Last week Shell Oil came to town and gave an open-house about their coalbed methane project in the Sacred Headwaters. I had a fascinating chat with Shell Canada employees, Larry Lalond and Kathy Penney. It was disappointing to note that only a handful of local people came to the open house. Perhaps Shell could have done better to advertise their open house. I would think it would be in their interest to encourage more local participation.
Hopefully, we have gotten past the bad old days when resource extraction was a kind of smash and grab operation with no meaningful consultation with stakeholders. This time I'm assuming that Shell, who appears to be in this for the long haul, is really serious about listening to the public. The issue that grabs attention anywhere downstream of the Sacred Headwaters is the issue of water. In order to get the methane out, Shell is proposing to pump water from underground to the surface. This “produced water” could well be contaminated with heavy metals or salts, we don't know yet, until it is properly tested.
Shell insists that it will truck all the contaminated water, a thousand kilometers away to Fort St John, where it will be re-injected underground. This is dubious, because it is not only a ridiculous waste of energy, but also totally impractical, once more than a handful of holes are drilled. The other problem is that pumping water out of an aqueduct is likely to affect ground water levels which could adversely effect salmon fry. These are all excellent reasons for local people to get involved in the consultation process with Shell. We're talking about them screwing around with our water, people!
Royal Dutch Shell is one hundred years old. It is now the second largest energy corporation in the world, after Exxon-Mobil. Last year, Shell made thirty-two billion dollars. The CEO of Shell, Jeroen van der Veer, acknowledges both Peak Oil and Global Warming. He'd like to see a global agreement on Carbon Cap and Trade soon.
Why I mention this is because it has direct consequences for all of us. Peak Oil means that the global demand for hydrocarbons is or will soon exceed supply. The price of oil may have its ups and downs, but as long as global demand keeps rising faster than supply, which is near peak production, it's likely that it will become more and more expensive over time. This means that there is and will be a massive transfer of wealth from consumers of oil and gas to producers. Ordinarily, this would be business as usual in our global capitalist system, as the higher price would just encourage everyone to avoid these products, but in this case it isn't – for two reasons: First, there are no good substitutes for oil in our modern economy; and Second, burning hydrocarbons on the massive global scale that has been happening is leading to climate change. For these reasons it is essential that governments step in and limit the amount of carbon emissions in the economy by putting a price on carbon.
Everything is connected. The atmosphere is common to all and if too much carbon dioxide gets produced the costs are spread to everyone, in terms of the damage from climate change. On the other hand, Oil companies, and consumers of oil products are not paying for those costs. This is what is called: “market failure”, when one group in the economy avoids paying for all the costs of their activities. That is why government has to step in and devise a fair means of compensating the public for this cost and at the same time, slow down the massive transfer of wealth from consumers to oil producers. Stephan Dion, leader of the Federal Liberal party got it right when he said polluters should pay.
Unfortunately in all this consultation with Shell, where are our governments? The Campbell government has streamlined and fast-tracked coalbed methane tenures and subsidized roadbuilding and initial drilling. Not only that, the Campbell government has taken away the legal rights of municipalities and regions to have a say in resource extraction decisions. Something doesn't jibe here with the provincial government's commitment to fight climate change .
This is where the other problem of “political failure” comes in. From the huge transfer of wealth from the public to oil companies, a portion of big oil's money is going towards lobbying governments. This has led to political corruption on a scale not seen since the nineteenth century. As a result oil extraction, production, and consumption is subsidized instead of being properly regulated. And we have huge military expenditures for wars in the Middle East which just might possibly have to do with securing oil supplies there. You can see the damage this has done to our democratic institutions in the obvious bias of the Bush and Harper governments toward oil companies and their blatant foot dragging over doing anything decisive about global warming.
You may say, “What's global warming got to do with me personally?” Here's the connection: Only if ordinary citizens get involved and take governments to task on these issues will we be able counter big oil's money and influence. Otherwise they'll run the show. And if you want to know what that's like, take a look at Iraq.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Monday, June 30, 2008
Carbon Dioxide and the Magic of Exponential Growth
If a frog is put into a pot of boiling water he will immediately jump out of the pot and save himself. But if the same frog is put into a pot of water at room temperature and the water is slowly heated, the frog will not notice the water is getting hotter until it is too late. The frog is a lot like us. He is built to notice and respond to sudden changes in his environment but is not as good at responding to gradual changes.
Two hundred years ago, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). It is now 385 ppm and increasing at a rate of 1.7% a year, due largely to the industrial development of China and India, and their increasing dependence on coal – the dirtiest of fossil fuels.
At 1.7% per year the amount of CO2 emissions will double in 43 years. That's the magic of exponential growth. As the world industrializes, more and more energy is needed and if that energy is from fossil fuels, the amount of CO2 emissions keeps growing too.
At this rate of growth, before the end of the century the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reach and surpass 1000 ppm. Carbon dioxide is toxic to the human heart causing decreasing contractile force as well as difficulty breathing. At concentrations of 1000 ppm CO2 causes discomfort in the form of nausea and headaches for about 20% of people. At concentrations of 2000 ppm – which we would reach within a century – the majority of people would experience discomfort. At that point, we might want to live outside all the time because the concentration of CO2 inside buildings would be even higher.
Although it is true that plants need carbon dioxide to grow, not all plants would benefit from increased levels of CO2. Specifically, our food crops would not do as well, but apparently weeds would thrive under these conditions.
