The IPCC has 2.5 billion data points behind the last assessment – the fifth assessment. It is the most astounding problem statement that humanity has ever created…Extraordinary!
But you don’t solve a problem by repeating the problem over and over again to each other. You solve a problem by looking at the possibilities that are inherent in that problem.
Paul Hawken, Project Drawdown - University of Queensland, 2018
A whole lot of people in the world KNOW that climate change is an issue - so KNOWING THE PROBLEM is probably NOT the real problem.
For someone to take action on change, they need to:
Anyone working in public health knows that you've GOT to do more than fear messaging - they know (as Martin Seligman wrote in LEARNED HELPLESSNESS 30 years ago) that you've got to connect people with immediate action they can take today.
That's why today's anti-smoking ads always finish with a QUIT line number - because when you WANT to change you need to know HOW to change and WHERE change is already happening.
How many of the smokers who stand in groups outside cancer hospitals are there because they don't believe that "smoking causes lung cancer"?
The human mind does not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol.
Rory Sutherland, Alchemy
So it doesn't matter how many "threatening futures" you talk about - if you don't tell people what THEY can do that will make THEIR world better today, you're not going to get a lot of action. (That's particularly true when we've been told for decades that "the people have to tell the government to take action".)
Back in 2014, sustainability entrepreneur Paul Hawken decided to find out for himself. After years of asking, no one had been able to tell him what the commercial climate solutions actually were. So he started Project Drawdown on a shoestring, and recruited 70+ volunteer researchers from 22 countries. They catalogued the top commercial solutions, selecting only those that had independent, peer-reviewed data that could be modelled at a global level.
Their initial findings - 80 commercial solutions - were published in 2017 in DRAWDOWN: THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE PLAN EVER PROPOSED TO REVERSE GLOBAL WARMING. They've updated their list and their modelling regularly, and in 2022 they were up to 93 commercial solutions that offer savings of $80-$140 trillion as a ROI on their investment.
Hawken moved on from Project Drawdown to explore the solutions that individuals, communities, regions and SMEs were creating, and in 2021 he published REGENERATION: ENDING THE CLIMATE CRISIS IN ONE GENERATION. So far, the experts of Project Regeneration's Action Nexus have compiled nearly 100 action lists for individuals, communities, SMEs, regions and industries.
And in parallel, the world's innovators and entrepreneurs have ALSO been developing design solutions. So anyone in business can get involved in solutions from Cradle to Cradle Product Innovation to Doughnut Economics.
There are a whole range of contexts supporting Regenerative Business innovation, so go exploring for the one that works for you. If you're industry, it might be a Circular Economy hub. If you're community oriented, it might be the Doughnut Economics Action Lab.
I offer 1-on-1 Regenerative Thinking in Action coaching/mentoring programs - check out Think Act Regenerate for details.
(And why they're not seeing the business opportunities on offer)
There's an interesting piece of wisdom from Robert Cialdini, best selling author of Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion and Presuasion: a Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade)
"What's prominent becomes causal - even if it's not."
Robert Cialdini, Pre-suasion
(It also explains why - if you're ever interviewed by police on camera - you should sit side-on to the camera.)
Essentially, it says that if you make something central in an argument often enough then people will accept that it is causing what you're talking about - just because it's visible and repeated so often.
(In a police interview recording, if you're the person face-on in the frame, your perceived guilt is increased - just because you're the focus. It's human neurobiology.)
In the business sustainability space, this helps to explain why there is so MUCH belief in "government policy" and "reducing consumption" and "environment is an expensive compliance obligation" - when actually there is a rich smorgasbord of actionable, high-ROI solutions commercially available today.
The media has been reporting on the need for "government policy" and "reducing consumption" for decades. Authorities have been enforcing regulations for most of a century. Industry bodies have been talking about "efficiency" and "reporting" and "reduction".
In 2017, Project Drawdown's 70 independent researchers published the results of 4 years analysis and modelling. They identified 80 existing, commercial, no-government-required solutions for reversing global warming.
6 years on, Drawdown has now catalogued 93 commercial climate solutions scaling globally. In 2021, Project Regeneration started publishing climate solutions actions for individuals, communities, regions and SMEs. (They're up to about 70 lists.)
Global studies of Circular Economy savings indicate that industry has trillion dollar savings available globally today. (About
Yet most people are so programmed into "government action" that they're missing out on a whole lot of fun and a whole lot of impact.
And a surprising number of businesses - especially SME businesses - aren't aware of
"The biggest business opportunity in human history"
Dr Jonathan Foley, CEO Project Drawdown.
Check out our upcoming workshop on Regenerative Business Planning for SMEs, starting 22nd May 2023.
One key characteristic of our Inconvenient Species is our habit of using anger and blame to try and generate change around climate change.
This isn't surprising. Read a majority of many "mainstream" articles about anger, and you could be forgiven for thinking that anger is a useful force for change.
