We Need To Join The Dots
Why Do People Who Care About Nature, Climate and Pollution Still Vote the Wrong Way For The Planet? Join The Mission To Change Things...
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. This is why those thousands of educational content channels are enjoying meaningful victories, but still not moving the 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 polling 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.
The New Problem
Adding more complexity and confusion are AI and politics. Content created with the help of Artificial Intelligence is exploding in volume. It is increasingly difficult to cut through and distinguish the facts among all the noise.
Political forces committed to the status quo, pushing through ever more oil and gas extraction, encouraging plastic production, the roll-out of huge data centres, and the continued destruction of vital habitats, are using every tool in their own communication strategy, including AI. And it is working.
What Ethical Disruption is Here For
This is not yet another channel adding to the noise. The crisis of nature, climate and pollution will not be resolved by 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.
That means communicating differently, in ways that connect with these people. Something I am keen to do myself - but the power will come from a community, discussing brave new ideas, searching hard for solutions. That community is also being built here.
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.
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 powered by a community keen to find the solutions, too.
If that question interests you, there are a few ways to be part of answering it…
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