Jack Stern from Ocean Champions wrote an interesting post on the Shifting Baselines blog about the frustrations of trying to mass mobilize citizens to pressure Congress to do right by the ocean. He said:

This to me is our biggest problem in getting people activated on ocean issues: they have a hard time seeing or feeling most of the destruction that happens in the oceans, and so no matter how much we squawk about it, it’s a “problem for the future.”

Ponder that quote for a minute. He’s right about two things, but still misses an important point. It’s true that everyday citizens have a hard time personally relating to problems in the open ocean. It’s also true that they tend to view environmental problems of every kind as manifesting themselves in the future rather than today.

But like many of us, Jack seems to believe that outrage leads to action, and that’s just not true. At least not by itself. Alarm is just one ingredient in the recipe for action on the part of everyday citizens.

“Now matter how much we sqawk,” most of the citizens who hear us lack the knowledge and confidence to act on the outrage we provoke unless we tell them what they can do. If we don’t paint a clear picture for how their actions make a difference, they won’t see it, and most won’t bother. And because they think their individual sacrifices are of little consequence, we need to tell them and demonstrate that others are doing their part and we are all working together towards a common goal.

And Americans’ tendency to think their individual efforts aren’t worth it is particularly pronounced when the necessary action is civic or political in nature. Check out this excerpt from Belden Russonello & Stewart’s landmark Communicating About Oceans: Results of a National Survey report. Note how citizens perceive that writing Congress is one of the least effective things they can do to protect the ocean.

You can shock people all you want, but unless you help people overcome the sense of futility about their actions, that outrage won’t get you much.

That’s why Secret to Success #4 is to both Warn and Encourage.

Thanks to Mark at Blogfish for the tip.

In a word, it’s the tense. Everyday citizens are quick to perceive bad news about the future as a warning and bad news about the past as whining. It’s a theme that winds its way through my entire collection of environmental social research.

Citizens are receptive to warnings about trends that affect future generations. They are interested in opportunities to make a difference to improve the world their children will live in. The future is a story of choices that face us, and we all want to make informed choices. Nature protection and pollution control issues framed in the future tense catch citizens’ attention and hold their interest.

History lessons have much less power to change minds and behavior. Pointing out past mistakes the community has made often comes across as whining, or puts people on the defensive. Nevertheless, we frequently want to educate people about the past before we discuss the future. And it’s usually a mistake.

This YouTube video has a typical outline for a communications piece produced by a nature protection or pollution control expert.

Anybody have any thoughts on how the filmmaker could have re-ordered the key points of this piece to make it stronger?

Are there any important points this filmmaker has omitted?

“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.

Here’s an utterly gripping two minute video that I downloaded from the Oceana website a while back. I tried to find it again today to link to the original but I couldn’t. It cuts between footage of the wonders of the ocean with horrific shots of bottom trawling — you can see the nets literally scouring the ocean floor, transforming a rich environment into what looks like the sahara desert underwater.

The footage is so powerful. I really wish they had… well… finished the video. The filmmakers seem to have the assumption that if they reveal the shocking truth, the viewers will figure out for themselves how to act on those feelings constructively. A few will. But for most, it’ll just be another briefly disturbing image they encounter and forget that day.

Everyday citizens perceive the world as a fucked up place. It’s hard to make your problem seem bigger than all the others. So make your problem stand out from the rest by empowering people to solve it: Encourage them they can make a difference, tell them what they can do, remind them that others are pitching in.

In a future post, I’ll show a video prepared by another cause that provides some shocking information, and then follows up with a clear call to action. In the meantime, after watching the video, if you have thoughts on how to improve it, please share!