Is this the kind of world we can look forward to? A world of mass hunger, misery, and nausea? Notice I haven't even mentioned global warming up until now. What is driving almost all the greatest threats to humanity, including global warming, is industrialization and economic growth.
People who believe we can continue on with business as usual are a lot like that frog in the pot – they don't notice any difference from day to day. It's not hotter today than it was yesterday. More and more children are getting asthma, but the increase is gradual so we don't notice. More people are getting cancer from the increased amounts of toxins in the environment, but the increase is so gradual that we barely notice it. Forests, which are net absorbers of CO2, are being cut down at an alarming rate – but we don't notice it because it's happening somewhere else.
Some people are worse than the frog. They're more like the ostrich that hides its head in the sand. They find the consequences of this news too overwhelming. They are too chicken to face up to the fact that we have to stop the growth of industrial output or we won't survive.
Two hundred years ago, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). It is now 385 ppm and increasing at a rate of 1.7% a year, due largely to the industrial development of China and India, and their increasing dependence on coal – the dirtiest of fossil fuels.
At 1.7% per year the amount of CO2 emissions will double in 43 years. That's the magic of exponential growth. As the world industrializes, more and more energy is needed and if that energy is from fossil fuels, the amount of CO2 emissions keeps growing too.
At this rate of growth, before the end of the century the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reach and surpass 1000 ppm. Carbon dioxide is toxic to the human heart causing decreasing contractile force as well as difficulty breathing. At concentrations of 1000 ppm CO2 causes discomfort in the form of nausea and headaches for about 20% of people. At concentrations of 2000 ppm – which we would reach within a century – the majority of people would experience discomfort. At that point, we might want to live outside all the time because the concentration of CO2 inside buildings would be even higher.
Although it is true that plants need carbon dioxide to grow, not all plants would benefit from increased levels of CO2. Specifically, our food crops would not do as well, but apparently weeds would thrive under these conditions.
Is this the kind of world we can look forward to? A world of mass hunger, misery, and nausea? Notice I haven't even mentioned global warming up until now. What is driving almost all the greatest threats to humanity, including global warming, is industrialization and economic growth.
People who believe we can continue on with business as usual are a lot like that frog in the pot – they don't notice any difference from day to day. It's not hotter today than it was yesterday. More and more children are getting asthma, but the increase is gradual so we don't notice. More people are getting cancer from the increased amounts of toxins in the environment, but the increase is so gradual that we barely notice it. Forests, which are net absorbers of CO2, are being cut down at an alarming rate – but we don't notice it because it's happening somewhere else.
Some people are worse than the frog. They're more like the ostrich that hides its head in the sand. They find the consequences of this news too overwhelming. They are too chicken to face up to the fact that we have to stop the growth of industrial output or we won't survive.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Fifth Discipline: Systems Theory
All human organizations are systems. They share common patterns, behaviours, and properties with electrical, and biological systems that can be understood and used to our advantage.
We can define a “system” as “ a web of relations among elements”. The structure of any system – the many circular interlocking, sometimes time-delayed relationships among its components – is often just as important in determining its behaviour as the individual components themselves.
Think of the solar system – a system of planets dominated by a sun, many times bigger than any of the other planets. Only the planet earth has the right distance from the sun so that the sun's energy was enough to support the development of life but not so much as to destroy life.
And life itself is a global system that has interacted with and changed the earth's atmosphere, climate, geology, and chemistry over hundreds of millions of years.
In a system, all the parts interact and influence each other in ways that aren't predictable . Think of the Beatles – who could have imagined the evolution of their music and the vast audience that could be created by those four guys as separate individuals?
Human organizations are built up to serve various purposes. Like a machine, it is individuals that make up the parts of the whole. But, unlike a machine, human organizations can learn and improve themselves. They can change and evolve.
A machine is built to further someone's goal. All of its parts are created and put together in the pursuit of that goal. Human organizations have goals, but those goals can evolve over time and come to influence those who serve in the organization as well.
You want to keep a machine running smoothly, but a human organization is much more than a machine because its components are living individuals with their own attitudes and goals. What is more, unlike the components of a machine, as human beings we care about each other and the world around us. This caring for others means that we are emotionally involved in social systems.
To be emotionally involved, to care about others, makes seeing the whole picture much harder to do because in order to see the whole we need to stand back from it and get some distance. Think of your own family as a system. It's not easy because we can't usually distance ourselves from our family. We care too much. But families are interacting systems of individuals just as much as a rock band, a corporation, a hospital, or a school.
When we learn how what we do is part of a system, we can picture ourselves as a participant rather than just a lone individual. We can be more effective than we could be as a lone individual. We can learn how to improve the system, make it work better. Sometimes we can even change its goals if we have a strong vision of what is most important to us.
The more accurate we are in seeing the workings of the system the easier it is for us to find the the points of greatest leverage and change the way the system works.
Obviously, not all change is beneficial, Some changes make things worse, which is why every organization needs to strive toward continuous learning. We all need to learn to see things accurately so that we profit from our mistakes as well as our successes.
We need to encourage diversity within all organizations because it is diversity that supports successful adaptation to change. According to Bill O'Brian, CEO of Hanover Insurance, a manager's fundamental task is in providing the enabling conditions for people to lead the most enriching lives they can.
