Category Archives: Messaging

Falling Forward

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Political slogans are, almost of necessity, excruciatingly bland and generic, typically with a cap of whatever you’d call the Muzak’d version of patriotism.

I won’t spend time on the recent Republican convention slogan “We Built It,” particularly as it’s built, as it were, on several fallacies. The DNC’s slogan, too, was marvelously vague, with “Forward” replacing “Yes We Can.” It is, presumably, a good way to point out that the Republican Party’s direction, as hijacked by the Tea Party, is somewhere between sideways and backwards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This question of directionality came to mind as I was perusing Andy Revkin’s blog where, in the “about” sidebar he quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls. When the fruit is despatched, the leaf falls. The circuit of the waters is mere falling. The walking of man and all animals is a falling forward.

Revkin then concludes “The human trick in this century is to foster practices and policies that result in us FALLING FORWARD without falling down.”

Now I’m not sure how far the metaphor of nature falling and “always work[ing] by short ways” holds up. Many of nature’s systems are highly complex and, furthermore, often battle gravity. Before that fruit that Emerson refers to can fall, its tree has to grow. Before water can fall, it has to evaporate upward into the atmosphere.

But “falling forward” is still an apt way of looking at EcoOptimism. I proposed the term EcoOptimism because we seem to be in such a depressed and pessimistic state – a state of falling. The “trick,” as Revkin terms it, is to use that falling motion, the energy of that movement, to transport us in a better direction. In other words, don’t fall back.

Another way to put it is with the old and overused (and perhaps inaccurate) statement that the Chinese character for crisis is the same as the character for opportunity. Putting translation issues aside, the idea that opportunity can arise from crisis is a powerful one. Crises shock us and allow us to look for answers in places that complacency either kept us away from or blocked our view of. It could also be termed “throwing caution to the wind” (so long as we’re casting idioms about), but I prefer to think of it in terms of seeing things that were not visible before.

Perhaps even more significantly, crises can jolt us into questioning our assumptions. I stress this questioning process with my design students – and I hope to write about it some more. Bringing the point back to EcoOptimism, it can involve wondering about the things that we take for granted and asking whether these things really are our values. How, for instance, did single-family suburban homes become the “American way of life?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A family in Pearland, Texas, 1993 with their belongings. Image from Material World: A Global Family Portrait.

(In the post “The Story of Change/Changing the Story,” I wrote “The irony of the vaunted ‘American way of life’ of commuting from detached houses in suburbia is that it was created by exactly the kind of government intervention and social policy that conservatives now decry. Without tax deductions for mortgages and without the massive investment in highways and bridges (accompanied by disinvestment in mass transit), the great suburban exodus would not have occurred.” How were we unwittingly maneuvered into thinking that a lifestyle of car commuting, child ferrying and lawn mowing is what we yearn for?)

The thesis of EcoOptimism is that we can solve our interdependent crises and end up in a better place. It doesn’t say there won’t be areas of painful changes such as industries that no longer make sense, but there will be greater new ones to take their place. And if we do this right, the new jobs will be more satisfying and healthier.

I don’t mean to imply one-size-fits-all solutions here. I fully realize, for instance, that my love of urban living is not everyone’s cup of tea. But let’s look at our choices clearly rather than through the lens of, if I may borrow a term usually applied differently, the nanny state. Some complain that the government has become a nanny state in which it tells us what’s best for us. (Wear your seat belt, don’t drink too much sugary soda, don’t do this or that or you’ll get a ticket.) But that assumes that we live the way we do now by our own unmanipulated choice. And that simply ain’t true.

The subtitle of EcoOptimism is “Finding the Future We Want.” It has meaning, for me, on at least two levels. The first is that we shouldn’t let our future be determined by default. We have the unique ability to change things, to play an active role in events.

It also, though, means we shouldn’t let our future be determined by forces or groups that don’t necessarily have our best interests in mind. In today’s politicorporate (dang, I thought I’d just created a new term, but Google says otherwise) reality, what that translates into is whether those with deep pockets will maneuver us (again) in directions in their favor. Because, you see, we are indeed falling. What we haven’t determined is whether we will fall martial arts style, guiding the momentum of the fall so that instead of injuring ourselves, we roll out into an advantageous position.

