‘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.

Pseudo satisfiers and Sustainability Non-sense

Reflections on: ‘Sustainability Sense: Creating value in an economic downturn’ PP4SD conference, 23^rd February 2010, Thistle Hotel, Victoria, London.

Responding to our values: Pseudo satisfiers and Sustainability Non-sense

Morgan Phillips

When talking about values, the things we as social actors place a value on, love, status, trust, fast cars, fun, houses, education, compassion and so on, we must also talk about emotions and the power of them. When does a human being have emotional wellbeing, when are they emotionally stable or high? I would argue that it is when they are able to live their lives in ways that allow them to have, protect or feel the benefit of the things they value. So if someone wants status symbols, enjoys regular big nights out, likes smoking cigarettes, cherishes Costa coffee mornings, loves clothes from Primark and a dozen other 'unsustainable' things and is able to get/experience them, they will have emotional wellbeing. It may not be continuous but they are able, thanks to credit cards, stable employment, overdrafts and so on, to sustain frequent enough waves of hedonistic highs to make the lows or boredom in between bearable. They're on the hedonic treadmill¹.

The argument from many environmentalists, myself included², is that we need to understand better what brings us stable sustained emotional wellbeing, which has occasional highs, but does not collapse into painful lows of confusion, regret, shame and anger. The New Economics Foundation³ ask in their edited book 'Do Good Lives Have To Cost The Earth?' Most of the chapters in that book argue 'no' and this is crucially important to sustainability.

Often the reasons we behave in unsustainable ways are more to do with our misunderstandings about how to protect, have or enjoy the things we value and there seems to be a hierarchy of values. We value one thing because we value another and we value that because we value something else; something more profound. It is not a simple linear thing however. We may value something like a bicycle for many different reasons, health benefits, time saving, exhilaration, etc, which all align, eventually, with our deeper values. We might however, place high value on an expensive gift from our partner as we see it as a measure of how much we are loved (valued) by them. The expensive gift may or may not have a large environmental or social justice impact, but its impact is likely to be more than something less tangible and arguably more loving: a hug, a kiss, a sacrifice, a poem etc. Loving someone means spending time with them, taking a selfless act to make their day a bit nicer, being loyal and understanding when and when not to bring up sensitive issues. Buying expensive gifts to compensate for not being able to do these things because of other commitments (work, leisure, etc) is not, in my opinion, the wisest way to show someone that you value them.

So, if emotional wellbeing is indeed linked to how congruent our values are with our lives, we are likely to get upset/ angry/ dissatisfied/ jealous when they are not. For example we might experience status anxiety⁴ if we feel our neighbours house, car, holiday, sofa, partner even, is more glamorous than our own. Emotions like anger, frustration and jealousy, when stirred up, are powerful drivers of behaviour change. The urge we get to 'kick out' at others or ourselves to try to change the conditions that are disrupting our emotional wellbeing intensifies as we get more angry, upset etc, so the more fierce the emotion, the more likely the change is. On a more positive note, we are also likely to modify our behaviour in ways that we believe will enhance our wellbeing. We shape our lives in ways that are likely to increase our chances of having and protecting the things we value, whatever they may be. We may not always change our behaviour in the right ways, we may fall back on old habits and lead ourselves back into the frustration we’re trying to escape and this is where education can help.

Discussions of values and proxy values are therefore very important. If after a discussion about status symbols an individual begins to get frustrated with the false promises of advertising and then, because of a realisation, or perhaps an admission, that material wealth does not guarantee happiness, they may get sufficiently emotional to strive for change. This change could be personal or at the sub - systemic level of an organisation they are a stakeholder in, or at the systemic level of a consumerism based economy. The vast majority of people, if you ask them, will value core things like love, happiness, friendship, tolerance, equality, health, compassion, openness, liberty, respect, generosity, empathy and kindness, among other things as Paul Murray showed us yesterday. Given this, a discussion of how we seek to observe these in, or have them facilitated by, other social actors is as important, if not more important than a discussion about how we can be kind, tolerant, etc to others and not impinge on their freedom, health etc. When we feel we need to change, we need to learn how to change.