As Peter Senge puts it in his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization “In effect, the art of system thinking lies in seeing through complexity to the underlying structures generating change... It means organizing complexity into a coherent story that illuminates the causes of problems and how they can be remedied in enduring ways." Ideally, that's what I see myself doing as a columnist and a blogger.
We can define a “system” as “ a web of relations among elements”. The structure of any system – the many circular interlocking, sometimes time-delayed relationships among its components – is often just as important in determining its behaviour as the individual components themselves.
Think of the solar system – a system of planets dominated by a sun, many times bigger than any of the other planets. Only the planet earth has the right distance from the sun so that the sun's energy was enough to support the development of life but not so much as to destroy life.
And life itself is a global system that has interacted with and changed the earth's atmosphere, climate, geology, and chemistry over hundreds of millions of years.
In a system, all the parts interact and influence each other in ways that aren't predictable . Think of the Beatles – who could have imagined the evolution of their music and the vast audience that could be created by those four guys as separate individuals?
Human organizations are built up to serve various purposes. Like a machine, it is individuals that make up the parts of the whole. But, unlike a machine, human organizations can learn and improve themselves. They can change and evolve.
A machine is built to further someone's goal. All of its parts are created and put together in the pursuit of that goal. Human organizations have goals, but those goals can evolve over time and come to influence those who serve in the organization as well.
You want to keep a machine running smoothly, but a human organization is much more than a machine because its components are living individuals with their own attitudes and goals. What is more, unlike the components of a machine, as human beings we care about each other and the world around us. This caring for others means that we are emotionally involved in social systems.
To be emotionally involved, to care about others, makes seeing the whole picture much harder to do because in order to see the whole we need to stand back from it and get some distance. Think of your own family as a system. It's not easy because we can't usually distance ourselves from our family. We care too much. But families are interacting systems of individuals just as much as a rock band, a corporation, a hospital, or a school.
When we learn how what we do is part of a system, we can picture ourselves as a participant rather than just a lone individual. We can be more effective than we could be as a lone individual. We can learn how to improve the system, make it work better. Sometimes we can even change its goals if we have a strong vision of what is most important to us.
The more accurate we are in seeing the workings of the system the easier it is for us to find the the points of greatest leverage and change the way the system works.
Obviously, not all change is beneficial, Some changes make things worse, which is why every organization needs to strive toward continuous learning. We all need to learn to see things accurately so that we profit from our mistakes as well as our successes.
We need to encourage diversity within all organizations because it is diversity that supports successful adaptation to change. According to Bill O'Brian, CEO of Hanover Insurance, a manager's fundamental task is in providing the enabling conditions for people to lead the most enriching lives they can.
As Peter Senge puts it in his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization “In effect, the art of system thinking lies in seeing through complexity to the underlying structures generating change... It means organizing complexity into a coherent story that illuminates the causes of problems and how they can be remedied in enduring ways." Ideally, that's what I see myself doing as a columnist and a blogger.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Gordon Campbell and the Dark Side of Green
He may have the most impressive looking carbon tax in North America, He may be encouraging renewable energy projects all over British Columbia, but dig beneath the surface and you'll find that Gordon Campbell's government is on the dark side of green.
To begin with, all those renewable energy projects are for private companies only. BC Hydro, which could have been developing wind farms and smaller hydroelectric power projects for British Columbians has been legally prevented from doing so. In it's place, the Liberal government has given away the rights to hundreds of "run of the river" hydroelectric projects as well as a bunch of wind farm licences to his business buddies for bargain prices. It's Liberal government policy to fast track and subsidize these renewable power projects, which is arguably a good thing, except that there is no benefit for BC's citizens.
You see, certified green power, that is power that comes from renewable sources like wind and water, command higher prices in the power-hungry U.S. Once these wind farms and hydro projects are up and running with the help of tax-payer subsidies there is nothing stopping them from selling their power to the U.S. That means that U.S. companies can cover our land with wind farms, can dam and divert our rivers, and we don't even benefit from the power that they generate. If we want to buy that power, we would have to pay higher prices than what we pay to BC hydro because it's "green power". Can you see the irony of this? Foreigners are going to profit from using our land and selling the power to other foreigners and our government is subsidizing them.
We've been lulled by Campbell's green public relations into thinking that the Liberal government cares about the environment. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's all about privatization, about selling off BC's resources to feed the hungry appetite of the biggest economy in the world and taking away our public rights to affordable recreation and hunting and fishing in the process.
Ask yourself why has Campbell's government consistantly avoided public consultation on privatizing BC Hydro, and on it's renewable power policies like "run of the river"? If local municipalities had a say in renewable power projects, and if BC Hydro could develop them, all citizens would benefit by generating green power in our backyards. But not Campbell's way. We lose our wilderness, and our rivers so that multinational corporations can make a profit selling energy to the United States.
Without public involvement, so-called green projects are nothing more than resource grabs for the rich and powerful. Going green is meaningless if it doesn't lead to a sustainable future. In order to be sustainable, we need local control over the use and conservation of our resources. If we allow Gordon Campbell's Liberal government to sell them off now their won't be anything left for our children and grandchildren. If you want to know more about these issues please check out www.saveourrivers.ca and www.thetyee.ca
To begin with, all those renewable energy projects are for private companies only. BC Hydro, which could have been developing wind farms and smaller hydroelectric power projects for British Columbians has been legally prevented from doing so. In it's place, the Liberal government has given away the rights to hundreds of "run of the river" hydroelectric projects as well as a bunch of wind farm licences to his business buddies for bargain prices. It's Liberal government policy to fast track and subsidize these renewable power projects, which is arguably a good thing, except that there is no benefit for BC's citizens.