However, there's NOT a lot of actual, scientific evidence that supports this view. While our anger response is instinctive, it's actually hasn't been particularly useful for centuries in producing long term, sustainable, positive results.
"The ancient instinct to lash out when angry has evolved because on the wild and dangerous savanna where early man lived in small cliquey societies , a vengeful reputation may have been an advantage."
The Anger Fallacy, p. 70
We don't live as tribal hunter-gathers any more. Leading anger researchers today are validating what philosophers from both eastern and western cultures have taught for centuries: anger is NOT useful for achieving anything much that's positive and sustainable over time.
Feeling angry is one thing - it's part of being human. Faced with the cumulative human irrationalities that have resulted in global warming and climate change, feeling angry (and scared and sad and resentful) is pretty much inevitable.
BUT can you effectively use anger as a tool for creating positive, long lasting change in the world? That's where the evidence is lacking.
And there are things you could well miss out on if you're angry all the time...
There has been a lot written about "channeling anger" - but it isn't backed up by the research.
What anger motivates in the long term is victimhood and vengefulness - NOT learning, cooperation and sustainable, supported change.
There is no actual evidence that anger is useful in generating long term, positive change. Its processing costs outweigh its supposed "motivating power".
Yes, you will be angry - you are human, after all.
BUT once you understand the reason why you're angry is it helpful to STAY angry?
What evidence there is suggests that the processing costs are pretty high....
The state of anger compromises your thinking in a few ways :
The Anger Fallacy, p. 72
• It makes your thinking rigid and automatic .
• It distracts you and clogs up your random - access memory ( RAM ) .
• It makes you fixated on external change .
Neuroeconomists tell us that - since we are organic beings - we have a limited amount of processing capability. Anger uses up your time, energy and problem-solving space - and then wastes it as you stay angry and become angrier. Being angry fixates you ON being angry - when you could be solving problems instead
When you express anger , what you actually do is rehearse it , rehash it , go over it , remind yourself of all the details of what’s making you angry . This works you up . As you hear yourself advocate and proselytise , you tend to mount arguments , which simply reinforce what you already thought .
The Anger Fallacy, p. 17
When you're angry, you play the blame, shame and guilt game. That's an been an ongoing feature of human behaviour for centuries (and one leveraged extensively by social media in recent times).
But think about the last time that someone tried to motivate YOU by blaming and shaming YOU. Did you respond by agreeing with them and quickly, enthusiastically taking on their issue and acting on it? Really?
Blaming is a strategy aimed at getting others to take the burden of emotional and real work; that is, it’s a way to get out of having to do stuff... It makes you reliant on other people doing stuff for you. It makes you soft, lazy and unskilled.
The Anger Fallacy, p. 94
Getting angry with other people and playing the blame game takes away YOUR power to be part of the wealth of solutions already happening in the world today. (Which means you could well be missing out on some great business and career opportunities.)
Even if your anger gets you acquiescence - will it get you the results that you want to the level that you want them?
... expressing anger to weaker or more desperate opponents may make them concede more (because your stance will seem tougher), but they will also be more likely to deceive or conceal , they will resent you , and they will be less inclined to renegotiate with you in the future ...
The Anger Fallacy, p. 39
...expressing anger to more powerful opponents is always a bad idea : it will make them feel and express anger in return , and concede less ( or be less likely to settle a dispute )
So if you're expecting that shouting at others is going to deliver the climate solutions you want, have another think.
Good leadership is defined as:
"Managers get people to do what needs to be done. Leaders get people to want to do what needs to be done."
Warren Bennis
It's plain hard work using anger as an approach - it means you're pushing people to do something they don't care about or don't want to do.
...influencing another to do something is often magnitudes more work than problem-solving it yourself.
The Anger Fallacy, p. 94
And what are your chances of getting a result you will actually LIKE? When you push someone else to do something they don't want to do, mostly they do it:
Overall, anger turns out to be a tiring, uncomfortable, unproductive way to create change.
The approach that has been summed up in Stoic Philosophy and Zen Buddhism to Psychology - and practiced by Seneca, Gandhi and Martin Luther King - suggests that there is nothing you can do with anger (once you understand its cause) that you couldn't do more effectively using more positive emotions to create sustainable change.
A key enabler for moving beyond anger is to understand what we now know about how automatic human behaviour actually is. The emerging science tells us that our behaviour is mostly far more automatic than we would like to think.
The decisions we believe we’re making ‘ freely ’ are all in fact determined by a dense thicket of crisscrossing cogs and causes — biographical , physiological , cultural , psychological , neurological and environmental . They don’t come out of nowhere.
The Anger Fallacy, p. 177
We are incredibly complex creatures , entwined in incredibly complex situations , which makes our choices often seem baffling and unpredictable ; but we are nonetheless , ultimately , biological machines that obey the laws of physics just like everything else.
While it conflicts with 20th century ideas about "free will" and "choice" - this view of humans as actors in systems can make our intervention plans and strategies far more powerful.
