Positively green
Very interesting article by Peter Madden, chief executive of Forum for the Future in Gristmill. He asks whether the green narrative focuses too much on doom and gloom.
Recently in my organization, senior staff were sharing the first five minutes of the presentations we give externally, the bit where we explain sustainable development, climate change, and so on to a skeptical audience. The idea was to compare notes on our best presentation techniques. But guess what? We all started off on the negatives. We opened with different variants of “We’re in real trouble, guys.” We then mostly had some graphs, facts, and predictions showing how “we are going to be in even more trouble soon.” Sounds familiar?
He goes on to say
Of course we still need to scare people a bit, to grab the attention. But we risk paralyzing and de-motivating people if that is all we dwell on. When greens do paint visions of the future, they are often utopian, hippie, bucolic, and frankly unbelievable. They either seem to think that everyone will live in some variation of rural France, on a small-holding complete with small vineyard, goat, and squeaky bicycle.
This is a refrain that others have made but I take my hat off to Mike Ward on his campaign site for the Nelson mayoralty for succinctness.
If we can’t have at least as much fun saving the planet as we are having destroying it we just aren’t doing it right.
Good luck on the campaign Mike - hope I can make it over for the celebrations! Mike . . . . . Yes!