Damn, I think I just used a sports metaphor.

Why doesn’t environmentalism bridge the political divide?

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No one expected to hear anything about the environment or climate disruption at the Republican convention. So it has been no surprise that the words climate or carbon or, say, endocrine disruptors are not even footnotes, let alone headliners. (Note: I wrote this before Romney’s spectacularly ill-received joke about Obama’s promising to stop rising sea levels.)

Nor am I holding my breath in anticipation of their resurgence at the Democratic convention. In a way, that makes the whole topic non-partisan: neither party is talking about it. The Republicans have given the issue such a pariah-like image that even the formerly supportive Dems have been cowed into believing it’s a non-starter politically. Of course, that isn’t actually the case and I wrote recently about how this political strategy may not be accurate.

The evolution of environmentalism from a grass roots populist movement to being cast as anti-jobs and anti-capitalism has been well documented. (Less frequently noted is that environmentalism used to be a Republican platform, dating back at least to the days of Teddy Roosevelt.) Lost in this is the observation that environmentalism is really a partisan issue only in the eyes of the corporate interests who fear (often incorrectly) that they are threatened and in the mouths of the candidates who perceive those interests as the voice of the populace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Republican Teddy Roosevelt was famously taken camping in Yosemite by John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and father of preservationism. Though Roosevelt later sided more with conservationists, who advocated “wise use” of resources rather than the stricter approach of preservation, there’s no doubt that his tenure as president established the validity of government’s role in environmental issues.(Photo source: Library of Congress via Wikipedia)

But a basic tenet of EcoOptimism is that environmentalism and the economy are not at odds, that the portrayal of the issues as a tradeoff of one for the other is not only a false dilemma, but is just flat out false.

Rhetoric, as has been widely acknowledged, has taken the place of fact and discussion — a carbon tax is patently bad because it is both a tax and, we are repeatedly told, an anti-jobs extremist idea. (Repetition of something often enough, even if it’s your own words, makes it true, right?) Never mind that there are demonstrable ways to set up carbon pricing that are capitalist in nature (no pun intended), that will increase employment and diminish the deficit, perhaps while being “revenue neutral.”

The description revenue-neutral , combined with the benefits just listed, should make carbon pricing a point of non-partisan agreement, especially when it has the potential to include a reduction in income taxes and perhaps a simplification of our ridiculously convoluted tax code (which often includes “perverse incentives” that favor investments in unenvironmental activities and essentially lead to a double whammy of reduced government income and increased government expenses to repair the damages incurred). But “revenue-neutral” is not going to make anyone’s top ten bumper sticker slogans. How else can we bring intelligent discussion to the topic?

If environmental initiatives can help fix our current economic woes and can do that utilizing capitalist approaches, why aren’t they political no-brainers? (Yeah, I know, “political no-brainers” opens the door to all kinds of comments. I’ll resist.)

The painfully obvious answer, of course, is that it would, in the short term, upset the corporate apple carts, especially those belonging to fossil fuel interests. And since money is now equated with free speech, theirs is now the free-est.

There are numerous companies, both existing and startup as well as those not yet envisioned, that would benefit from such a correction to the free market. (In a true free market, one of the necessary conditions is accurate pricing and, when polluting or causing harm to others is free, that’s a strong indication that the free market isn’t working as it should. Even conservative icons Adam Smith and Milton Friedman would agree with that.) Unfortunately those companies do not have the financial or political clout to outshout the “big boys.”

Nor do non-profits. Even if they did have equivalent resources, they are characterized as fringe groups interested only in destroying American enterprise. Which brings us right back to the point that doing this will not destroy the economy or capitalism or “American exceptionalism.”  More probably it will save and improve all of these things.

Yes, I know Citizens United made this imbalance of power far worse. But still, there has to be a way (I’m drawing here upon the optimism part of EcoOptimism) to convey such a broadly appealing “morning in America” message. What’s the path to convincing a climate change skeptic that carbon pricing (staying on that one topic for a moment) is a good – or great – idea even if it turns out all those scientists are wrong. How does a win-win solution become tagged as a loser?