You see, certified green power, that is power that comes from renewable sources like wind and water, command higher prices in the power-hungry U.S. Once these wind farms and hydro projects are up and running with the help of tax-payer subsidies there is nothing stopping them from selling their power to the U.S. That means that U.S. companies can cover our land with wind farms, can dam and divert our rivers, and we don't even benefit from the power that they generate. If we want to buy that power, we would have to pay higher prices than what we pay to BC hydro because it's "green power". Can you see the irony of this? Foreigners are going to profit from using our land and selling the power to other foreigners and our government is subsidizing them.
We've been lulled by Campbell's green public relations into thinking that the Liberal government cares about the environment. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's all about privatization, about selling off BC's resources to feed the hungry appetite of the biggest economy in the world and taking away our public rights to affordable recreation and hunting and fishing in the process.
Ask yourself why has Campbell's government consistantly avoided public consultation on privatizing BC Hydro, and on it's renewable power policies like "run of the river"? If local municipalities had a say in renewable power projects, and if BC Hydro could develop them, all citizens would benefit by generating green power in our backyards. But not Campbell's way. We lose our wilderness, and our rivers so that multinational corporations can make a profit selling energy to the United States.
Without public involvement, so-called green projects are nothing more than resource grabs for the rich and powerful. Going green is meaningless if it doesn't lead to a sustainable future. In order to be sustainable, we need local control over the use and conservation of our resources. If we allow Gordon Campbell's Liberal government to sell them off now their won't be anything left for our children and grandchildren. If you want to know more about these issues please check out www.saveourrivers.ca and www.thetyee.ca
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
What's Growth Got To Do With It?
In biological growth, living cells multiply by dividing their genetic material in two and then splitting into two distinct cells. Each cell is then free to divide in two again indefinitely, providing conditions are favourable. But at some point growth gets limited, either because the food supply runs out or because production of waste interferes with the consumption of food.
That's where variety or biodiversity comes in – because what is one creature's waste is always food for another. Everything is connected. Living things are never isolated, but are always part of what we call “ecosystems”.
When people think of a jungle, they often think of competition of many creatures eating each other up in a race for survival. But actually, a jungle is made up of a huge diversity of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria – that, although partly competing , on the whole are cooperating with each other to form a vast interconnected web of life that supports the growth of all the countless individual species.
If one invasive species were to grow to fast and take over everything else it would eventually run out of food or end up suffocating in its own waste. That's why diversity supports biological growth – animals breathe out carbon dioxide as waste and plants take it in as food and produce oxygen as waste which animals take in as food.
Think of a cancer cell. A cancer cell is a cell in our body that's just like other cells except for one thing. Healthy cells are programmed to stop dividing after a time, which means that eventually they will die. If not for the sacrifice of healthy cells the body would not survive long. But a cancerous cell keeps multiplying and making millions of copies of itself without end.
And all this cancer cell growth consumes valuable nourishment and creates excessive waste products, both of which puts stress on the body's organ systems. At some point this excessive growth destroys the functioning of the organ systems and the body dies.
Economic growth is analogous to biological growth. Here's how Herman Daly and Joshua Farley define it in their book, Ecological Economics: “We define growth as an increase in throughput, which is the flow of natural resources from the environment, through the economy, and back to the environment as waste. It is a quantitative increase in the physical dimensions of the economy and/or the waste stream produced by the economy.”
Economic growth cannot continue indefinitely because, like a cancer, the consumption of too much resources and the production of too much waste will eventually over-stress living systems and cause breakdown of ecosystem support, which will then compromise human survival.
There is no question that economic growth has pulled human society out of mere surviving and into a world of comfort and abundance. But growth has become a secular religion. Instead of seeing it as a tool that may be close to reaching the end of its useful life, we have ended up worshipping it in a reckless and unquestioning manner.
Our task today is to transform a one-way economic trap into a sustainable system that supports human development. Right now, in the developed world, we are producing more and more stuff, but not necessarily improving human life. We need to learn how to increase the meaning and quality of life without increasing material throughput.
In the old days, when a person was diagnosed with cancer, his doctor would often lie about it in order to spare his patient's suffering mental anguish. In those days, there weren't many useful treatments available.
In some ways we are in an analogous situation with regard to economic growth. Politicians and economists are denying there's a problem with unlimited growth because they haven't got the guts to try alternative solutions. Just as there are now plenty of chemotherapy treatments for cancer, there are solutions to economic growth for those who have the imagination and courage to try.
That's where variety or biodiversity comes in – because what is one creature's waste is always food for another. Everything is connected. Living things are never isolated, but are always part of what we call “ecosystems”.
When people think of a jungle, they often think of competition of many creatures eating each other up in a race for survival. But actually, a jungle is made up of a huge diversity of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria – that, although partly competing , on the whole are cooperating with each other to form a vast interconnected web of life that supports the growth of all the countless individual species.
If one invasive species were to grow to fast and take over everything else it would eventually run out of food or end up suffocating in its own waste. That's why diversity supports biological growth – animals breathe out carbon dioxide as waste and plants take it in as food and produce oxygen as waste which animals take in as food.