I value nature, I get upset, angry and frustrated when I learn about the innumerable ways in which it is exploited by business, individuals and governments. I feel uncomfortable when I engage with social actors who are not doing their upmost to lessen their unsustainable behaviours. Ideally I support more sustainable competitors to send out market signals and fill out feedback forms like this one (http://www.thistlefeedback.com/) with constructive criticism and offers of help and advice. Beyond that, there is not much else I can do as an individual; it is out of my sphere of control. But these actions are enough for me to maintain my emotional wellbeing.

Paul Maiteny taught us yesterday about the importance of emotion; our emotional drives as educators and the importance of exploring, even challenging the emotions of others. An exploration of our emotional wellbeing and the reasons why we value the things we do is very important. When the things we value appear under threat we get emotional and feel moved to act. It is a crude thing to say but a lot of people still believe (or at least behave as if they do) that material wealth = happiness, they therefore value the ‘wrong’ things environmentally and, if you agree with the Affluenza^5,6,7,8 hypothesis, the ‘wrong’ things emotionally. The consequence is a ‘take, make, waste’ economy with an infantalised⁹ population that is constantly in need of external stimulation and consequent gradual but persistent environmental degradation. As educators, in whatever capacity, we need to help people unpick the material wealth = happiness paradigm at personal, sub-systemic and systemic levels. And, importantly, we need to help them to truly connect with the values that are inherent within us all. We need to help them discover true satisfiers and protectors of the things they value to replace their cravings for the pseudo-satisfiers, which keep them locked on the hedonic treadmill¹.

What does this do at the systemic level, within business? I don’t know. If a business recognises that its future success is tied up in some direct or indirect way with the persistence of the material wealth = happiness paradigm, they may be resistant to ‘training’ that encourages its employees and customers to question it. If it truly wants to be sustainable, it may recognise the long term benefits of a wellbeing based economy and seek to change itself to be at the forefront of making it happen. To do this it will need an employee base that understands and values this approach; workers who feel proud to be an employee, customer and advocate.

People value ‘unsustainable’ things not because they hate the environment, but because they believe that these things will protect or enhance the deeper things they value like love, happiness and respect. It is the value we place on pseudo-satisfiers that needs to be explored, not our underlying, core values. Is it possible to find and access the people we need to explore it with?

1. Easterlin, R.A. (1974) Does economic growth improve the human lot? Some empirical evidence, In: David, R. and Reder, R. (Eds.), Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz. New York, USA, Academic Press
2. Phillips, M. (2009) Emotional Wellbeing In: Stibbe, A. (Ed), The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy, UK, Green Books
3. Simms, A. & Smith, J. (eds.) Do good lives have to cost the earth? UK, Constable and Robinson Ltd.
4. De Botton, A. (2004) Status Anxiety, UK, Penguin
5. De Graff, J., Wann, D., and Naylor, T.H. (2002) Affluenza. The all consuming epidemic, USA, Berret-Koehler Publishers
6. Hamilton, C. and Denniss, R. (2005) Affluenza. When too much is never enough, Australia, Allen and Unwin
7. James, O. (2007) Affluenza, UK, Vermilion
8. James, O. (2008) The Selfish Capitalist, UK, Vermilion
9. Barber, B.R. (2007) Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, New York, W.W. Norton and Company

Communicating Climate Change with Camera

Had a lovely night out with staff, volunteers and session workers from ecoACTIVE last night. I'd spent the afternoon working on a little project on how to talk about climate change with 'normal' people in social situations without boring the pants off them or antagonising them massively. Normally if I'm out socially I specifically avoid the subjects sustainability, environment, climate change and so on for fear of being shot down in barrage of yawns..... but it was really nice to hang out with people who understand the issues and are not afraid to talk about them, or dare I say it, enjoy talking about them! I had a good chat with Andy Bodycombe, a photojournalist, about how to communicate climate change issues in ways that make it personal and tangible to people, like us, who are temporally and/or geographically so removed from the impacts. Andy and I talked about the danger of falling into the cliches when it comes to telling stories and raising awareness. From a photography point of view, we luckily seem to be veering away from the Polar bears hugging ice cubes and cracks on desert floors cliches. It is still, however, really very difficult to find ways to educate people for sustainability when there are so many images surrounding us that add up to education against sustainability.