I’m writing this the day after Paul Ryan’s nomination acceptance speech, a speech which has been condemned even by Fox News columnists for being built on lies. So I may be somewhat less than my EcoOptimistic self in wondering how distortions (“you didn’t build that”) and lies can be overcome. Or how, when protesters are kept so far from the candidates that their (less funded) viewpoints can’t be seen or heard, voices can be equaled.

Simply shouting louder is not the answer when you don’t have the stage. Environmentalists certainly didn’t have any part of the stage at the Republican convention and aren’t likely to have much of one at the upcoming Democratic version. Corporate Republicans built their own stage in the form of Fox News. Democrats have occasionally tried (did anyone ever watch Current TV or listen to Air America?), but they’ve lacked the corporate “free speech” money.

They’ve also lacked the unrelenting, single-minded, take-no-prisoners clarity of messaging, truthful or otherwise, that Fox and Republicans hew to with a military-like oneness. Should Dems and environmentalists copy that method? That’s probably a rhetorical question given the nature of the participants.

If the only viable path, given the lack of regulation on campaign contribution and lobbying, is to seek corporate money and major contributors, why don’t we  seek to show the signatures behind that money that we’re not their enemy, that the pursuit of win-win environmental/ecological solutions will be in their interests. Even oil companies, if they remain focused on that one energy source, will find themselves dead-ended in the long run. (We’ll save the issue of short-term financial tunnel-vision for another time.)

All the Patagonias and Ben and Jerry’s in the country can’t come close to the financial clout of an AT&T or a Murdoch or the misleadingly named US Chamber of Commerce. Does our only route involve gaining their ears (and wallets)? I don’t want to think so – I want to believe rational thinking and persuasion can win the day on their own — but it certainly seems as if we need to alter the political equation. And surely there are ways to convince the entrenched interests that the path they are pursuing is not, in fact, in their interest. It’s not a false choice between capitalism and the environment. It’s an opportunity – one that we pass up at the risk of losing everything and that we take to open the way to a world in which individuals, nations and capitalism can flourish. The downsides and disruptions, though there, are temporary, short-term and relatively small while the rewards are huge and continuing.

How wise is political wisdom?

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In a post a few weeks ago, I discussed why environmentalism is not a topic in the election, and why the public doesn’t seem interested. I wrote: “… the public lack of support is, in part, a Catch-22. Politicians don’t put it on their agendas because they are told people aren’t interested. Then people think it’s not important because no one is talking about it. This is what’s known as a positive feedback loop. Too bad its effect isn’t so positive.” (Is it bad form to be quoting myself already?)

Well, it turns out there is somewhat more positive news out there. A new study from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication investigated what the effect would be on a candidacy if the candidate were to come out in support of climate initiatives. Surprisingly, their finding is voters do want to hear views on global warming and that such a stand would benefit candidates more than it would hurt them. Even more surprising, Republican candidates would not lose votes overall. The study found:

  • A majority of all registered voters (55%) say they will consider candidates’ views on global warming when deciding how to vote.
  • Among these climate change issue voters, large majorities believe global warming is happening and support action by the U.S. to reduce global warming, even if it has economic costs.
  • Independents lean toward “climate action” and look more like Democrats than Republicans on the issue.
  • A pro-climate action position wins votes among Democrats and Independents, and has little negative impact with Republican voters.
  • These patterns are found nationally and among ten swing states.

So, what’s going on? Why the difference between the common political “wisdom” and these findings? “80 percent support action to reduce global warming, even if it has economic costs,” the study reports, but that’s different from what we hear elsewhere, and way far different from what that political wisdom believes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, it’s a cheap shot and I lifted the image from a Tee Shirt site.

The explanation, of course, lies in where the money and influence come from. No new news there. And it still leaves us with the question of how to balance that undue influence. Maybe with better slogans? That might be a start at least.

There’s a lot of other interesting info within that Yale study. One that particularly grabbed me was this chart:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though the title reads like something only a policy wonk would be interested in, its implications are significant. Among other conclusions, it says that more than half of Republicans (and of course higher percentages of Dems and Independents) believe that oil companies should be responsible for hidden costs. In my post “Where’s the (true cost) in beef?” I discussed “true costs” and externalities, both of which are similar to “hidden costs.”