If you're not angry, then you can get curious about the human systems in play and how you can leverage them for change.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller
The more you fight against the system, the more those in the system fight back.
The world's 10% (approximately) innovators and entrepreneurs have been building solutions for centuries. The first solar panels were installed in New York City in 1884 - and renewable energy is multiplying, sourced from sun, wind and waves. We have all the technology we need - the challenge is to use it.
If all your energy goes into fighting the status quo, how do you support (and benefit from) the renewable revolution? What opportunities DON'T you see because your Reticular Activating System is preoccupied with the problems of the status quo?
You can study the wealth of commercial climate solutions we already have, and explore the smorgasbord of new jobs being created as those solutions are scaled.
You can study the systems causing the behaviour - the pressures, the beliefs, the culture, the motivators. You can learn about both the physical production systems doing harm AND the human social systems around them. You can explore everything from Systems Thinking for Social Change to Paul Hawken's Project Regeneration.
You can explore for leverage points that can create shifts in those systems - without having to wait for "belief" and "agreements" and a time when "everybody is on the same page".
(And if there's one top skill for progressing your career and growing your business success, it's the capability to innovate human systems.)
If you're not using up valuable energy in rehashing anger, rehearsing your grievances and "shoulding" about what other people "ought" to be doing, then you can use your brain for problem-solving.
The most creative parts of your brain only operate when you're functioning well - you lose them when you're stressed, angry or anxious.
You can still be an activist - but when you ditch the blame and shame, you can be an intelligent activist working to create paths forward.
You can follow Buckminster Fuller's advice, and be part of "building a new system that makes the old system obsolete"...
You could:
This post draws heavily on ideas from the 2013 book The Anger Fallacy, by clinical psychologist Steven Laurent cognitive behavioural therapist and researcher Ross G Menzies.
It has elegantly put in to words many of my concerns over years of listening to passionate, well-intentioned (but ill-informed) environmental activists - confirming that we need to become smarter communicators.
Defaulting to the anger/blame/shame/guilt emotions used so toxically by social media platforms is unlikely to deliver the future we want.
The book is published by Australian Academic Press - and is well worth adding to your change-making toolset.
This blog is a work-in-progress, sparked by ongoing conversations with serious, concerned, committed citizens who want REAL climate action.
Again and again some key "everybody knows" assumptions come up - assumptions that (from my point of view) are as limiting as "the earth is the centre of the universe".
I see the world from the factory floor and the warehouse - not from the supermarket aisle. My view is the result of 30 years of problem solving in the world of industry.
While I was studying my first degree I had a summer job in a metalware factory - as a production line worker - making refrigerator shelves and electric hotplate elements.
A few years later I ended up back in manufacturing - as an analyst programmer for a pharmaceutical company making headache tablets and acne creams. Next move to a software house working with companies making everything from icecream to power tools.
You have a very different view of the world from the average consumer AND the average politician - especially when your job is to analyse systems.
First, you see the massive amounts of resources used to design, produce, ship, store and deliver the products and services we use every day.
Then you see the massive amounts of "waste" happening throughout the system - human effort, materials waste, energy waste.
And you see the massive disconnects and tensions between the human system elements, including conflicting goals between:
And you also get to see the massive energy that human systems expend to maintain their status quo.
(Try putting a computer on the desk of an inventory clerk who's spent 30 years using paper systems, or getting an accountant to write off the value of 10-year-old spare parts for a de-comissioned printing press.)
What I saw was:
So when you get hooked on "this environment thing" you don't think like a "normal"environmentalist.
Firstly, when you realise that the antiquated, 1-way supply chain that delivers our products and services actually delivers 99% resource waste, you stop believing that "the thing we need is for consumers to use less" or that "the thing we need is for governments to make better policy".
Whether it's 5 tonnes of mis-printed confectionery wrappers dumped to landfill at a packaging factory or the massive heat shimmer coming off the production line at a tomato cannery, you see the overwhelming reality of resource consumption.
When you understand the real creative thinking and problem solving power of the engineers that design and build the products and services you use every day, you stop believing that "the thing we need is government policy change".
When you look at the amazing ability of human entrepreneurs of the last three centuries to build everything from affordable motor cars, open source 3D printing to crowd-funded community energy coops, you stop believing "the solutions we need have to come from the top down".
If would be nice if humans were a rational, sensible, pragmatic species. It would be nice if we were in control of our thinking and our actions.
But we evolved as tribal hunter gatherers who succeeded by ganging together to share resources. Our focus was on surviving for the short term future, keeping the group together to enable that survival and conserving the scarce resources we managed to accumulate.
As we've come to understand ourselves better in recent decades, neuroscientists, psychologists, linguists, philosophers and even marketers have started to catalogue how our perceptions and behaviours have limited our results.
These are some of the ongoing human inconveniences I'm exploring. They're the ones that seem to blind good people to greater levels of opportunity and influence.
If you'd like to add to them, let me know.
After years of watching the creative ways that the human systems around me resisted (and sometimes accepted) innovation, I started studying it.
