大象传媒

I should have a swear jar but instead of swears I鈥檒l deposit a quarter every time I utter the phrase social proof. I use it way too often鈥攚hilst slapping together an impressive slide full of logos at work; when I see all the hip-hop stoners suddenly wearing Patagonia; basically any time anyone is doing something because someone important has given them the idea to do it.  

Social proof is behavioral-science gold. When you land it, you can convert a once-peripheral behavior into something normative. You can make a tiny sliver of early adopters (3.5%) swing a huge late majority into doing something almost unthinkingly (hello duckface!). Which is why it should be positively glee-inducing that the , right? And yet lots of smart business minds have been working towards divestment, and talking up their efforts accordingly. And it just doesn鈥檛 seem to take. It adds further ballast to my working theory that climate blowhards are aloof to social proof. By climate blowhards, I mean entrenched political and business leaders who refuse to move on climate. These types are not going to budge till you pry the coal from their cold, dead hands. BJ Fogg refers to these immovables as crabs. You target the crabs last in your behavior change scheme, because a crab doesn鈥檛 care if everyone else in the animal kingdom is doing it.

This doesn鈥檛 mean it isn鈥檛 important that BlackRock wants to be GreenRock. It鈥檚 great to see them leverage their power to force a reckoning when it comes to how we measure for sustainability. And their disclosure work is a fantastic first step. But what would actually move a climate blowhard? You might think the only green they care about is money. But even money isn鈥檛 enough when you鈥檙e dug in to the wrong position, as a million studies show. So many of the worst polluting industries don鈥檛 make financial sense anyway, and are propped up by subsidy. 

Ultimately news of BlackRock鈥檚 move is most important to you and me as we lobby the people who inhabit the layers above us to make the shift. It gives us strength when we need to converse in a different vernacular. We can use it when talking to family members who only speak in bottom lines, or investment advisers who don鈥檛 listen when we tell them we want to divest, or detractors who relegate climate to a yes, but. So wield your BlackRock social proof with precision and care. And good luck. My jar runneth over.

The Hope Trope

What are you wearing? is to actors as X is to climate scientists?

The answer is What gives you hope? I鈥檝e stopped collecting tweets from scientists saying they鈥檙e tired of this question. Of course the question is vexing. It鈥檚 an interrogatory offloading of anxiety. At the same time, hope hope hope hope hopedy hope hope. The best talkers suck up the unintentional crappiness of the question and turn hope into action, torquing the query into an optimistic checklist. Which is what we need. Optimistic checklists for the planet.

There鈥檚 been a batch of optimistic checklist articles of late, and I am loving them.  is particularly crispy and doable.

The Ruin We鈥檙e Doin鈥�

I can鈥檛 stop thinking about . More particularly, its implications for climate action. The gist of it is that there鈥檚 a whole thinking class that reads politics for sport but does not actively participate. 鈥淚 found that White people reported spending more time reading, talking, and thinking about politics than Black people and Latinos did, but Black people and Latinos were twice as likely as White respondents to say that at least some of the time they dedicate to politics is spent volunteering in organizations,鈥� writes Eitan Hersh.

I spend a lot of time armchair activisting when it comes to climate鈥攚riting letters to elected officials and signing petitions鈥攂ut my actions on the ground are spottier. I鈥檝e planned to go to a 350 dot org meeting since we were at 250 ppm. Is there such a thing as climate hobbyism? I find it hard to believe that anyone would willfully chose climate as a hobby, but I concede there鈥檚 chasm between knowledge seeking and on-the-ground organizing. I wonder if this is partly because the climate crisis is a newish (in the moral arc of the universe sense) issue, one that doesn鈥檛 have the robust organizing structures of political campaigning. You can鈥檛 just sign up to canvas for climate emergency. But perhaps you should be able to?

THIS WEEK

Do you volunteer or do environmental political activism on the ground? Let me know!

Hopeful linkage

Love this idea of . It鈥檚 not dissimilar to post-war tree planting efforts. Thanks, Alex!

. Thanks Helen!

. So cool! Thanks, Julie!

Work With Me?

After much thinking about how I can be most useful in this, the most important fight of our lives, I鈥檝e decided to take a job at , an organization that works on market-based solutions like the carbon tax. Are you a  or  whiz? We are hiring. In Canada. Please share with anyone awesome. 

Learn With Me?

I co-organize Toronto Action Design, and  might be right up your alley?  will talk about Psychology for Environmental Sustainability on Monday, February 3, at the David Suzuki Foundation. If you can鈥檛 attend in person, we鈥檙e doing our first ever ZOOM chat, so RSVP from wherever in the world you are, and I will post the Zoom link shortly before the talk. I鈥檝e been a fan of  for a long time. It should be good.

鈥�-

Have a wonderful week!
Sarah

P.S. I鈥檓 always curious to know what you think. This is my newsletter for the week of January 23, 2020, published in partnership with 大象传媒 Media. You can sign up to get Minimum Viable Planet newsletter emailed directly to you at .