We Don't Need Environmental Awareness, We Need Connection
As a journalist writing on environmental and ethical matters, I believed, until very recently, that my job was to educate larger audiences about the climate, nature and pollution crisis.
I launched Ethical Disruption on Substack, and on other platforms, to communicate the crucial messaging in ways that perhaps hadn’t been tried before.
And then it hit me. I was just adding to the noise. Environmental awareness isn’t the problem. It hasn’t been the problem for a long time.
There is no lack of awareness of the planet’s nature, climate and pollution crisis. Thousands of environmentally-conscious groups, activists, charities, campaigns and businesses share beautifully-crafted, emotion-triggering content daily.
People watch, people share, and people genuinely feel something.
And then they go and vote for a party that will license that new oil field, block the solar farm, build the new road, destroy the ancient woodland and approve the new runway.
We are suffering a crisis of effective communication, and a crisis of connection.
Awareness Isn’t Bringing Change
Those thousands of environmental warriors I mentioned - they are enjoying meaningful victories all the time, and they do make a difference.
But they’re still not moving the overarching dial.
The Earth is getting warmer, the weather is becoming more unstable, the sea levels are rising, the ice is melting, wildlife is disappearing, more land is being given over to animal farming, the microplastics are everywhere outside and inside us…
There is no connection between what people feel when they watch a destructive wildfire or dying coral reef, and what they do when they stand in a booth at election time.
Sure, there are other considerations when people cast their vote. But is anything bigger than the climate, nature and pollution emergency? Not when you consider how many lives are, and will be affected.
That knowledge gap is where the crisis lives. It is too easy to blame the people receiving the message - the real failure lies in how the message is being delivered.
What Ethical Disruption is Here For
This is not designed to be another channel adding to the noise. Not any more. The crisis of nature, climate and pollution will not be resolved simply through more awareness. It will only improve when communication gets better at joining the dots between what people know and feel, and what they actually do.
I used to be encouraged by surveys revealing that, despite all the climate crisis-denying nonsense, more than 75% of people globally wanted action. I don’t feel confident with such statistics any longer. They don’t play out in reality.
We need to be honest about what isn’t working. About why extraordinary content produces likes and shares, but not change. We need to have serious conversations about this, now.
The Hardest Question
Another uncomfortable truth is this: even when people understand what is happening, many still do not change what they do.
This is not stupidity, and people calling out voters of Reform, Restore, Republicans, Conservatives, need to be smarter about this.
Yes, there is often a lack of education, but also, it is human nature. We are not wired for the kinds of threat we are warning about.
The human brain evolved to respond to what is immediate, visible, and personal. That’s where the dots need to be joined up.
There is also the role of denial - sticking our heads in the sand. Psychologists tell us we can hold only so much anxiety before the mind begins to protect itself, not by solving the problem, but by managing the feeling and finding reasons that the threat is exaggerated, or false.
And people just want to enjoy life. There are so many pressures today relating to conflicts, the cost of living, distrust of others… being told to take action to save all future life on Earth seems like a big, complicated problem that most people want nothing to do with.
What Success Looks Like
If awareness is not enough, and denial is hardwired and human, what does communication that actually works look like?
It is the question Ethical Disruption is genuinely trying to answer, led by a journalist’s instinct, but hopefully powered by a community keen to find the solutions, too.
If that question interests you, then you’d be very welcome to subscribe and join the conversation.