Here’s a great example of both the behavior and the message that we should be focusing our efforts on encouraging. My friend Ari sent a personal recommendation to his buddy email list this week: Watch The 11th Hour, a movie about global warming.

Ari’s a serious environmentalist, he’s developing one Philadelphia’s most environmentally conscious buildings, creating a positive example for the city — but he’s not a policy or science geek like most Water Words readers. I have bolded the phrases in his message that jumped out at me:

fyi…. saw the movie The 11th Hour this evening…. you should see it if you haven’t already. similar to Gore’s Inconvenient Truth but more broad based, bigger picture, somewhat analogous to Quinn’s message. the movie ( http://wip.warnerbros.com/11thhour/) packs in a lot without striking too much fear. the style is similar to What the Bleep (individual interview clips from variety of people), from folks like stephen hawking, lester brown, paul hawken. 90% of the movie spent on how badly we’ve screwed up our world (and our place in it), the last 10% on the necessity to act now and that we perhaps have a chance to save our species from doom. (….the Earth has all the time in the world [to repair and rebound from imbalance], the human species does not)

American citizens are losing faith in the news media and dialing back on much of it they consume. As these trends continue, digital-word-of-mouth efforts like this will become increasingly important for all of us. That’s why I spend so much time trying to deconstruct this behavior, hoping to uncover tips for how nature protection and pollution control experts can encourage more of it.

We are entering an era where public opinion will be shaped by Ari and others like him who send messages to their friends and family, who pass them on to their friends and family via email, instant messenger, YouTube videos, blogs, and other personal digital channels. And in this new era, the influence of TV talking heads and newspaper pundits will be seriously diminished.

Also note that when communicating this way, Ari felt obliged to point out that there’s a lot more empowering content in this film than in Inconvenient Truth: Content that hits on themes like make difference, what you can do, and working together. Ari has not lost sight of the fact that everyday citizens need this encouragement to get involved.

Thanks for the note, Ari. And as for the rest of you, go see 11th Hour. I know I will.

Blogger’s Note: This is the third installment in the Writing to Be Read” series of guest posts by Eleanor Ely, editor of EPA’s The Volunteer Monitor, which facilitates the exchange of ideas, monitoring methods, and practical advice among volunteer environmental monitoring groups across the nation. Eleanor is a noted environmental communications speaker and trainer. Click here to contact her directly.

In the previous column I talked about “shoptalk” — specialized technical language, also known as jargon. “Bureaucratese” or “officialese” is another kind of language that’s sometimes called jargon. It seems unfortunate that the word “jargon” is used for both shoptalk and bureaucratese, since the two languages are almost the opposite of each other. Shoptalk is specific and succinct, whereas bureaucratic language is vague and wordy.

Orwell rewrites Ecclesiastes
It’s easy and fun to parody bureaucratic writing, which tends to convolution and pretentiousness. In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell skewered the academic version by taking a verse from Ecclesiastes and rendering it into what he called “modern English of the worst sort.”

The original:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Orwell’s version:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Environmental bureaucratese
Environmental agencies and organizations have their own brand of bureaucratic writing, with its own set of favorite words—develop, implement, identify, priority, collaboration, watershed, and so on. I’m not saying these words are “bad” per se, but they are mercilessly overworked. String a bunch of them together, sprinkle in some vague feel-good adjectives like “key” and “effective,” use the passive voice, and voila — environmental bureaucratese.

Inspired by Orwell, I took a different biblical passage (with a subject matter closer to an environmental project report) and imagined how an environmental agency bureaucrat might have written it:

Innovative and effective approaches for construction of a planetary body were developed and implemented. Insufficiency of light was identified as a priority concern. Post-project monitoring documented the attainment of appropriate light levels.*

The bureaucrat’s intent is to make projects sound more impressive. But the effect is the opposite — every project report sounds the same and it’s hard for a reader to figure out what happened, or why anyone should care.

______________
* “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep…. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good …” (Genesis 1:1-5; King James Version)

The Mott Foundation (disclaimer: A client of Beaconfire Consulting, my employer), a major charitable foundation, has decided to “stay the course” on its investments in freshwater protection and cleanup activities, despite some changes in focus elsewhere.

That’s great news for the Water Words That Work audience. Click here to read an interview with Sam Passmore, a program officer in Mott’s Conservation of Freshwater Ecosystems program area.

The Save Our Springs Alliance are the guardians of Austin’s Barton Springs, a giant spring-fed pool where families gather to swim, wade, escape the otherwise oppressive summer heat. The alliance’s recent animation provides another example for me to deconstruct about the importance of calling everday citizens’ attention to the future, and the mistake of trying to educate them about the past first.

This video highlights the threat of proposed irresponsible overdevelopment by a big corporation in a natural area that provides clean water to the springs. It has some strong messages, but a weak script overall. Check it out, and then read on.

Like many conservation communications pieces, the filmmakers have buried the lead, meaning they have put the punchline — a crisis, a crossroads — at the end, after a long long long story about the history of the springs. Since the future is always more interesting to everyday citizens than the past, the filmmakers wrote their script basically backwards. They should have raised questions about the future of Barton Springs, the families that enjoy it, and the wildlife that lives there from the opening scene, only later exploring the history of citizens’ prior efforts to make a difference to protect the site.

And it’s too bad, because for those who do elect to sit through the entire video, the payoff at the end is rewarding. I’m particularly fond of the line “I wish I knew the end of this story, but the people of Austin will write the rest.” And there’s a “Help save Barton Springs” link that probably went to some kind of action alert center back when this video was first launched.

Congrats to SOS Alliance for experimenting with animation to make their point. Good luck in your efforts to protect Barton Springs.