Out in Iowa’s Great Lakes country, somebody screwed up and now a bunch of fish are dying, slow, painful, needless deaths. PR pros call this a “teachable moment.” It’s a brief window of opportunity when the slow, incremental degradation of the natural world reveals itself to even casual observers. It’s some immediate, awful, tangible event that nobody wants to see happen again.
And “again” is the key word here. The thing to talk about at a teachable moment like this is the future. While the memory is fresh, your fellow citizens will be very receptive to your proposals if you point out how they will prevent this awful event from reoccurring. It’s a great time to use words like “planning ahead,” “balance,” “investment,” and of course, “future generations.”
But that memory won’t stay fresh for long, so think carefully about whether you want to use your teachable moment to push for a positive solution — or make sure someone gets what they’ve got coming to them.
Fish kills are one kind of teachable moment. Floods are another. Dam failures are another.
What else in our world could we consider a teachable moment?
Hat tip to Darryl Halling for taking this graphic shot and letting me use it. He’s a member of the Iowa Great Lakes Yahoo! group, a terrific group of clean water activists.
I dish out the critiques of others’ work pretty liberally on this here blog. But I’m ready to take it like a man, too. The Gulf Restoration Network is running a video contest, and I have prepared this little piece to submit. What do you think? How can I make it better?
The deadline for submissions is August 10, 2007. If you want to put something together yourself.
“Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.”
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
The author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t writing about nature protection and pollution control experts — but she might as well have been. We pump out so much bad news, that we have to continuously crank up the alarm level to get the attention of our ever-more desensitized fellow citizens. Now there’s plenty of bad news that we have to deal with, but it is simply a lack of communications savvy that causes us to try so often to shock citizens into action with bad news, and so seldom to provide direction on what they can do, reassure them that others are doing their part, and encourage them that together we can make a difference.
If you want evidence of the consequences of this bad habit of ours, check out the latest episode of Popular Science, which rates marine biologist as the second worst career in science. Why? Too depressing.
I believe the editors have got that flat wrong. I find my career in conservation to be very rewarding — and I have to pay for my own scuba diving. But we’ve only got ourselves to blame for the editors’ mistake. We’ve pumped out so much bad news in an effort to rouse people to action that we have ended up demoralizing and disempowering some people who would otherwise be sympathetic to us.
Hat tip to Mark at Blogfish for first noticing and blogging about the Popular Science article.
Need a little good news to close out your week? Here are four examples of people like you working together and successfully making a difference.
Michael over at the Water Wired blog has a great piece about the Owens River, of Cadillac Desert fame, once again flowing with clean water and teeming with wildlife.
A bunch of resource agencies and environmental groups, including a former employer of mine, announced a deal to demolish a dam on Maine’s Presumscott River. Future generations will enjoy a healthy river and the company will save money over the cost of putting in a fish ladder. Congrats to all on this fine work!
Montana State University in Bozeman produces a terrific video blog called “TERRA: The Nature of Our World.” I’m really jealous of their beautiful video and graphic design. Their new episode is called “Fish ands Cows” and profiles a Montana ranching community taking responsible steps to conserve wildlife along the Big Hole River, including the only surviving population of grayling in the lower 48 states. I sure wish more farmers felt this way.
Finally, Duane with the Friends of Accotink Creek reports that my home state of Virginia was among the top states participating in the International Coastal Cleanup. Virginia volunteers “picked up 151,432 pounds of litter, and collected very valuable data too!” Good job, Virginians. Now that you’ve made an emotional investment in clean and attractive beaches for your family to enjoy, why not adopt some responsible habits to reduce pollution and waste?
More Water Words That Work next week!