What I found was a growing knowledge base that rivals the "hard" technology revolution we see around us - the one that is re-inventing products, services and systems that we use every day.
Now we can access another powerful revolution - a revolution in understanding and working with human systems to deliver a whole new level of adaptation.
This revolution can give "citizen innovators" better tools for delivering substantive innovation DESPITE the self-conserving tendencies of the human systems we call "business" and "the economy".
“While we were finishing the book [Drawdown] I spoke with three of the best-known international climate change experts—professors and authors who have been leading this field for the past 25-30 years. I asked them to write down their top-5 solutions for global warming. It took them a long time.
Moreover: They were all wrong.
Their top solutions are not the top solutions according to the data of the leading institutions as we have researched those.
Here’s my point: We are 40 years into global warming. It is the most serious problem humanity has ever faced. We have created it and the authorities in the field cannot name the top-5 solutions. That’s an astonishing anthropological fact. There is no plan…” (emphasis added)
Paul Hawken in The Optimist Daily, 2018
Most problem experts on global warming are academics and scientists. - meteorologists, climatologists, botanists, hydrologists and the like. They know a lot about their chosen field and the politics within their academic silos - but how much do they know about the worlds of business, including manufacturing and distribution?
The multiple planetary boundaries we're challenging all have their roots in the 1-way mine/make/use/dump design thinking that industry inherited from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Academics and scientists often operate in very traditional organisations and specific silos. So they can sometimes have suprisingly mainstream "solutions" ideas collect from what "everybody knows" - thinking like:
So it's not surprising that they would automatically look to "the authorities" for action.
"We've got to get the people to tell the government to tell business that its alright to take action"
Famous environmental campaigner
Unfortunately, human perception automatically designates the focus of a message as the causal factor.
If "everyone knows" that the environment is a government responsibility, then many of our more traditionally-minded experts are all to likely to act from that mindset.
So what happens when you tell the average consumer or business person about the environment and the need for government action? They worry - and then get on with doing business as usual.
Who changes industrial design? Who delivers economic innovation at scale? Who designs, constructs and delivers the vast majority of the products and services we use every day?
Look at the smartphone in your pocket or bag and think about its history? Whose idea was it? Who paid the engineers who built the factories that manufacture them at scale?
To reverse the harm we've caused, we need to get our best and brightest business innovators scaling the design solutions of the last 40 years into practical, regenerative solutions. We need to accelerate smarter, more efficient, more profitable models like Circular Economy and Biomimcry and turn them into globally scaled industrial practices.
Government policy change isn't the only - or best - option for accelerating an industrial revolution.
I absolutely agree that governments can - when they choose - create supportive environments for sustainability innovation. I absolutely agree that government policies can be counter-productive (at least).
I know from 20 years of my own observation that there are many, many, many national, state, regional and local governments doing amazing things - and they have been doing them for decades.
Still, the most powerful, immediate leverage point for reversing global warming probably ISN'T voting for a government to make policy changes.
Vote, lobby AND go industrial...
One of the world's most sustainable businesses is Interface, and their approach has consistently been to "do well BY doing good". They take a strategic, longer term view - but they're about "good for the environment, good for the community AND good for our bottom line".
They have proven that strategic sustainability - like quality and safety in previous decades - is an innovation driver that offers trillions of dollars in business opportunity.
The Interface journey started when a series of events put sustainability front and centre in their CEO's head.
So arm yourself with information about the wealth of design solutions and the massive business opportunities. Then go out and start some solutions conversations in your local business community.
Think about who was behind the development, construction and commericalisation of :
Who drove the design and delivery work that made it a desirable consumer product?
The systems that deliver the products and services we use every day go back centuries. Their environmental impacts were multiplied and magnified by the Industrial Revolution. Then they were further accelerated through the 20th century.
Their primary problem is that they are fundamentally 1-way, mine/make/use/dump designs. Making them "more efficient" is like slowing down the speed of the car you're driving over a cliff.
To survive, you actually need to change direction. You need smarter, fairer safer systems - circular, renewable systems that restore and regenerate BY DESIGN. You need to change whole industry mindsets.
Industrial innovation at scale isn't typically delivered by democratic national governments.
Western democratic governments aren't "in charge" of the design of industry. They can set policies and - to a certain extent - regulate what business does.
Who is the primary force in designing, building and delivering the majority of products and services you consume every day?
Who directly briefs the engineers , designers and technologists who work out how to provide us with transport, clothes, energy and communications?
Research and development may be done in laboratories and think tanks using government funding . However, scaling a product or service for a national or global market is primarily done by canny business innovators.
These innovators are at all levels. They can be an entrepreneurial head of a global manufacturing corporation; the owner of a family construction business; or a collective of citizen entrepreneurs delivering a renewable energy coop.
It's surprising how few climate "experts" seem to know this - but we do. According to one analysis, simply by scaling 80 existing, commercial, no-government-required solutions we could be carbon negative by 2050.