Why is this significant? The largest component of hidden costs or externalities in the oil industry, even when spills are included, is climate disruption. The largest causal factor there is carbon emissions.  And what’s the simplest way to tie carbon emissions to the hidden costs of climate disruption? Carbon pricing.

According to that chart, somewhere around 60% – 65% of voters support true costing of oil. Stands to reason, then, they should support carbon pricing. Yet mention of any kind of carbon pricing, whether it’s called a carbon tax or cap-and-dividend, falls into the black hole of politics.

It’s a disconnect, obviously. “We like this idea,” polls indicate, but not when you call it something else. Which brings us right back to the issue of communication and EcoOptimism. A lot of people have been concluding lately that rational or scientific explanations and arguments do not work in the public sphere. With that in mind, I’m very curious to read the new book Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s written not by a semiologist or a political flack, but by the head of ClimateProgress and claims to “reveal the secrets of the world’s greatest and most memorable communicators.” If a climate wonk like Romm can help us find ways to more effectively get “the word” out, then we may have solved a significant part of that disconnect, and be better able to make the case for EcoOptimism.

If the medium is the message, is the bumper sticker the medium?

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Earlier this year, I attended a non-eco event that necessitated a longish subway ride. My reading material for the ride (one of the great advantages of not driving) was Tim Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth. Having since completed reading it, my copy is now littered with Post-it notes.

A friend attending the event looked at the book under my arm and asked, somewhat aghast, “why would you want prosperity without growth?” It took me a few seconds to grasp that that she thought the book was advocating financial prosperity over personal growth.

Easy enough to understand in retrospect, the reaction brings up one of the major stumbling blocks of EcoOptimism and of environmentalism generally: how do we not only convey the message, but put it in sound-biteable, appealing terms? Or put another way, where’s our version of Frank Luntz?

For better or worse, most environmentalists are liberals and it’s a truism that liberal goals don’t often translate well into catchy slogans. The earliest evidence of that I can remember was the Vietnam War era bumper sticker that read “America. Love it or leave it.” Why did we never see something like “America. Fix it or lose it?” Where’s the equivalent to “Guns don’t kill people. People do.” or “Drill, baby drill?”


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who’s got the better messaging?

I do recall — or perhaps I’m wishfully riffing on a Saturday Night Live line — bumper stickers that read “The Great Silent Majority is Neither.” (By the way, always fact check. When I looked up “the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire” just now, my dependency on pop culture was revealed. Turns out it’s attributed to some dude named Voltaire, not Mike Myers.)

 

 

 

 

 

One of the relatively rare examples of a really catchy green slogan, “Don’t Mess with Texas” began as a statewide anti-littering campaign, as recently pointed out in “Making Green More Macho.” So successful, in fact, that it’s been adopted and transformed for other purposes.

I’ve had a few, probably lame, attempts at channeling my inner sloganeer. Since the day I signed up for Facebook (you know, eons ago), my “political views” have read “Tax Pollution, Not People.” Personally, I thought it was pretty catchy. But I’m still waiting for it to catch on.

Can we/should we play the sound bite game? It’s tough to explain in a few short words why, for example, a growing GDP is probably not a good thing. Or why a carbon tax is. I think, though, it’s a game we can’t just opt out of, which means we have to play it better. (Please don’t make me use a sports metaphor.)

Enter your suggestions in the comments. And, by the way, as a non-car owner (I prefer the term car-free), I need to find a substitute for bumper stickers.

Bummer, Dude

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Buried in the penultimate paragraph of an Elizabeth Kolbert piece in the July 23rd New Yorker – which starts out with the somewhat enticing line “Corn sex is difficult” – is a comment that deserves its own New Yorker article. (I’ll take suggestions for its opening line so long as they’re not X-rated.)

Kolbert writes “Both President Obama and Mitt Romney have chosen to remain silent on the issue [of climate change], presumably because they see it as just too big a bummer.” That summation is perfect evidence of the need to communicate EcoOptimism. What if climate change, along with the rest of our environmental issues, was seen as a great and patriotic opportunity to improve the bedraggled economy and simultaneously further the “American Way of Life?”

