Could a well-run social marketing campaign encourage enough people to work together to conserve water that it could  dent the drought that has put Atlanta’s golf courses and Georgia’s wildlife at such odds?  I believe so, and here are my back-of-the-envelope calculations to back that up:

According to the Atlanta Water Shortage blog, the federales are draining Lake Lanier to the tune of a billion gallons per day, more or less. 

A well-run campaign to perusade hotel guests to reuse their towels conserves 72,000 gallons of water per hotel per year, more or less.

Finally, according to the Google, there are 84,691 hotels in the state of Georgia, more or less.

Assuming those numbers are all somewhere close to accurate, that means if every hotel in Georgia ran a successful campaign to encourage guest to be responsible and conserve water by reusing their towels, it would save six billion gallons of water per year. That’s six days of outflow from the beleagured Lake Lanier. For good measure, it would save a bunch of energy and prevent a bunch of pollution, too.

Of course, we can’t make the drought go away with this penny-ante conservation, but six more days of water in the lake would be nothing to sneeze at.

Everyday citizens are much more willing to be conscientious about little things like reusing their towels when they think that enough other people are doing it that it adds up to something meaningful. Hey, why be the only one to give up a fresh new towel?

Waiting for a plane to Reno where I will speak at the National Water Conference later this week, I came across this curious advertisement from The Nature Conservancy of Illinois for a website called Start One Conversation.  The ad warns that up to half of the planet’s people are facing an imminent water shortage and urges viewers to visit the website, because “Action starts when people talk.”

Sounds great to me! So I pulled pulled up that webpage and was treated to a beautifully designed, impecably branded, jaw-droppingly boring website. There’s no “conversation” here at all. Just a bunch of grim news about the state of the planet and chest-thumping about how great The Nature Conservancy is. If you post a comment, TNC staff will screen it before it appears, and I didn’t see any other visitors’ comments as I toured the site.

Somewhere along the way, the people who put this campaign together got so absorbed in what they wanted to say that they lost perspective on the two-way nature of a “converation.” I predict with great confidence that this site will flop, so let’s show the sponsors an example of how they could have done it:

In 2001, the South Puget Environmental Education Clearinghouse (SPEECH) in Olympia, Washington created a Yahoo! Group called Envirotalk. Does it have a slick graphic design? Nope. Does it have it’s own URL? Nope. Do the organizers panic if somebody disagrees with them about something? Nope. Does it have a lively conversation that keeps people coming back again and again? Oh yeah!

The conversation thrives because the groundrules are more inviting. The group owner moderates who can join — no spammers or eco-evil doers please — but once you’re in, all members are equal. Unless a member makes a real ass out of themselves, they can participate how they want. The result is a rewarding conversation where people feel they have a forum to voice their own views and hear the views of others without some back office staff person censoring everything. It’s INTERESTING.

So here’s my advice to The Nature Conservancy of Illinois: Loosen up. If you want a conversation, show some respect and trust for the views of the people you hope will join the discussion. The world will not end if somebody posts a contrary opinion on your website.

P.S: For more insights into how to create a successful online conversation, read my free report “A Network of Networks.”

No, it’s not John Stewart funny fake news, it’s scary fake news – click the image above to see National Guardsmen handing out bottled water in a drought-stricken Southern California of the not-so-distant future.  It’s an ad for an upcoming National Geographic Special on global warming. Social research suggests the producers have chosen their message well. As the chart below reveals, setting this up as a looming crisis makes the whole thing more believable.

(Click the chart to download the full poll, note how the reference to future generations causes the sense of urgency to spike. That’s why it’s a word that works!) 

And by depicting the rationing and lines for water, the prodicers convey how droughts and global warming can affect them, without hosing viewers down with a lot of hard-to-parse scientific jargon. So I’m confident this fake news story will do a good job building interest in the upcoming TV special. But will the TV special move us in the direction of solutions? 

That will depend on the degree to which the producers have gotten over the antiquated notion that “awareness = action” and use their airtime to address the concerns that really hold viewers back. “I’m not sure what to do.” “I don’t think my efforts amount to anything.” “I can’t solve this problem by myself.” “I don’t see anybody else doing their part,” etc… etc… 

We can’t move people past objections like this with scare tactics. Fear is a poor remedy for ignorance and lack of confidence. We have to help them out by showing them role models doing things they can do, and demonstrating that others are doing their part. We have to encourage them that we’ll all be working together and it’s not too late to make a difference.  It’s as important to prove to people that they can save money by conserving water and energy as it is prove that global warming is real.  

Thanks to Aqua Blog Maven over at Aquafornia for the tip! Feels great to be back in the blogging saddle.

Help a good conservationist through a tough time. Click below to donate to one of my reader’s medical bill fund.

I’m back at my computer after spending a week in the Caribbean goofing off, and I’m going through the thousand + email messages that stacked up in my absence.

Here are a few tidbits worth relaying:

National Forest Foundation “Collaboration Support Program” Grant Oppotunity
The National Forest Foundation, in partership with the Surdna Foundation, is distributing grants of up to $5,000 to nonprofit organizations under the auspices of its “Collaboration Support Program.” The notice specifically references both watershed management and community outreach and communications, so this has potential for you.

Grants are available only to formally established nonprofit organizations that can demonstrate their involvement in some kind of collaborative community project related to a national forest or grassland and the waters found there. The good news is that if you meet those very specific criteria, the program is otherwise very flexible — no matching funds are required and the grantee can use the funds for both projects and planning, and to hire consultants.

Applications are due 10/26. Click here to learn more about the Collaboration Support Program.

NOAA’s Chesapeake B-WET Grant Program
Better act fast if you want in on this action, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is soliciting proposals for environmental education projects in the Chesapeake Bay region. Applications are due on October 19 and can be for as much as $75,000, it seems. Click here to learn more.

Environmental Communication for Behavior Change.
Duke University’s Environmental Leadership Program will be running an online course on environmental “social marketing” from 1/15 to 2/24 — persuading everyday citizens to change their polluting and wasteful ways using commercial marketing techniques. The course will be lead by Brian Day, executive director of the North American Association for Environmental Education. I spoke on a panel once with him and he’s very good. I might sign up for this one myself.

Click here to learn more, or write del@nicholas.duke.edu

Clean Water for the Future-Will Georgia’s New Water Plan Provide Enough Clean Water for the Future?
That’s the title of a symposium that some Georgia conservation groups held last week to focus attention on the state’s forthcoming water plan. It’s chock full of water words that work! Good job, guys! This is a powerful way to set up the discussion.

Click here to see the agenda.