This is what Paul Hawken found when he was preparing to release the first Drawdown report on reversing global warming in 2017:
“While we were finishing the book I spoke with three of the best-known international climate change experts—professors and authors who have been leading this field for the past 25-30 years. I asked them to write down their top 5 solutions for global warming. It took them a long time.
Moreover: They were all wrong. Their top solutions are not the top solutions according to the data of the leading institutions as we have researched those.Here’s my point: We are 40 years into global warming. It is the most serious problem humanity has ever faced. We have created it and the authorities in the field cannot name the top-5 solutions. That’s an astonishing anthropological fact. There is no plan…” (emphasis added)
Paul Hawken in The Optimist Daily
The problem experts don't know the answers. If they did they may still not have the supply chain smarts to turn good technology into great products and services.
It seems likely that the most powerful place you could campaign for climate action is inside an entrepreneur's head.
You can still march on climate strikes.
You can still use your vote to send a political message.
You can still reduce your meat intake and your car miles.
And when you've done those things you can do more!
You can learn about the existing, actionable solutions that are being collected under titles like Circular Economy and Regenerative Business.
AND you can do more than protest, vote and eat more veggies - you can take the best solutions to work and use them to build your career (or business)!
Find out more at my sister website Balance3.
Deer are hunted by lions and wolves. Great white sharks hunt tuna and seals - and in turn are hunted by killer whales.
Over the millenia, humans have learned to form packs and defeat external predators. We no longer (mostly) fear rhinos, tigers or wolves.
There are still predators we need to be wary of - and learn to deal with. They are the psychopaths, sociopaths and Machiavellis of our own species.
"We have met the enemy and he is us"
Walt Kelly (Pogo)
Machiavelli - a name associated with manipulation mastery - wrote The Prince in the 15th century German writer and politican Ludwig von Rochauhe coined the term "realpolitik " in the 19th century.
Centuries earlier, The Art of War was published, a military text with a focus on:
how to outsmart one's opponent without actually having to engage in physical battle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War
Today, Machiavellism has been identified as one of the "dark triad" of personality traits along side psychopathy and narcissim. The "dark triad" concept originated in 2002 and in 2013 further work began to better understand the patterns behind inter-personal harm.
These are three key sub-clinical personality traits that are involved in anti-social behaviour.
All three are socially malevolent, with tendencies towards being emotionally cold, duplicitous and aggressive. All of them are callous and manipulative and don't care about a) the "truth" or b) "other people" and there is a lot of overlap between them.
However understanding their patterns and distinctions is useful.
Psychopathy adds impulsivity and a tendency towards anti-social, reckless behaviour to the basic traits of callousness and duplicity. It is thought to have an inherited genetic component.
Narcissism has the additional aspects of entitlement and grandiosity, with a tendency to over confidence.
Machiavellianism is a habit of manipulation, a cynical world view, a lack of trust and willingness to exploit others to achieve personal goals at all costs. It's more pragmatic, strategic and rationalised pattern than psychopathy.
Machiavellians can control their impulses to do harm. They are flexible, adaptable and work strategically to get what they want.
The three traits overlap - but are distinct.
Machiavellism is the most prevalent pattern in the general population, though not in its extreme form (1-3%). However, at sub-clinical levels estimates are than something under 10% of the population has these tendencies (which is a disturbingly high number).
"A narcissist will insult you, a psychopath will hit you, a Machiavellian will invade you."
Dr Daniel Jones
Machiavellism is thought to develop through life experiences. As a learned pattern, it can can create a cynical, duplicitous environment where more individuals become Machiavellis. Work is ongoing towards understanding how to reverse Machiavellian patterns.
In the meantime - if you want to increase your success as a sustainability change agent - it's worth studying how Machiavellianism works - that way you will:
It would be really easy to externalise and start labelling and blaming individuals - but part of the human race's ability to develop comes because of them.
They are immune to "everybody knows" and "doing the right thing". So "six drops of the essence of Machiavelli" probably contributed to developments from cosmology (when the Catholic Church was burning astronomers for blasphemy) to personal computers (the world will never need more than 12 computers - IBM).
It's also worth remembering that humans are social chameleons - with brains hard-wired to blend into whatever environment we enter - from the kindergarten playground to back room party politics.
So if our objective is to create "an economy that is regenerative and restorative - by design" then it's probably going to be useful to:
Radio National's program All in the Mind discussed this human reality in a program called Machiavellianism, and the 'dark triad' of personality in June 2020 and prompted my further exploration and this article.
It included reference to science communication website on Machiavellian personality traits.
And for a more humourous twist:
Most of us, most of the time operate on "rules of thumb" - mental shortcuts that simplify complex decision-making processes.
These shortcuts are necessary in daily living because our brains have a limited energy supply and rational thinking is a high-energy, time-consuming process.
The brain runs on about 40 watts of power (a lightbulb!)
Greg Berns, Iconoclast
The idea that human beings take all relevant information into account all the time - making their decisions thoughtfully and rationally - is a piece of 20th century marketing fiction.