What if political races were competitions to see who could propose the equivalent of a war effort, as we discussed here?  We had a taste of that in the 60s, when on the left, Robert Kennedy said

[Gross National Product] measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

And on the right, or what used to be the right, Richard Nixon said

“the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debts to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its water, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.”

Whether he really meant this and whether he should be considered an environmental hero is debatable. (Though he signed the Clean Air Act Extension, the Clean Water Act was passed only over his veto.) But the point is he felt it politically valuable to at least give lip service to environmentalism.

In 1992, many of us were overjoyed that Al Gore, having just that year authored Earth in the Balance, was elected with Bill Clinton. Finally we had a knowledgeable and devoted advocate in the White House. But the topic of environmentalism virtually disappeared from the campaign and from the eight years of the Clinton/Gore administration. Even more disappointing, Gore rarely spoke of environmental topics in his 2000 presidential campaign. He was advised not to because it wasn’t a popular enough topic – it was a bummer. It was only when he was safely freed from polls – or perhaps from pollsters – that An Inconvenient Truth resurrected his reputation with us greenies.

And, of course, Kolbert is correct; you won’t find a significant environmental statement from either of the current presidential candidates. It was the Santa Barbara oil spill that, in part, prompted the 1972 Clean Water Act. No such advocacy or leadership emerged out of the Gulf of Mexico spill.

The usual explanation for this is that the environment is a low priority in the public’s list compared to the economy, the war and health. This raises a couple of topics. The first is that the public lack of support is, in part, a Catch-22. Politicians don’t put it on their agendas because they are told people aren’t interested. Then people think it’s not important because no one is talking about it. This is what’s known as a positive feedback loop. Too bad its effect isn’t so positive.

But what if the environment was seen as integrally tied to our other, more highly prioritized issues? That a solution to the Great Recession is tuning our economy – our consumption and materialism – to reflect what things actually cost and what things actually benefit us. That diminished expenses in the military and on health care would directly result from renewable energy and energy efficiency.

In response to my recent post Bouncing Back, a friend wrote “Without a carbon tax, you’re in fantasyland.” He’s probably right, but this doesn’t address how we get there. The source problem, I think, is not that we don’t have carbon pricing (I’d settle, by the way, for cap and dividend), but that carbon pricing is seen as an evil, a punishment, and a drag on the economy. THAT is the picture we need to change, and it’s what EcoOptimism is about.

The Story of Change/Changing the Story

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In the realm of happy coincidences, “The Story of Change,” the newest project from the folks who first brought us “The Story of Stuff,” was released the day after we launched the EcoOptimism blog.

For those who haven’t watched “The Story of Stuff,” I heartily recommend the twenty minute explanation of how our consumerist world works. You may find it a bit simplistic or a bit overbearing, but you won’t find it overly complicated. Or wrong. And you may come out a different type of person, what the narrator Annie Leonard calls a citizen rather than a consumer.


The “hedonic treadmill” illustrated in The Story of Stuff.

Upcoming posts will focus more on issues of consumerism and materialism. But “The Story of Change,” the newer video by Leonard, provides an excuse for me to explain a bit more what some of the goals of EcoOptimism are about.

Actually, let’s start with what it’s not about. Though I’m sure there will be exceptions, in general we’re not concentrating here on the bad news and the guilt. You can find that in plenty of places elsewhere. Rather, EcoOptimism looks more, well, optimistically and positively at the great win-win-win possibilities. Win #1 here is the economy. Win #2 is the environment and win #3 (never mind the order) is us, in the form of bettered, happier lives. And most significantly, these are not in opposition to each other, they are complementary. Down with the false dichotomy! (OK, so it’s not the catchiest of slogans.)

The main point of “The Story of Change” is in how change occurs, and the fact is it doesn’t just occur; it is made to occur. By people. In groups and individually. Leonard’s goal is to rally us and to show the various ways we can help make it occur by being investigators, communicators, builders, resisters, nurturers, and networkers.


From The Story of Change

EcoOptimism is a little of all those things, but mostly a communicator. Leonard observes that the path to change may not be clear, and she concludes “The Story of Change” with a quote from Martin Luther King: “Faith is taking the first step even though you don’t see the whole staircase.” But we architects want to design things and I keep asking what that staircase looks like. What does that combined ecological-economic future look and feel like?