Think of a cancer cell. A cancer cell is a cell in our body that's just like other cells except for one thing. Healthy cells are programmed to stop dividing after a time, which means that eventually they will die. If not for the sacrifice of healthy cells the body would not survive long. But a cancerous cell keeps multiplying and making millions of copies of itself without end.
And all this cancer cell growth consumes valuable nourishment and creates excessive waste products, both of which puts stress on the body's organ systems. At some point this excessive growth destroys the functioning of the organ systems and the body dies.
Economic growth is analogous to biological growth. Here's how Herman Daly and Joshua Farley define it in their book, Ecological Economics: “We define growth as an increase in throughput, which is the flow of natural resources from the environment, through the economy, and back to the environment as waste. It is a quantitative increase in the physical dimensions of the economy and/or the waste stream produced by the economy.”
Economic growth cannot continue indefinitely because, like a cancer, the consumption of too much resources and the production of too much waste will eventually over-stress living systems and cause breakdown of ecosystem support, which will then compromise human survival.
There is no question that economic growth has pulled human society out of mere surviving and into a world of comfort and abundance. But growth has become a secular religion. Instead of seeing it as a tool that may be close to reaching the end of its useful life, we have ended up worshipping it in a reckless and unquestioning manner.
Our task today is to transform a one-way economic trap into a sustainable system that supports human development. Right now, in the developed world, we are producing more and more stuff, but not necessarily improving human life. We need to learn how to increase the meaning and quality of life without increasing material throughput.
In the old days, when a person was diagnosed with cancer, his doctor would often lie about it in order to spare his patient's suffering mental anguish. In those days, there weren't many useful treatments available.
In some ways we are in an analogous situation with regard to economic growth. Politicians and economists are denying there's a problem with unlimited growth because they haven't got the guts to try alternative solutions. Just as there are now plenty of chemotherapy treatments for cancer, there are solutions to economic growth for those who have the imagination and courage to try.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
social marketing
How do we get people to lower their green house gas emissions? How do we get people to act more sustainably?
We can enact regulations that forbid excessive GHG emissions, like an anti-idling bylaw. But regulations are only as good as public compliance, and public compliance depends on people's attitudes.
We can tell people about the threat of global warming but we need to be careful. Because if we just pump them with information about how bad a situation will be without showing them that their actions can make a difference, they are more likely to ignore the information in self-defence.
If we perceive that we have some control over how to improve the problem then we are more likely to act. If we perceive that in concert with others we can make an impact we are also more likely to act. Information by itself is impersonal. People are strongly influenced by personal contact with other people.
People don't necessarily need to know more about global warming. They need to know how lowering their greenhouse gas emissions is easy to do and convenient. Any appeal to change has to be in the form of a quid pro quo – if people are going to make a sacrifice they have to feel like they are getting something in return. That's where Social Marketing comes in.
Good marketing creates a set of benefits for the customer. Commercial marketers study the habits, perceptions and attitudes of consumers to see how they can produce a product that will satisfy consumer wants.
In social marketing, the goal is to reduce bads and increase public goods by influencing public behaviour. Composting can reduce the amount of landfill and add fertility to gardens – but only if people are willing to do it. Buses can replace a lot of cars on the street and thereby reduce traffic congestion and lower emissions, but only if people actually take the bus.
Why do some people adopt sustainable activities and others do not? Those who do not act sustainably may do this out of ignorance, or because they perceive barriers to the sustainable activities, or because the benefits are higher for competing behaviours.
The fact is, people will always find attractive – behaviours that have high benefits and few barriers. But a benefit to one person may be a barrier to another. Benefits and barriers vary both over persons and over time.
If we don't know what the barriers to a desired behaviour are, then we cannot successfully influence people to change their behaviour. In order to influence people we need to understand what are the actual and the perceived barriers to that activity.
What behaviours do we want to promote? Reducing carbon dioxide emissions can be done by increasing the fuel efficiency of cars, reducing the use of cars, by insulating houses, and by increasing energy efficiency. For an example, let's look at reducing car use.
The behaviours we want to promote are taking the bus, walking, and riding a bicycle. Let's narrow it a bit more. What are the barriers and benefits associated with riding a bicycle? The barriers might be: the weather, seasons, self-image, lack of physical fitness, fear of traffic, riding is uncomfortable, don't have appropriate clothing, etc, What are the benefits of riding a bicycle? Self-image, it feels good, seeing more of the landscape, enjoying the good weather, getting fresh air, exercise, saving money, etc.
Who are we targeting? This is a very important question. We do not target people who do not want to ride a bicycle. We want to know which people are most likely to want to ride a bicycle and which people are most likely to change their behaviour in this direction. Teenagers? Young adults? Working people? Parents? Here's where field work is required. Surveys need to be done in order to target the correct audience.
Once you target the correct audience you need to gather facts on the ground. It's time to observe what people actually do; to compare how people should ideally do behaviour to what they actually do. What are the target audience's perceptions of barriers? What motivates them? What do they see as benefits? Then you want to determine what barriers would be easiest to lower and what benefits would be easiest to add. This requires more research.
Now we are getting up close and personal because this kind of information requires focus groups to get at the right details. Note that, when dealing with focus groups we would want the participants to be uninformed about any campaign for encouraging cycling because if they were informed beforehand they would not be representative. Here are some questions we might ask at this stage:
1.What makes it difficult to ride a bicycle?