Over millennia, the human brain has evolved to rely on quick decision-making tools in a fast-moving and uncertain world and in many contexts those heuristics lead us to make better decisions than exact calculations would do.
Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics
But our heuristics aren't ALWAYS helpful - and they can often get a) dated OR b) over-ridden by our unconscious biases.
Combine this limited energy supply with millenia of evolution as tribal hunter-gatherers - being hunted ourselves by bigger, more dangerous predators - and it's not surprising that we act first, automatically avoid "risk"- and think later.
Part of our biological inheritance is a pre-disposition towards anxiety and risk aversion - because those of us who worried that the rustle in the long grass was a sabertooth tiger lived longer.
So, by default, we worry far more about what we could lose today than what we might enjoy or suffer tomorrow. Our decision-making is NOT always logical - just count the smokers gathered outside any hospital.
Future existential threat does NOT change human behaviour!
Paul Hawken, founder of Project Drawdown
There are 6 social heuristics that influence our behaviour, according to psychologist and bestselling author Robert Cialdini. They happen automatically and can strongly influence
(See an introductory video on Cialdini's influencing principles here)
Any time we face a complex problem, our response is heavily influenced by what's happened in the lead up to our response.
This is another piece of wisdom from Robert Cialdini, explained in his recent book Pre-suasion.
Extensive research has demonstrated that the "frame" that you create before you put your case, request or offer is probably MORE important than what you actually pitch. (Video summary here.)
Pre-suasion provides a wealth of insight. One that's particularly useful is:
What's focal is perceived as causal.
Robert Cialdini, Pre-suasion
If every message you're presented with on global warming bemoans the lack of government action then guess what? Despite the evidence of:
The chances are you're never going to think through issues like:
Framing is powerful - and can be compellingly mis-directing. (If you don't know about it, you're probably being trapped by it.)
That's the current human operating system.
It's probably less than ideal for our complex, post-industrial operating environment.
We probably don't have time to do some miracle upgrade.
AND we want a better future - a cleaner, smarter, fairer safer future.
How could you capitalise on what we now know about human neuroeconomics, heuristics, framing and cognition?
How could you work smarter in reversing the urgent environmental and social issues that degenerative 20th century systems have created?
Firstly, how will you apply this awareness to check whether your own heuristics are working for you?
If you want climate action, a regenerative "Doughnut" economy and fairer society then what are you prepared to learn to do differently?
What could you apply from what we know about perception and influencing to get more action with less effort, frustration and despair?
(Is it ethical? Ethics is about HOW you do what you do and HOW you align your actions with your values. Any powerful tool can be used or abused. What you can be absolutely sure of is that you're surrounded by human beings - who operate heuristically. So someone's heuristics - intentional or not - are always at play.)
This ABC Hot Mess Podcast on Human Frailties is an interesting discussion with an Australian perspective.
Andrew O’Keeffe’s book Hardwired Humans could be an useful introduction to help you think about human wiring in the corporate world.
George Marshall's climate-specific book Don't Even Think About It is issue-specific analysis of why engaging on global warming is such a challenge.
I keep a list of some of the other tools, insights and understandings I find powerful here.
Fear and anxiety were great for human survival when we wandered the plains of Africa as hunter gatherers 20,000 years ago.
We needed to be afraid of the world around us - so we'd be ready to RUN or FIGHT when a rustle in the long grass turned out to be a saber tooth tiger.
Fear and anxiety have a place - and back then the body chemistry involved in them was balanced by physical activity. Running away from that tiger (or ganging up and killing it) burned off all the stress chemicals.
The psycho-social impacts were appropriate too - blame and shame kept the tribe together, story-telling cemented social bonds and spread wisdom (as well as juicy gossip).
Fear, anxiety, shame and blame WILL NOT HELP change the 21st century world we live in.
(You just need to look at the groups of smokers outside cancer hospitals to recognize that fear alone is not enough to change human behavior.)
Fear has been the methodology of the communication about climate change. You mix fear with doom and gloom and stir well with shame and guilt and you have apathy.
Paul Hawken, Founder of Project Drawdown https://www.optimistdaily.com/2018/12/solutions-thinking-climate-change/
(If fear REALLY changed human behavior, then 40+ years of warnings about looming, accelerating "environmental collapse" would have generated a whole lot more action.)
However scared you are about the future, IF you want to generate action instead of helplessness then don't JUST use fear.
Don't JUST talk about horrible futures and irresponsible governments and the need for policy change.
WHY?
Constant, unrelieved fear - fear without access to immediate personal action creates HELPLESSNESS. It shuts down our brains and primes our bodies to run, fight or hide.
AND when you add shame and blame and guilt to your message it gets even LESS effective.
Think about it....
When someone comes at you with accusations about being "greedy" or "stupid", isn't your first reaction "NO I'M NOT!!!" Regardless of how valid their point is, how likely are you to REALLY listen to what they're trying to tell you?