A growing number of folks are talking about what’s needed. They use terms like carbon-pricing, steady state economy, degrowth and externalities (and part of what we’re doing here is taking the jargon out of the picture, especially where the jargon works against the objective). EcoOptimism discusses a lot of these topics, but where I hope it will be different is in helping to visualize – to virtually experience in advance – what life in this win-win-win world can be.

Because that, I think, is where the case can be made and the argument won. An economist can go on and on about why we need carbon or congestion pricing, but unless that scenario viscerally grabs us, it’s so much verbiage. A planner can lament suburban sprawl, but so long as suburbia and cars are still seen as the idyllic American lifestyle, fighting it is going to be an uphill, probably unwinnable, battle.


The irony of the vaunted “American way of life” of commuting from detached houses in suburbia is that it was created by exactly the kind of government intervention and social policy that conservatives now decry. Without tax deductions for mortgages and without the massive investment in highways and bridges (accompanied by disinvestment in mass transit), the great suburban exodus would not have occurred. Top image from GM’s Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

It’s hard to comprehend that the Interstate Highway System was begun just 56 years ago. Before then, commuting was unheard of unless there happened to be a passenger rail line nearby. Note that per the map title, this massive program, which literally paved the way for suburban expansion, was promoted on national defense grounds. Image source: Wikipedia Commons

As great and important as “The Story of Change” is, for me it still falls short in the same way that so many of the current books on growth do. Prosperity Without Growth, The End of Growth, Plenitude, eearth, et. al. all make great cases for the “new economy,” but leave me wondering how we get from here to there. And what life “there” looks like. Even if we all became advocates as Annie Leonard suggests – and don’t get me wrong, I think we should – most people will need something they can positively relate to. The concept of the new economy is still too abstract and, for many, frightening in the changes it engenders. It will take images and stories that are far more palpable (as well as appealing) to shake generations of cultivated, and therefore arguably false, ideals. We need to find those images and stories, or create them where they don’t yet exist.

I’ve no doubt “the truth is out there.” What we need to do is bring it here.

What is EcoOptimism?

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A prime rule of blogging, I hear, is to keep your posts short. I’m about to start my blog by breaking that rule. I won’t do it again. I promise. Maybe. But please bear with me this once (or twice).

Who you calling an optimist?
I don’t want to go all Jimmy Carter on you, but we appear to face a malaise. And not only because I have a thing about cardigan sweaters. We seem, it’s tempting to say, to have fallen into a rut from which we can neither push nor pull ourselves forward, nor can we escape the muddy side walls by reversing out. We have a twin breakdown. Both our economic engine and our ecological source of sustenance have encountered roadblocks. And the problem, according to some, is that the detour signs point in opposite directions.

Ruts, breakdowns, roadblocks, detours. (Let’s not dwell on the observation that that entire opening paragraph is built on metaphors rooted in the automobile, which is arguably a proximate source of both our economic and environmental issues.) Pretty pessimistic terms.

No wonder. When you look at the statistics – whether you’re talking about growth, unemployment, climate change, income disparity, water scarcity, happiness, famine, or a valium-demanding number of other bars and graphs – the situation looks pretty dire, beyond the ability of any political leadership, let alone any individual, to solve. It leads, on the one hand, to the headline of a recent New York Times op-ed piece, Going Green But Getting Nowhere

On the other hand, maybe it’s all in our minds. Fed Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, said recently that it’s not really so bad and consumers are irrationally depressed. (Yeah, like the market is more rational?) It’s part of his job, though, to soothe the financial beasts and be the economic cheerleader-in-chief.

But that’s not how I meant to begin this blog
Let me start again, because a discussion on a topic called EcoOptimism really shouldn’t begin on a pessimistic note. I’ve no interest in adding to the end-of-the-world-is-nigh literature (though I do have a soft spot for post-apocalyptic B-movies). That admonishing approach – the one that also tells us that it’s all our fault for having no self-control or foresight or sense of something greater than our individual selves — strikes me as, at best, unhelpful. At worst, it’s counterproductive, alienating (if not angering) those who we need to enlist.

Perhaps more significantly, it points us away from solutions that, far from entailing economic collapse and far from endangering the “American way of life,” will bring us closer to goals and lifestyles that we (and countless philosophers, religious leaders, even politicians) have long sought.

