In my first diary, I promised to talk "later" about why I think that polar bears, penguins and pie charts are starting to lose their efficacy as talking points for climate change activists - or more to the point, how we need to augment our messaging with topics that aren't in the traditional environmental/climate change activist wheelhouse: (
http://www.dailykos.com/...).
So let's talk polar bears.
Making appeals for protecting the environment and climate based on the threat of extinction of some photogenic species isn't a bad thing. Au contraire - it's a real concern, for many reasons (http://www.fws.gov/...) and it's urgent to do whatever we can to protect fellow travelers now hurtling toward extinction because of our greed and environmental malfeasance.
No one in the environmental movement (broadly writ) has done anything but act with good, full hearts, in the firm and considered belief that if we just SHOW people the polar bears (and penguins, and tigers, and turtles, and storks) - and provide them with scientific evidence proving that human activity is behind species loss and climate change - they'll stop in their tracks, gasp, and change their ways.
But clearly, that doesn't work with everyone. While most Americans "believe" in climate change (Pew piece here: http://www.pewresearch.org/...) they also give it low priority in their list of concerns.
And you'll note that "most" is not equal to "all," or "the preponderance," or "the vast majority." In other words, people are getting it, but the dial isn't moving fast enough, and we aren't reaching everyone.
By now we've all read the excellent Think Progress piece on echo chambers (http://thinkprogress.org/... ).
It's easy to rail against Mitch McConnell and Jim Inhofe and Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz and their conservative echo chamber. But environmentalists and climate change activists (writ large, so, maybe not you) also live inside an echo chamber. Yes, it's a liberal, environmentally conscious, eco-friendly echo chamber, but it's an echo chamber nonetheless.
So here we are inside our echo chamber, and we're desperately trying to communicate about climate change. We email links to petitions (sign to save the polar bears!) and tweet pictures of fluffy cubs (save the Arctic!). We genuinely think that we're reaching out. We think that we are engaging others to our cause. We've come up with a totemic animal that tugs our heartstrings and makes us want to take action. We've come up with a set of messages that move us, and make us demand change. We send pictures of polar bears and we think "look at this poor polar bear starving on an ice flow! Are you not worried? Are you not moved to take action?!"
Because WE are moved to action. We are moved to passionate, furious action on behalf of polar bears, and penguins, and tigers, and green turtles, and dolphins, and rain forests, and virgin tundra, and glaciers. But not everyone shares our delight in and passion for those things.
In the case of polar bears, there are a lot of perfectly reasonable people who don't think of polar bears much, if at all, in their daily lives. Maybe they have enough to worry about what with two jobs, and kids to schlep around to school and whatnot, and bills to pay, and, you know, a life - a life that is already fully packed and plenty to juggle without thinking about polar bears.
And when they DO think of polar bears, it's as dangerous apex predators - which, to be fair, polar bears are.
When they think of polar bears at all, many people think of that news story they saw last winter about some poor guy who ventured outside in his boxer shorts to do the recycling when all of a sudden BLAM! from out behind the rhododendrons pounced a ravenous polar bear, who chomped him!
People who recall that news story - fair, reasonable, caring people - are likely to register fright and horror when thinking about polar bears. And they probably don't think, "poor polar bear! Climate change has reduced his habitat so he has to come into town and feed on whatever he can find in the garbage!"
And what other kind of polar bear images are passed around by environmentalists who want to pull your heartstrings and get you to think about the environment and climate change? Pictures of fluffy, chubby, adorable polar bear cubs. But when you think about it, a picture of a polar bear cub is proof positive - particularly when it's a cub frolicking in the snow with an equally chubby sibling and a doting parent - that polar bears are, in fact, doing just fine! If they weren't, would there be new fresh baby polar bear cubs?
Not that polar bears aren't threatened. We know they are - although the situation is more complex than just "they are all imminently going to die." Here's just one of many nuanced pieces you can find on the fate of the polar bear: http://www.bbc.com/...
It's that they don't work on everyone. Sure, liberal white environmentalists (like me) will have kids, and those kids will grow up loving the poor endangered bears, so there's a potential new audience. But not everyone responds to polar bears (and penguins, and tree frogs) the way (most of us) environmentalists do. So just hitting the "repeat" button on messages featuring our favorite totem animal(s) isn't always going to work.
What might work? Well, lots of things. One "good thing" about climate change, in terms of messaging, is that it's either already affecting - or will affect - pretty much everything. So choose your message!
Money: rising insurance premiums, infrastructure costs (psssst: higher taxes!), higher food prices.
Health: ashthma, tropical diseases moving north. (Note - I heard a commercial a couple of nights ago that casually mentioned chikungunya, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for folks in Seattle to worry about p.s., it's not:.)
Race/#BlackLivesMatter: just read this excellent post: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Real estate (cross-reference money): rising sea levels wiping out coastal towns in Florida, among other states, and hey - thinking about retiring there soon?
The economy: irrelevant if we are sloshing around in toxic bilge water.
Women’s rights: women's issues also include food security - of which there will be less and less if there are widespread drought and crop disruptions.
Right to work legislation: an issue that pales in comparison to the possibility that, if we don't do something NOW, the American West is going to be uninhabitable: 114 degrees in the shade with raging, unquenchable wildfires.
Poverty: which isn't a patch on what we'll see if we don't stop or reverse climate change now.
Talking about climate change in ways that will resonate with people who don't naturally gravitate to the traditional environment and global warming messages is vital. And except for the extreme hard core of ideological "deniers," most people will listen to a message that talks about their own self-interests.
So pick a topic - any topic - research how climate change will impact it - and then start messaging about that! Climate change is manifesting itself all around us. The subject is gripping because the stakes could not be higher, and we are both the villains - and the potential heroes - in the piece. The time to widen our horizons and include everyone possible in the conversation is.... NOW.
White lights!