Sell the Sizzle

I've just read Futerra's 'Sell the Sizzle' guide, it is required reading for whoever thought the Please help the world - COP15 opening film was a good idea! The advice in Sell the Sizzle took me back to one of the '10 minute lectures' I did for Hackney Environmental Education Network back in June. So here it is:

10 Minute Lecture: I have a dream

I began the 10 minuter by playing an excerpt from Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech. Below are my notes for the lecture:

That speech in total is around 15 minutes long, during it he highlighted the oppression black people in America had and were suffering. But, it is one of the most famous speeches ever because of four little words and how those words made people feel. ‘I have a dream’

In 1963, when that speech was made, America was on the cusp of great change. ‘I have a dream’ provided a persuasive impetus. The speech is memorable because it is so full of HOPE and EXCITEMENT.

Messages of hope are far to infrequent in Environmental Education. This is especially true in the mainstream media.

Most messages are ones of fear, controversy and blame. Sensationalism sells.

Climate change, for example, is often described as awesome, terrible, immense and beyond human control. It has been dubbed by some as ‘Climate Porn’ (Ereaut and Signit, 2006)

The problem with sensationalism is that the scale of the problem is presented as so big that people become paralysed into inaction by feelings of insignificance. This is compounded by environmentalists telling people to give things up and to engage in mundane solutions: Changing lightbulbs, recycling, public transport, insulation, renewable energy, composting, campaigning etc etc... to a lot of people they sound like a series of chores.

All of those things are not THE answer, they are a small part of the answer. We need people to change their whole way of life, we need people to enjoy themselves without compromising the ability of others to enjoy themselves. As environmental educators we need to start showing the way and not just in terms of practical solutions. We need to create hope and excitement and not spread blame and depression. We don’t create waste and pollution because we hate the environment, we create it as a by product of doing the things that we hope will bring us wellbeing.

NEF has identified 5 ways to wellbeing: 1. Connect, 2. Be Active, 3. Keep learning, 4. Take notice, 5. Give...

Consumer culture conditions us to try and meet these needs in material heavy, energy dependent ways; we are sold pseudo-satisfiers that promise much but only provide short term satisfaction therefore driving us to discard one product as we buy a shiny new one.

‘Sustainability’ is about doing these five things in socially and environmentally responsible ways.

For this we need two things:

1. Understanding of how we can and why we need to live sustainably.
2. Opportunities and inspiration to lead a fulfilling and varied life.

We need more of the first and a hell of a lot more of the second, we need to start showing the way. We can meet all five things in low impact ways, but a lot of people have forgotten, or in the case of my generation, never really learned.

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I'm really impressed with the Futerra guide. As it says at the end what we need now are lots of positive visions of the future. It is what we're trying to do with Global Footsteps.

Alain de Botton's Six-Part Series on Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness

Just wanted to create a link to an excellent Six Part series on Philosophy by Alain de Botton. each programme is about 20 mins long and looks at several big emotions like 'happiness', 'anger' and 'love'. Each programme filled me with ideas for workshops critiquing consumerism, materialism, affluenza and so on. My fave thing to do would be to create a 'Diogenes Happiness Wall' (see Epicurus on Happiness) I'm hopefully going to give it a go at a forthcoming LEEF event I'm planning!

Thanks to John Graham-Cumming for posting the links in one place: http://tinyurl.com/yj8wzxm

Documentary: The Shock Doctrine: RSA Screening

Last night we went to watch The Shock Doctrine at the RSA....

After a 2009 packed with high impact environmental films: The Age of Stupid, End of the Line, Pig Business, The Vanishing Bees... 2010 looks set to kick off with some films that don't leave you feeling depressed and saddened and helplessly thinking 'oh dear'. The Shock Doctrine, directed by Michael Winterbottom and 'starring' Naomi Klein takes us to the next step; it makes you angry, motivated and ready to take to the streets. The next step after that, something that was brought up during the Q&A is that we need an alternative ideology to follow, economically and politically; we also need a leader, where is the next Che Guevara (without the violence, or maybe with it?)? Neither are currently obvious.

The Shock Doctrine is a film you have to lean forward, listen intently and concentrate on right the way through, it is like an Adam Curtis doc, but not quite as good. The basic premise is the same as Klein's book. Klein argues that wars as well as economic, environmental and terrorist shocks have been used systematically by neo-liberal governments to hurry through public sector reforms in the shape of mass privatisations of just about everything. The end result is inequality of the kind so well described in the book: 'The Spirit Level'. We live in society in which the rich are very rich and the rest of us are sleepwalking in a bubble of escapism, idly letting our public services slip away as everything is privatised and run for profit. The villian according to Klein is Milton Freidmann, whose extreme free market economics was ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher via Augustus Pinochet and Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo and has since guided the policies of nearly all the rest of the worlds governments.

Where does this film leave us? It leaves me wondering whether the UK and US population at large will wake up to the domestic and global inequality that results from extreme neo-liberalism.. I am left wondering whether a digital technology inspired documentary led revolution will give rise to a mass movement of individuals rebelling against free market economics. What we have at the moment is a society in which being financially rich is the main game, everyone wants money and fame. While this mindset persists, which it does so thanks to the mass media, a grassroots movement is unlikely, it is akin to asking people to fight against what they are striving to achieve for themselves... people still believe that they can be super rich, when it is painfully obvious that only a lucky, small elite can ever be. But while individuals harbour this belief and cling to it, their expectations remain high and they go on living as Selfish Capitalists.