And with those solutions we’ll create at least two things to hand down to our descendants: a better sense of who we are along with what it means to live a human life (sorry, those constitute one thing) and, well, a future. That’s because — at the risk of returning to the negativism I just spurned — if we screw up the environment, the main victim will be humanity. The Earth, in the long run, will be just fine. It just won’t include us, at least not in anything resembling our current forms of civilization or comfort.

There I go again. Pessimism. Hyperbole. (Actually, I’d dispute the latter accusation.) Stick to the topic, man.

Preface (the part that should have been above)
The amount of time, ink and electrons devoted to environmental topics has grown faster than a fertilizer-fed algae bloom. Aside from the daunting task of wading through the mountains of studies and opinions (and counter-opinions), an almost equal problem has been the chicken-little doom-and-gloom tone that seems to prevail, especially within the mass media. The result of this emphasis too often has meant that pursuing the solutions – when solutions are proposed — requires believing in a future, as-yet-intangible threat (sea levels will rise, oil will run out, but not today) and being willing to make undesirable changes to avoid it.

So, what is EcoOptimism?
The premise of EcoOptimism is that this is neither a viable nor productive approach, that most people do not respond well to being told they must change or have to make sacrifices. Sitting atop that is “green fatigue.” In my talks and teaching as well as general conversations, the topic of oversaturation, along with that fear that the problems are too big and therefore unsolvable, keeps dogging the potential for real solutions.

EcoOptimism takes a different approach, seeking to show how we can come out the other side of our concurrent ecological and economic crises (ECOoptimism, get it?) in a better place than we started; that not only will the planet be healthier, but we, as individuals, as families, as communities and as a species, can feel fulfilled and be more prosperous. It breaks the presumption, the false dichotomy, that environmentalism is at odds with our well-being and our happiness. It posits instead that we can eat our cake and have it, too.

OK, maybe that’s not the best way to put it, especially since we’re probably going to be talking about topics like the benefits of consuming less and of eating better.

It’s not enough to say there are solutions (though it’s a good start). We need solutions that are desirable; not solutions that are adopted only because they are necessary. I firmly believe there are futures that simultaneously save the environment that nurtures us while allowing, indeed helping, us to flourish as individuals and as the species homo sapiens.

EcoOptimism will attempt to cut through the negativism implied in so much of the environmental movement and explore the flip side – the opportunities that are presented by what appear to be constraints. The hope is that we’ll help enable a movement forward rather than backward, to a win-win solution in which both the environment and humanity are not only sustained, but can thrive.

And just how are we going to go about this save-the-world blog? (Yeah, yet another blog…)
The first answer is a hedge: I’m not totally sure yet. But I’m not supposed to say that.

A more useful answer is that I foresee this endeavor having two parts. One will be a vehicle (I just can’t get away from car-related terminology) to point out what others are doing and saying, along with a bit of soapbox-mounting. Not rabble-rousing so much as encouraging. (I guess I can’t really call it cheerleading since I accused Bernanke of doing just that.)

The other will be a conversation. We’re looking at questioning some of our fundamental assumptions (like ‘growth is good’) and, in some cases, creating new visions of our lives. No one person could have the breadth of knowledge to figure out the interwoven paths to and the implications for re-imagining the ways we work, live, eat, consume, travel and recreate. There are both too many subject areas involved and too many variations on the theme homo sapiens. (There are no one-size-fits-all solutions.) For that reason, EcoOptimism is looking to crowd-source our future(s). The optimist-in-chief (that’s me) will occasionally launch topics and then look to YOU for responses. We’re looking for input that is open-minded and constructive, future-oriented yet enticing in the present.

We seek a Future By Design, rather than a Future By Default.

About the optimist-in-chief:

David Bergman runs an architectural practice that emphasizes the transparent inclusion of sustainable/eco design principles. David is also the founder of Fire & Water, a designer/manufacturer of eco lighting. He is a LEED Accredited Professional and an adjunct assistant professor at Parsons the New School for Design. He is a frequent contributor to GreenHomeGuide.com. His book, Sustainable Design: A Critical Guide, was published in 2012 by Princeton Architectural Press.