2. What makes it easy to ride a bicycle?
3. What positives are associated with riding a bicycle?
4. What negatives are associated with riding a bicycle?
5. Who wants you to use a bicycle and how much do you care about their opinion?
6. Who doesn't want you to ride a bicycle and how much do you care about their opinion?
Once the more detailed information about barriers and benefits is acquired from the focus groups, a plan is devised and a pilot project is attempted with a small selected group. The pilot project is evaluated and then the plan is modified until it will work for the community as a whole.
Behaviour Change Tools
The diversity of barriers to an activity like bicycling mean that information alone won't get people to switch activities. Personal contact is the key to influencing people which is why most of the tools of social marketing involve direct social contact.
Communication - present information that is vivid, concrete, and personalized. It will more likely be noticed and remembered and have a lasting impact. Know your audience – their attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. To do this you need to gather evidence before you develop your message.
Have your message delivered by an individual or an organization that is seen as credible to your target audience.
Frame your message. Messages that emphasize losses which occur as a result of inactivity are consistantly more persuasive than messages that emphasize savings as a result of taking action.
Committment – Individuals who agree to a small initial request are far more likely to agree to a subsequent larger request. The act of committment subtly alters one's attitude. People have a strong internal pressure to behave consistantly. Example: During a blood drive, volunteers were told over the phone: “We'll count on seeing you then OK?” Just saying this made volunteers more likely to show up. Another example: Earth Hour – committing to turning off the lights for one hour.
Written committment is even more effective. Asking for permission to make the committment public leads to lasting change even if it isn't made public. Home visits, or when a service is provided, such as the delivery of a compost unit, are ideal opportunities to employ committment.
Existing volunteer groups like church groups and boy scouts can be effective in getting group committments or working door to door. We can ask people who commit to trying a new behaviour to ask others to commit. We can point out other sustainable behaviours that they are already involved in. The idea is that we are helping people to see themselves as environmentally concerned.
Committment must be voluntary. Do not ask a subject if they are not interested in the activity.
Prompts – are reminders to engage in action that we are already predisposed to do. We tend to forget to do things – we leave cloth shopping bags at home, we forget to shut off the car's engine when we are waiting, etc.. Prompts need to be noticable, self-explanatory, and in close proximity to targeted behaviour. Example: removable decals on dashboards to remind drivers to stop engines while waiting. Signs can be put in common waiting areas like school parking lots. Prompts should be used to encourage positive behaviours rather than to avoid negative behaviours.
Norms – People look to the behaviour of others around them to determine how they will behave. Start with people who want to do the target behaviour. Identify natural leaders. People are more likely to imitate or conform to a behaviour if they see someone they respect or look up to doing it.
Communicate to people the number of people in the community who are already doing the activity – eg., riding a bicycle to work.
Acting to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and acting sustainably are complex activities that transcend the kind of simple behaviour of switching brands of toothpaste, etc. that commercial advertising targets. That is why information campaigns, no matter how clever, are not usually effective. Social Marketing emphasizes techniques of observation and social contact that help form more long lasting and effective patterns of behaviour.
Bibliography
McKenzie-Mohr, Doug, and Smith, William, Fostering Sustainable Behaviour , New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island BC. c.1999
Bird, Tom, “Five Secrets of Social Marketing” Alternatives Journal, V 34, number 1, 2008.
We can enact regulations that forbid excessive GHG emissions, like an anti-idling bylaw. But regulations are only as good as public compliance, and public compliance depends on people's attitudes.
We can tell people about the threat of global warming but we need to be careful. Because if we just pump them with information about how bad a situation will be without showing them that their actions can make a difference, they are more likely to ignore the information in self-defence.
If we perceive that we have some control over how to improve the problem then we are more likely to act. If we perceive that in concert with others we can make an impact we are also more likely to act. Information by itself is impersonal. People are strongly influenced by personal contact with other people.
People don't necessarily need to know more about global warming. They need to know how lowering their greenhouse gas emissions is easy to do and convenient. Any appeal to change has to be in the form of a quid pro quo – if people are going to make a sacrifice they have to feel like they are getting something in return. That's where Social Marketing comes in.
Good marketing creates a set of benefits for the customer. Commercial marketers study the habits, perceptions and attitudes of consumers to see how they can produce a product that will satisfy consumer wants.
In social marketing, the goal is to reduce bads and increase public goods by influencing public behaviour. Composting can reduce the amount of landfill and add fertility to gardens – but only if people are willing to do it. Buses can replace a lot of cars on the street and thereby reduce traffic congestion and lower emissions, but only if people actually take the bus.
Why do some people adopt sustainable activities and others do not? Those who do not act sustainably may do this out of ignorance, or because they perceive barriers to the sustainable activities, or because the benefits are higher for competing behaviours.
The fact is, people will always find attractive – behaviours that have high benefits and few barriers. But a benefit to one person may be a barrier to another. Benefits and barriers vary both over persons and over time.
If we don't know what the barriers to a desired behaviour are, then we cannot successfully influence people to change their behaviour. In order to influence people we need to understand what are the actual and the perceived barriers to that activity.
What behaviours do we want to promote? Reducing carbon dioxide emissions can be done by increasing the fuel efficiency of cars, reducing the use of cars, by insulating houses, and by increasing energy efficiency. For an example, let's look at reducing car use.
