Good communication strategy 7

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1. 

   Delay And Deny Posted 6:45 am
   26 Mar 2007

   100% instead of 33%
   
   It all comes down to ego.
   If environmentalists want to parade around wearing big buttons that say "See, I Told You So" as the Earth melts down into oblivion, then go ahead, and use Global Warming scare tactics.
   If you actually want to get 100% of the people on board doing what has to be done, then you have to give them a pocketbook reason.   Every time you can tell someone that they're saving a dollar by doing something green, you win.   And everyone, Liberal, Conservative, Moderate, wants to save a dollar.
   
   The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services. http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com

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2. 

   Jason D Scorse Posted 6:48 am
   26 Mar 2007

   I agree David, but...as you well know, the energy security card can get tricky very quickly since coal is probably the quickest and easiest way for us to reduce our reliance on foreign oil- at least on the supply side. The demand side is still the winner but doesn't seem to get through to people.
   
   I teach environmental economics and blog at http://www.voicesofreason.info. I am a proud liberal, who stands on the shoulders of giants.

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3. 

   David Roberts Posted 7:04 am
   26 Mar 2007

   Which is to say,the national security narrative could play their way or it could play our way. Let's make sure it plays our way!
   
   www.grist.org

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4. 

   Lou Grinzo Posted 12:00 pm
   26 Mar 2007

   The cloudI'm always saying on my site and in presentations that there's a conceptual cloud of reasons that motivates people on energy + environmental issues.  Some want to use less energy simply to save money.  Some want to stop exporting money and adding to the US's trade imbalance.  Others are concerned about reducing GHG emissions or preparing for the advent of peak oil and peak natural gas or national security issues.
   In most cases the individual things in the cloud all point to the same conclusion: Use less fossil fuel through conservation and transitioning to alternatives.  
   As Jason pointed out, there can be a problem with coal as well as other nasty details, like what the heck do we do with the 55,000 metric tons (and growing) of nuclear waste in the US, etc.
   But there's enough common ground that it's possible to get people moving in the right direction.  Capturing mindshare and overcoming the paralysis of ignorance that most newbies experience is the big battle.

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5. 

   Rune Posted 2:35 pm
   26 Mar 2007

   Conservation makes sense but doesn't sellConservation is clearly the most important option right now.  The return on investment (in terms of dollars and energy saved) is much more certain and greater than the ROI on new energy development.  Moreover, given that renewable energy accounts for only a few percent of total energy consumption, even when hydro from dams with limited lives is included, conservation is much easier to scale up in a hurry.  (In other words, a mere 6% across the board savings in energy could save as much as a doubling of renewable energy could produce.)  Simply put, saving energy makes the most economic sense.
   Why, then, is renewable energy development getting almost all the buzz and support?  There are a couple of reasons that stand out to me.  First of all, most people are very resistant to anything that would cause them to change their lifestyle or give up convenience.  It has been estimated that people tend to weight anything they must give up or endure to gain new advantages about five times as heavily as the new advantages themselves.  That's a lot of inertia to overcome IF energy conservation measures actually involve lifestyle changes or convenience and comfort sacrifices, which many people assume to be true.  In fact, many energy saving measures actually improve convenience, reliability, and comfort.
   That leads to the second factor I have noticed.  People equate conservation with sacrifice and hardship.  Until there is a major campaign to educate people about the secondary benefits of, for instance, sealing and insulating buildings, energy conservation, as economically and practically sensible as it is, won't get off the ground.
   Part of what makes it difficult to educate people is that entrenched interests in the energy and manufacturing sectors believe they can make more money by continuing to use traditional energy sources and minimizing short term costs by not investing in energy conservation measures that may benefit the consumer (although they are often pretty good about finding ways to cut their own energy expenses).
   I think the manufacturers are probably right about people being disinclined to invest up front in energy conservation, especially when most people are not aware of the many benefits of doing so.  But more than that, most people subscribe to the fantasy that "they" will provide a techno fix that lets them use the same old crap they have always bought on the cheap with little or not extra cost for energy (or energy savings), especially when they hear that the government is subsidizing the whole affair--with money that appears to many to grow on trees, as with the hundreds of billions of dollars in military adventurism with no tax increases (so far).
   Meanwhile, big business is sopping up the gravy in the form of research and agriculture subsidies, relaxed pollution standards (which completely undermines emission reduction goals, among other important things), and insurance against loss and liability in the case of conventional energy development, nuclear in particular.  And, of course, that only fattens the war chests with which those businesses can continue to lobby and spin the public into believing that change means loss instead of security, economy, and comfort.
   I think the best we can do is to educate ourselves about established means of saving energy while improving other aspects of our lives, especially those that are backed by mainstream entities, such as the federal government's Home Performance with Energy Star program, and lend our voices to publicizing and supporting those ideas until energy conservation seems more attractive.  From there, the options for promoting conservation can grow by leaps and bounds--today, not ten or twenty years from now when "they" invent enormously complicated and investment intensive new technologies most people hope for and expect to save them.

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6. 

   Nucbuddy Posted 2:49 pm
   26 Mar 2007

   Deal-breakers vs comprehensive risk-assessmentLou Grinzo wrote: what [...] do we do with the 55,000 metric tons (and growing) of nuclear waste in the US
   That might be an important question if deal-breaker outlook (outcome-orientation) were compatible with comprehensive risk-management.
   This is dry-cask storage:
   
   library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/images/drycaskstorage.jpg
   It represents one of many easy spent-fuel-dispensation alternatives.
   Here is another alternative:
   
   phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html
   For nuclear waste, a simple, quick, and easy disposal method would be to convert the waste into a glass -- a technology that is well in hand -- and simply drop it into the ocean at random locations. No one can claim that we don't know how to do that! With this disposal, the waste produced by one power plant in one year would eventually cause an average total of 0.6 fatalities, spread out over many millions of years, by contaminating seafood. Incidentally, this disposal technique would do no harm to ocean ecology. In fact, if all the world's electricity were produced by nuclear power and all the waste generated for the next hundred years were dumped in the ocean, the radiation dose to sea animals would never be increased by as much as 1% above its present level from natural radioactivity.
   
   

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7. 

   step back Posted 6:47 pm
   26 Mar 2007

   Sticky BackfireThe "be afraid" meme is "sticky" because it activates the reptilian fear factor centers in the brain.
   But then again so does a message like: "Real men have nuke plants and nuke bombs to defend themselves against those who hate our freedoms."
   As others have mentioned above, these kinds of smear the fear messages can easily backfire.
   As for my example about "Real men", isn't that message being played today ... in Iran?

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