This is what the experts have to say about making a person feel helpless:
Tell them that their problem is:
Dr Martin Seligman, founder of Positive Psychology, researcher in Learned Helplessness
1) permanent;
2) pervasive; and
3) personal
Yes, we face massive environmental challenges. Yes they're multiplying and accelerating. Yes, we're late to action.
AND...
We have the technology to solve them.
AND...
Millions of people around the world are busy doing that.
There are scores of viable, scalable solutions that don't need "government policy change" in order to succeed - and the world's entrepreneurs are out there making them happen.
Much as it might feel good to complain about the people you think are guilty of inaction, it's worth thinking carefully about what you're saying and how you're saying it...
Is the WAY that you complain complain about a lack of government/ industry/ consumer action actually limiting the potential for that action?
When you loudly demand "national government action" - and especially when you complain about its absence - is this what you're implicitly telling people ?
It's a common message - AND IS IT ALSO SPREADING HELPLESSNESS?
So if the communication strategies that environmental campaigners have been repeating for 30+ years don't work, what do we do instead? Here are some starters:
If you're serious about solving global warming, ocean plastics or species loss - how much do you know about the solutions?
NOT the problem - but the SOLUTIONS!!!
(REMEMBER: Government policy change ISN'T a solution! It's just one channel - among many - for delivering solutions to the root cause issues.)
If you can't list the top 10 existing, scalable, evidence-based actions to reverse global warming, then how can you effectively "campaign for climate stability"?
So once you've picked your issue - whether it's global warming or ocean plastics - then get informed about the solutions.
(If it's global warming then download the latest Project Drawdown update - NOW!)
Professor Martin Seligman researched helplessness for years - and also how to overcome it. One of the outputs of years of teamwork (that led to Positive Psychology) came this ABCDE of helplessness-busting:
If you're a book junkie like me, then Seligman's classic Learned Optimism is a must-have reference. In the mean time, this summary of the ABCDE of helplessness-busting is a useful start.
Since (at least) the publication of The Limits to Growth in 1972, environmental campaigners have been pushing pretty much the same line:
"We've got to tell the people to tell the government to tell business to action on sustainability."
Various respected figures
Despite what they know about who and how smartphones, cars, social media and Internet business were commercialised at scale, they're still massively addicted to "government policy change".
The most powerful anti-smoking campaigns are the ones that start with fear and end with a call to action and immediate contact details for QUIT programs.
We're an Inconvenient Species - so if you MUST use fear, then make sure you finish with immediate, personal, beneficial ACTION.
For overwhelmed citizens, the movie 2040 is positive and accessible.
For anyone in industry - or with an entrepreneurial bent - the Project Drawdown list of 80 existing, commercial, no-government-required business and community development opportunities. These are all solutions that people can start action on immediately.
There are lots of other solutions, from systems-level design such as The Doughnut Economy and The Circular Economy to detailed product/process design approaches such as Cradle to Cradle Product Innovation.
You can explore further Regenerative Business solutions at Balance3.com.au
For millennia, people lived relatively short lives in small groups, learned from quick feedback (put your hand in the fire: it gets burned) and had little impact on their wider surroundings.
Raworth, Kate. Doughnut Economics (p. 112). Random House. Kindle Edition.
Hence our brains evolved to cope with the near, the short term and the responsive, while expecting incremental, linear change.
Putting our own needs for comfort, prestige and connection ahead of social and ecosystem well-being isn't something unique to Industrial Era humanity. We've probably been doing it since we moved into cities and away from the evidence of our impact.
Pliny the Elder was complaining about destruction in the 1st century AD - a time when Romans pillaged shellfish beds to dye their clothes and "barbarian" communities to provide the slaves to build their cities.
When city buildings decided to get serious about water and energy conservation, they embedded in their buildings. They installed automatic doors and created airlocks. To conserve energy and water, they built in automated lighting and taps - controlled by sensors.
Long term sustainability isn't primarily going to be delivered by regulation and consumer frugality! (That will help - but the endgame is an intentional economy designed to regenerate ecosystems and communities - not "willpower".)
It's going to be delivered by regenerative design and systems upgrades. It's going to be delivered by Cradle to Cradle Product Innovation and Circular Economy supply chains and Doughnut Economics.
It's going to be delivered by biomimetic production techniques where renewable products are made at room temperature using renewable materials and renewable energy.
It's going to be delivered by a regenerative economy that operates WITHIN its planetary boundaries.
"Engineers can't NOT solve problems - it's in our nature"
Kathleen Davies, Ekkremon.com.au
The world's best and brightest innovators, biologists, engineers, architects, yachters and chemists have been busy for decades on smarter, cleaner, safer systems.
Radical industrialists have been turning their concepts into proven, profitable products and (increasingly) services.
Real sustainability will be the result of systems that are more than "sustainable" - systems that are actively regenerative.
We know how to do it today - and the world's innovative businesses are working on it.
