I heard philosopher A C Grayling quoted this weekend as saying that our current breakdown in trust in politics and capitalism 1.0 is “as if there is no longer any interchange between Bank and Monument.”
What he means by this London Underground analogy is that the link between society/the citizen and that of ‘the system’, or corporate-consumer-capitalism, has broken down. Of course this is just what we are saying in Citizen Renaissance (see for instance this on Trust) but its fascinating how many people are saying the same thing in slightly different ways.
Another interesting piece by Grayling in the New Scientist in February discussed the need to learn from commercial marketing and to find a new language for framing and communicating climate change. Grayling discusses MIT risk-perception specialist John Sterman and his idea of communicating not about ‘climate change’ but ‘the bathtub effect’. Like the Greenhouse Effect, it has a ring to it. And the way it uses the analogy of a bath with the taps running twice as fast as the bath can drain to describe the way we are overpowering the planets atmospheric balance is I think clever.
We badly need a new way to get through to people just how serious climate change is. As George Lakoff and Drew Westen illustrate so well, facts bounce off bullet-proof ‘frames’ no matter how many you fire off. Most people put ‘green’ and ‘environmentalist’ into a part of their brain which says ‘thats not me’ and so those who communicate about such issues will continue to be perceived as a fringe, special-interest obsessed out-group.
So I am going to think about using and promoting the ‘bathtub effect’ as well as other frames such as security, stability, safety, quality-of-life etc in the hope that we can engage and empower the citizens. Only then will politicians have the guts to do their job and reframe markets and norms to ensure we transition rapidly to a sustainable way of living.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Jules,
the problem will always be the data. While the bathtub analogy is neat and evocative, you still have to back it up with data. The maths are in the image loud and clear: “twice as fast”, so people will want to see the figures that back that up. Another problem is the time it takes to become conversant in the science of climate change. The Media has to present things in a particular format, one hopefully conducive to being read and enjoyed, and is most often written (necessarily it seems) by non-scientists. Climate change is a simple idea which has complex science behind it. In my experience of debating it, firm conclusions are impossible — the planet is huge, weather is unpredictable, nothing so terrible has happened that civilisation has been rocked to its core, etc. There is nowhere anyone can look — through a microscope, telescope or otherwise — that shows metaphorical water rushing into a metaphorical bath twice as fast as it can drain away. Unless the data shows this clearly. And then you have interpretation.
In short, I doubt finding the right metaphor is what lies between ignorance and wisdom. The changes you see and discuss here at Citizen Renaissance are multi-faceted and — I have begun to believe — unstoppable, bathtub effect or no. I’m an optimist who is not sure of anything except change. Change is the only constant. Can we wisely direct humanity’s future? I believe so. Will we? I hope so.
Keep up the good work old bean!
Toby
thanks toby
my next blog will respond to this good point.
I’m inclined to agree with Toby, but on different grounds. There have been dozens of attempts to revisualise the problem but they haven’t stuck yet, not because they fail, but because they succeed.
They all depict the size and depth of the problem accurately, but that endorses the logic that sees the individual as insignificant. “Aviation is only 3% of the UK’s emissions. If I give up flying it will only make an insignificant difference.”
For me the most potent activator is the timeline; we can’t hear what Tim Smit just called “the screams from the future” because the future is unimaginably far away. Even if those screams are only a generation or two away. That’s the distance we should seek to close.
Thanks William and Toby
Its worth checking out Drew Weston’s great book and Poltical Brain and his work here on framing and language around CC as its really helpful for thinking how we need to communicate to citizens http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/speaking-with-americans-a_b_205598.html
http://ecoamerica.net/press/media/090520/truths