“If we could just impress upon everybody the magnitude of the crisis, they would rise up and demand that something be done about it!” That seems to be the underlying premise of the film “For the Love of Water,” which made a splash at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. And every once a while, this premise holds up (see: An Inconvenient Truth).

But more often, this approach does not achieve the desired results, at least not outside a small group of educated, empowered treehugger types. Sometimes it even backfires. And here’s why: As the chart below reveals, everyday citizens pretty much already believe that the state of the planet is getting worse. And piling on the evidence and anecdotes to “prove” it, as the individuals featured in the film do in their interviews, often just ends up “proving” that the problem is too big to do anything about.

You can’t scare people into action unless they know what to do. The Water Words “method” anticipates this in two areas. Rule #4 is to “warn AND encourage” — point out the problem, but always emphasize that there are solutions and that the target audience is part of those solutions.

And when touting solutions, use the water words that work to “prove” to everday citizens that they can make a difference. Sometimes it means telling people what they can do, and using facts and figures to show just how consequential that act really is. And often, that means “proving” to people that they won’t be acting alone, that they’ll be working together with others, and the individual deeds will add up to something meaningful.

Hat tip to Ari for the link to the interview with the experts in the film.