The Natural Step first defined an industrial system that would respect the ecosystems. In a sustainable society, nature is NOT subject to:
Principles for products, services and businesses that regenerate by design were further described in Natural Capitalism in 1999:
Doughnut Economics integrates economics, design and systems, using 7 strategies:
"A bad system will beat a good person every time."
W. Edwards Deming, pioneer of continuous improvement
One of the reasons that our Inconvenient Species is so slow to respond to global warming has to do with the power of the systems we live and work within.
20th century thinking about human behaviour considered individuals as rational, consistent and relatively unchanging.
21st century thinking acknowledges that - overall - humans are heavily social creatures evolved to operate in groups.
Most of us, most of the time want to look good and not look bad - because we experience rejection in the pain centres of our brains.
(Myers-Briggs suggests at least 75% and Diffusion of Innovation suggests 85%)
This isn't just a hypothesis - it has been backed up by substantial and substantive neuropsychology research.
It also isn't "conniving" or "cowardly" - the physiology of our perception in group situations is neurologically wired to peer behaviour.
Outside of the research lab, this need further backed up by investigations into institutional abuse of children, the disabled and the elderly.
As Kate Raworth wrote recently in The Doughnut Economy, humans are more like octopus, with their behaviours and opinions changing to match their social settings.
Thanks to our neurodiversity we have a sprinkling of "under/non/anti social" individuals in our species - enough to see the world differently and design new solutions.
We have always had weirdos exploring "the whichness of the why" - from the flinty innovators who chipped the first stone spearheads to the 19th century's top-hatted balloon pioneers and to the 21st century's first biomimicry practitioners.
But while they can be world-changers, they are in the minority. Most of the people, most of the time, are heavily influenced by their immediate social contexts.
Einstein is said to have defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and expecting different results".
What do you do differently when you know that the majority of the human race meets their social needs FIRST most of the time?
In updating his initial work on influencing, Cialdini added a 7th principle of persuasion - Unity.
What creates most influence for the most people is being a tribe member.
"Sending out a message" isn't enough.
Overall, blame and guilt do great harm - they create resistance and denial in their targets as well as victim-hood in their user.
All too often, we aim them at the person in front of us - NOT the person in power.
Remeber how, in the early days of COVID-19, retail workers were attacked for situations totally outside their control?
Use the insights of Diffusion of Innovation - and especially of Crossing The Chasm
Aim to win over a powerful, innovative member of the Early Majority - then let their testimony work for you. A (gradually) increasing number of campaigners know the names "Ray Anderson" and "Interface" - but few have heard of Jim Hartzfeld.
Identify a need that is immediate and pressing. Find the most sustainable solution. Deliver your solution to that niche.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
- Richard Buckminster Fuller
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Start with the hypothesis that "the system is broken". Then you can work to understand and change the system.
Way too many environmental campaigns have been all about symptoms. It's understandable, human - and horrendously incomplete.
Yes, if someone is bleeding to death you apply a tourniquet. But then you look deeper. Bandaging a compound fracture without setting the bones and cleaning the wound is a recipe for gangrene, amputation and death.
Skill up in Systems Thinking and Human Behaviour - and apply them to delivering new systems that make the old ones obsolete.
Some starting points that I like are:
We're not in an environmental mess because we don't have better, smarter, safer options.
We've been building technology solutions for over a century. Solar panels have been around since the 1880s and EVs were already on the market in the early 1900s.
Powerful systems solutions and smarter implementation practices have been developing for decades - at least since the publication of The Limits to Growth in 1972.
The underlying reason we're in an environmental mess is that the self-protecting human systems we call “business” and “the economy” have been stuck in 19th century design thinking for way too long.
The same evolutionary biological forces that make mature forests stable ecosystems also impact human behaviour.
We don’t have time to upgrade the global human psyche.
And we don't have to.
Instead, if we leverage the leading edge of the expanding “soft tech” revolution, we can make the improvements we need to make with the human race we currently have.
Following quietly behind the Information Revolution is a whole new world of human understanding. Some examples include:
When we acknowledge what the human race is (and especially what it ISN'T) - then we can get on with the job, applying the wealth of solutions we already have.
It's time to take a good dose of Radical Acceptance, then get to work applying the best solutions from fields as disparate as Systems Thinking and Generative Innovation.
Within multiple disciplines - old and new - the tools exist that can help us make the human systems changes that will regenerate the ecosystems we need to survive.
You win anyway, regardless of how the future develops.
The skills that will shift us more rapidly to a smarter, safer, fairer Regenerative Economy will also enhance your relationships, your career and your working life.
Because the overall ability to get things done in human groups will help you thrive in any environment - from corporate jungle to rural outpost.
I've been building a library of resources on both Regenerative Business solutions and Innovation Delivery skills for years, and now I'm building this blog - An Inconvenient Species - to explore the human in the global warming equation further.
If you'd like to be part of making a world where our Inconvenient Species thrives along with the rest of nature, then sign up for updates to get ideas in your inbox.