identity' which Kasser talks about in this video. Both serve as a great introduction to this year's 'Common Cause: The Case for working with our cultural values' published by WWF. 'Common Cause' has fuelled the debate around Identity Campaigning, with Futerra and Chris Rose both very much in the anti camp and George Monbiot and others in the pro camp. I'm in the pro camp and have recently critiqued this through the Unilever Case Study. I'm not going to write a review of Common Cause here; I just wanted to list a few resources and reactions around it:

• Solitaire Townsend's VIEW on Identity campaigning: 1 page (Blog) with 11 comments including some from Tim Kasser, Joe Brewer and Tom Crompton
• Response to Solitaire by Common Cause author Tom Crompton: 1 page (Blog) with 29 comments.
• Ed Gillespie, Futerra, lends his view Common Cause or Common Sense; 1 page (Blog) with 5 comments
• Chris Rose's Campaign Strategy Newsletter: 15 pages (PDF)
• Oxfam's Martin Kirk responds to Chris Rose: 8 pages (PDF)
• Tom Crompton in the Guardian, A value laden Elephant in the boardroom, : 1 page (Comment is Free) with 3 comments!
• George Monbiot in the Guardian, Left values progressive self-interest: 1 page (Comment is Free) with 480 comments!
• Cian O'Donvan offers a brief summary of the pro and anti arguments on his Keep Faking It blog: The Network Grenade: Policy, Values and Behaviour
• Deeper analysis by Shaun Chamberlin, Dark Optimism Blog, Values and Propaganda: 4 pages (Blog) with 18 comments.
• The RSA's Matthew Taylor on 21st Century Enlightenment, putting it into practice?: 38 pages (PDF)
• Visit Cognitive Policy Works for advice on how to conduct Frame Analysis for your organisation.
• Clive Hamilton on 'Why we resist the truth about Climate Change' : 14 pages (PDF)
• Jon Fletcher on the Brook Lyndhurst blog responds to the Common Cause conference: 1 page, with a very useful comment from Martin Kirk

It is also very worth reading George Lakoff's views on Environmental Communication: 3 pages (Blog) with 48 comments. Lakoff is a major inspiration behind the Common Cause paper as well as Webster and Johnson's 'Sense and Sustainability'

I've not read all of these yet (not sure I'll read all 480 comments left in response to Monbiot's article!), but when I have I am sure I will be adding to the debate! I would be really interested to read Jon Porritt's views on this; searches for Tom Crompton, Tim Kasser and Common Cause WWF all threw up 0 matches on his blog. Anyone want to speculate which side of the pro/ anti camp he would be in?

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