My opinion is that you don't necessarily have to mention the environment or climate change at all to provide some education for the environment. Photojournalism wise, if you can show stories of people simply getting on with living sustainably and enjoying it, you can provide inspiring examples. Especially if you can explain what is bringing them wellbeing (community, learning, fulfilment, activity, sharing, empowerment, pride etc) rather than just showing happy faces. After all it is the oldest marketing trick in the book to show a photo of a happy family... in their car, on their sofa, on a sun lounger, in a fast food restaurant... to sell something. The promise of happiness is a strong and powerful one and one that people routinely buy into whether it is an idealised illusion or not. Somehow we need to get the population of Britain and the rest of the World to buy into sustainability to create a low impact but vibrant, healthy and enjoyable society. Acting sustainability is not about just opting out of the consumer economy hunkering down in a log cabin with a good book and an acoustic guitar defiantly humming 'I might not have any friends but at least my carbon emissions are below 1 ton a year la la la', that is a cop out; a bitter and lonely one. Acting sustainably is about being part of an ecologically sustainable economy and contributing to that economy through ones purchasing decisions, work and leisure activities and enjoying it. That economy does not have to be at a national or global scale to begin with, it starts at grass roots and grows. This growth creates signposts to other people, governments and entrepreneurs, signposts that bring more people in. These things are happening and we need to tell those stories.

What we don't need (again in my opinion - good old blogosphere!) are stark warnings about the end of the world and how we must 'reduce our consumption', 'give things up' and 'buy green'. These messages translate in people's minds to 'have less fun', 'do some chores' and 'be a responsible adult'. They are all counter intuitive to our present culture. At the moment most environmentalists persist with trying (and mostly failing) to get people, governments and businesses to buy into things that, to them, look like mundane chores, vote losers, restrictions on fun and short term profit losses. Environmentalists are trying to persuade people to give up goods and services that are environmentally unsustainable; right intent wrong strategy. Many of these goods and services are, at best, only 'pseudo satisfiers' of our basic non-material needs. But, trying to persuade people to give them up without sufficiently advising on and offering alternative, genuine, satisfiers of those needs; things like love, respect, fulfilment, meaning, joy, creativity, diversity, stimulating conversation and community, is a hugely inefficient process. Businesses know that people need all these things in their lives and have for decades been making people feel anxious and insecure about their lack of status, friendships, creativity and so on while at the same time positioning their products as solutions or satisfiers of their needs. The solutions are largely only 'pseudo-satisfiers' because as The Beatles put it: 'you can't buy me love' and a material consumption based economy would not work if these goods and services really did keep their promises of happiness, love, respect etc etc. To get people to consume less without advising on, inspiring, offering and, in fact, selling opportunities for them to satisfy their basic non-material needs in genuine non-material ways is shortsighted. Few people will do it for the sake of preventing some distant environmental disaster, they will only do it if it benefits them, now.

So, lets tell the stories of people who are fulfilled, secure, respected, loved, emotionally stable and fun. These are the people who can see through 'pseudo-satisfiers' and therefore don't buy them, they are people who don't see the 'green' behaviour as a major ball ache, they see it as common sensical and aligned with their everyday existence. They are not overly antagonised by environmentalists and are happy to add a bit of green nous to their life because it won't be a big chore. They also probably don't make a big song and dance about being sustainable either, its just what they do.

Governments and businesses in the end take their lead from people; they need to please them. It will be much easier for a government to impose taxes and regulations on environmentally damaging products in an attempt to phase them out if people are not buying into them anymore. Governments, at the moment, are finding it very difficult to make radical policy decisions for the sake of the environment because they know that there will be a public backlash. Environmentalists need to help people see through the pseudo-satisfers while providing and promoting opportunities for less stressful, less anxious, less materialistic, more fulfilling, more enjoyable and (with added green nous) therefore ultimately more sustainable lives. It is starting to happen, get your camera out and spread the word!