The behaviours we want to promote are taking the bus, walking, and riding a bicycle. Let's narrow it a bit more. What are the barriers and benefits associated with riding a bicycle? The barriers might be: the weather, seasons, self-image, lack of physical fitness, fear of traffic, riding is uncomfortable, don't have appropriate clothing, etc, What are the benefits of riding a bicycle? Self-image, it feels good, seeing more of the landscape, enjoying the good weather, getting fresh air, exercise, saving money, etc.
Who are we targeting? This is a very important question. We do not target people who do not want to ride a bicycle. We want to know which people are most likely to want to ride a bicycle and which people are most likely to change their behaviour in this direction. Teenagers? Young adults? Working people? Parents? Here's where field work is required. Surveys need to be done in order to target the correct audience.
Once you target the correct audience you need to gather facts on the ground. It's time to observe what people actually do; to compare how people should ideally do behaviour to what they actually do. What are the target audience's perceptions of barriers? What motivates them? What do they see as benefits? Then you want to determine what barriers would be easiest to lower and what benefits would be easiest to add. This requires more research.
Now we are getting up close and personal because this kind of information requires focus groups to get at the right details. Note that, when dealing with focus groups we would want the participants to be uninformed about any campaign for encouraging cycling because if they were informed beforehand they would not be representative. Here are some questions we might ask at this stage:
1.What makes it difficult to ride a bicycle?
2. What makes it easy to ride a bicycle?
3. What positives are associated with riding a bicycle?
4. What negatives are associated with riding a bicycle?
5. Who wants you to use a bicycle and how much do you care about their opinion?
6. Who doesn't want you to ride a bicycle and how much do you care about their opinion?
Once the more detailed information about barriers and benefits is acquired from the focus groups, a plan is devised and a pilot project is attempted with a small selected group. The pilot project is evaluated and then the plan is modified until it will work for the community as a whole.
Behaviour Change Tools
The diversity of barriers to an activity like bicycling mean that information alone won't get people to switch activities. Personal contact is the key to influencing people which is why most of the tools of social marketing involve direct social contact.
Communication - present information that is vivid, concrete, and personalized. It will more likely be noticed and remembered and have a lasting impact. Know your audience – their attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. To do this you need to gather evidence before you develop your message.
Have your message delivered by an individual or an organization that is seen as credible to your target audience.
Frame your message. Messages that emphasize losses which occur as a result of inactivity are consistantly more persuasive than messages that emphasize savings as a result of taking action.
Committment – Individuals who agree to a small initial request are far more likely to agree to a subsequent larger request. The act of committment subtly alters one's attitude. People have a strong internal pressure to behave consistantly. Example: During a blood drive, volunteers were told over the phone: “We'll count on seeing you then OK?” Just saying this made volunteers more likely to show up. Another example: Earth Hour – committing to turning off the lights for one hour.
Written committment is even more effective. Asking for permission to make the committment public leads to lasting change even if it isn't made public. Home visits, or when a service is provided, such as the delivery of a compost unit, are ideal opportunities to employ committment.
Existing volunteer groups like church groups and boy scouts can be effective in getting group committments or working door to door. We can ask people who commit to trying a new behaviour to ask others to commit. We can point out other sustainable behaviours that they are already involved in. The idea is that we are helping people to see themselves as environmentally concerned.
Committment must be voluntary. Do not ask a subject if they are not interested in the activity.
Prompts – are reminders to engage in action that we are already predisposed to do. We tend to forget to do things – we leave cloth shopping bags at home, we forget to shut off the car's engine when we are waiting, etc.. Prompts need to be noticable, self-explanatory, and in close proximity to targeted behaviour. Example: removable decals on dashboards to remind drivers to stop engines while waiting. Signs can be put in common waiting areas like school parking lots. Prompts should be used to encourage positive behaviours rather than to avoid negative behaviours.
Norms – People look to the behaviour of others around them to determine how they will behave. Start with people who want to do the target behaviour. Identify natural leaders. People are more likely to imitate or conform to a behaviour if they see someone they respect or look up to doing it.
Communicate to people the number of people in the community who are already doing the activity – eg., riding a bicycle to work.
Acting to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and acting sustainably are complex activities that transcend the kind of simple behaviour of switching brands of toothpaste, etc. that commercial advertising targets. That is why information campaigns, no matter how clever, are not usually effective. Social Marketing emphasizes techniques of observation and social contact that help form more long lasting and effective patterns of behaviour.
Bibliography
McKenzie-Mohr, Doug, and Smith, William, Fostering Sustainable Behaviour , New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island BC. c.1999
Bird, Tom, “Five Secrets of Social Marketing” Alternatives Journal, V 34, number 1, 2008.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Beyond the laws of leadership
I've been reading a book by leadership guru John Maxwell, called
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. I'm impressed with Maxwell's
page-turning writing style and his simple pithy examples. "Leadership
ability is the lid that determines a person's level of effectiveness."
That's an eye-opening point he makes in his first chapter.
Another quote: "to add growth lead followers but to multiply
growth lead leaders." This one reminds me of what's behind the success of the Religious Right and the Christian mega-churches in the United States. Maxwell himself acknowledges his connection to Bill Hybels ,pastor of the hugely influential Willow Creek Community Church.
Outside Bill Hybels' office is a poster with the caption: "What is
our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?"
Every year Willow Creek Church hosts a leadership conference
which, in previous years, has featured Presidents: Jimmy Carter, Bill
Clinton, and George W. Bush as speakers.
Like the corporate goal of maximizing profits, the goal of the
Willow Creek Mega-church is to maximize the conversion of unbelievers. It has 13,000 member churches and a 50 million dollar state-of-the-art worship center that features the largest auditorium in the United States.
Hybels, in his book: "The Courageous Leader" says: "Leaders see the big picture and understand how to help others to find their place of
service within that picture." My problem with Bill Hybels is that he
is not thinking big enough. Just because you use words like "God" and
"Jesus" doesn't mean that your vision is big enough. It's simple – the
big picture is how are we going to survive, both as a civilization and
as a species. One of John Maxwell's quotes on leadership is apt here:
"Anyone can steer the ship but it takes a leader to chart the course."
Corporations, are required, by law, to be run solely in order to
make money for their stockholders. And they have become enormously successful to the point where the size of many corporations rivals that of the nation-state. Exxon-Mobil Corporation has an economy that's bigger than 180 countries. Many of these huge corporations,including Exxon, are corrupting governments so that they will
implement policies that further the corporation's own profit-making
goals. The problem is that, even though corporations are now as
powerful as nation states the rules of the game are fixed so that
these corporations assume no responsibility for future generations.
The problem of focussing on growth of any kind, is that it is
too narrow a focus. While corporations have grown bigger than many
states the environmental and human cost has become too high. Think about the fate of the Titanic. It was so big for its time that people thought it was unsinkable. But its captain couldn't see the iceberg in time to change the big ship's course and the Titanic went down.
When you don't see the bigger picture you aren't navigating,
you're steering blindly. By concentrating on growth, corporate leaders
have forgotten to look ahead at the consequences of their actions.
Making more money is great but as the Indians say: "When the rivers
stop flowing, and nothing can grow in the soil you won't be able to
eat money."
Bill Hybels' favourite quote is "the local church is the hope of
the world." But where was the church when corporations were denying and delaying action on global warming? By prioritizing emotional issues like abortion and homosexuality the religious right has wasted its moral capital. And by mobilizing it's members to help elect the worst president in U.S. history for two terms of office it has essentially abdicated it's leadership and become a tool of the Republican party.
Mega-churches like Willow Creek may be exemplary at churning out leaders but if those leaders don't see what's coming then it's more a case of the blind leading the blind.
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. I'm impressed with Maxwell's
page-turning writing style and his simple pithy examples. "Leadership
ability is the lid that determines a person's level of effectiveness."
That's an eye-opening point he makes in his first chapter.
Another quote: "to add growth lead followers but to multiply
growth lead leaders." This one reminds me of what's behind the success of the Religious Right and the Christian mega-churches in the United States. Maxwell himself acknowledges his connection to Bill Hybels ,pastor of the hugely influential Willow Creek Community Church.
Outside Bill Hybels' office is a poster with the caption: "What is
our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?"
Every year Willow Creek Church hosts a leadership conference
which, in previous years, has featured Presidents: Jimmy Carter, Bill
Clinton, and George W. Bush as speakers.
Like the corporate goal of maximizing profits, the goal of the
Willow Creek Mega-church is to maximize the conversion of unbelievers. It has 13,000 member churches and a 50 million dollar state-of-the-art worship center that features the largest auditorium in the United States.
Hybels, in his book: "The Courageous Leader" says: "Leaders see the big picture and understand how to help others to find their place of
service within that picture." My problem with Bill Hybels is that he
is not thinking big enough. Just because you use words like "God" and
"Jesus" doesn't mean that your vision is big enough. It's simple – the
big picture is how are we going to survive, both as a civilization and
as a species. One of John Maxwell's quotes on leadership is apt here:
"Anyone can steer the ship but it takes a leader to chart the course."
Corporations, are required, by law, to be run solely in order to
make money for their stockholders. And they have become enormously successful to the point where the size of many corporations rivals that of the nation-state. Exxon-Mobil Corporation has an economy that's bigger than 180 countries. Many of these huge corporations,including Exxon, are corrupting governments so that they will
implement policies that further the corporation's own profit-making
goals. The problem is that, even though corporations are now as
powerful as nation states the rules of the game are fixed so that
these corporations assume no responsibility for future generations.
The problem of focussing on growth of any kind, is that it is
too narrow a focus. While corporations have grown bigger than many
states the environmental and human cost has become too high. Think about the fate of the Titanic. It was so big for its time that people thought it was unsinkable. But its captain couldn't see the iceberg in time to change the big ship's course and the Titanic went down.
When you don't see the bigger picture you aren't navigating,
you're steering blindly. By concentrating on growth, corporate leaders
have forgotten to look ahead at the consequences of their actions.
Making more money is great but as the Indians say: "When the rivers
stop flowing, and nothing can grow in the soil you won't be able to
eat money."
Bill Hybels' favourite quote is "the local church is the hope of
the world." But where was the church when corporations were denying and delaying action on global warming? By prioritizing emotional issues like abortion and homosexuality the religious right has wasted its moral capital. And by mobilizing it's members to help elect the worst president in U.S. history for two terms of office it has essentially abdicated it's leadership and become a tool of the Republican party.
Mega-churches like Willow Creek may be exemplary at churning out leaders but if those leaders don't see what's coming then it's more a case of the blind leading the blind.
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