Conversations with Green Gurus

The film that goes with the book has just gone up on YouTube. And the individual lengthier film interviews will follow soon on the GreenGurus channel. It's a fantastic book anyway - I actually recommended it last week to a friend who said she wanted THE one book to read about green. It's stuffed with wisdom, quotable insights and personal stories from some of the most inspiring people in the field (and yours truly!)

Speaking of which myself, John Elkington and Paul Dickinson are speaking in a 'Faith and Climate Change' debate organised by the Green Guru authors at the liberal Jewish synagogue tomorrow night December 2nd, (28 St John’s Wood Road, London NW8 7HA • 6.45pm for 7pm - it's free to all comers if anyone local fancies a night of deep debate after work!)

I'm also rumoured to be interviewing another Green Guru contributor Hunter Lovins (fantastic lady, amazing hats too) at the Cineforum event Friday.

Finally do check out the Green gurus book itself here

Go #RED

Today is world AIDS day. To help raise awareness twitter is turning every tweet that contains the hashtag #red red (ie it appears in dark/light red coloured type). This was sponsored by Nike who are kind of trailblazing in the cause related, quiet, supportive marketing domain this last year (see also TheGirlEffect). You can also turn your tweet red by using the Nike linked hashtag #laceupsaveslives I love it anyway & wish we'd thought of something similar for Tweehive.

New Article for Mediacat Magazine

Through the Looking Glass

As we stare into another year and wonder what it will hold, I am encouraged to look further ahead and think about where brands and media are heading medium term. I know it’s tempting just to hope that it “wont be as bad as last year” but perhaps the forces that are tilting against the status quo are deeper than issues like banking confidence, consolidation and quarterly profits? So that leaving 'the future' to a quiet year could be a long wait! Anyway the medium term future is more interesting; calling on imagination, not just 'more of the same' realism?

It’s tempting to take a sustainability point of view on brands, media and change. Consumerism is to blame for some of our problems. We can ill afford the fantasy that the world exists to fulfil our wishes; nor even the sickness that has resulted from partial success in this (eg obesity). We do live in a world of cornucopian bounty; if only we could adapt to what it does offer, and abandon the idea that it could ever support 9 billion American consumer lifestyles. The way we have organised human societies, for instance the food system that traverses the earth in search of slightly more profit, is perverse. In future oil will not be cheap enough to support this and food security (along with water security, energy security) will be the pressing issue, not consumer choice.

The trouble I’ve found with future gazing from a sustainability point of view is it is all about restriction (or ‘mitigation’). Like a global health problem it shows that our lifestyles and cultures cannot but change. But it doesn’t in itself point to a positive alternative; and that may account for the failure of sustainability to achieve general recognition or popular support? We have nothing to look forward to on this view. Whereas individuals that successfully adapted to a restriction (illness, redundancy, divorce) often found it is in retrospect also an opportunity to flourish and develop in new ways; restriction and calamity can come to be seen as a blessing in disguise, an opportunity to rebalance, build new relationships, follow other passions.

If you look into history, you find that such limits and necessities do force change upon us. But perhaps they are less predictive of the direction of that change. Two things that are far more predictive of change are the amount of contact between cultures, and the form and function of media. We can maybe amalgamate the two and talk about the way in which we share ideas?

In case this feels like a remote concern for a marketing magazine, consider that what you describe as brands are actually fragments of media. At a functional level most advertising media mimic real media. Direct marketing appears to be a personal letter addressed to you. A TV commercial appears to be a little TV show or movie. A press ad has a headline, picture and copy – just like one of the more important newspaper and magazine stories. There is a slight nuisance factor in content that mimics what we are looking for to get our attention. But also like the bacteria in our gut, it repays the host; the direct marketers pay for our post service, the advertisers for our entertainment media, sports events and news. Among ‘old’ media the poster stands alone as a pure act of promotion; a descendent of the pamphlet. Although you could also argue that it masquerades as public graphic art?

What is new in media, in a fundamental society-restructuring way? I would argue that the deepest innovation is the invention of shared texts. Since the invention of writing humanity has been split between the objective, neutral, machine-like world as written, and the subjective, interweaving, alive, nuanced world of conversation. Writing may have made possible technology, empires, industry (they all resemble printing presses, replicating human ideas – making the world more ‘uniform’ in the process). This is also art imitating life – the very core living process being one of a similar replication of cells. Conversation is something other. It is a means to understand each other and through that process understand ourselves. It is not straightforward, it is subjective and a way for two minds to ‘boil the world together, so that it tastes less bitter’ as one writer (Theordore Zeldin) put it.

Shared texts have many uses. Some are literally conversations as in Twitter and chat forums. Others are co-written and edited in a very obvious ways; like Wikipedia. Others are less personal. For instance ecommerce is only possible because of a process by which one side writes a catalogue, but the other can write orders, reviews and in other ways make their mark in it (for instance Amazon’s ability to tell me what others who liked a book bought). It’s likely that we are at the early stages of discovering all of shared texts' uses. The printing press was originally used to make bibles (and TV was originally used to make radio programmes with pictures). Already though we have seen that the place of brands and media thinking is evolving; for instance inhabiting new key internet functions like searching for stuff.

When the media change, the brands change. Coca-Cola the defining brand of the mass media age is looking less dominant than ever. Other brands like Google, Apple, Amazon, Twitter are being born out of the markets for information. But what will true ‘shared text age’ brands look like? Of course some will be evolved from today's brands – companies like Proctor & Gamble have been deeply immersed in internet communities and other new media formats since the mid 1990s. But (of course) I think there is an alternative…

Imagine a future where brands were not owned and made by producers, but by consumers. The simplest way to explain this is imagine a consumer buying club being the most powerful brand in the world. There are early signs of this emerging; community choice aggregation (whereby whole American cities buy greener, cheaper electricity by buying in bulk – San Francisco being the latest); money supermarkets (comparison sites where people find the cheapest mortgage or credit card); community supported agriculture (where the consumers effectively buy a farm); microcredit (where the borrowers own the bank and pay themselves dividends in the form of free life insurance and so on). There have already been internet plays where ‘purchase power aggregation’ was the key model. But what would be needed is something with more solidarity. eBay might be a better guide to what these buying guilds could look like; self-governing, with a strong identity and shared resources, but freedom and diversity within this.

Of course I am stargazing. Who could really know what lies ahead? But the significance of shared texts as a human development can scarcely be overstated. In a broad historical sense it is a challenge to the ‘top down’ scheme of industrial society; for instance Linux was (another shared text and) a mighty challenge to Microsoft. And the ultimate shared text would be a new system of direct democracy. In the narrow sense I think it helps you to get your bearings in new media. To better get ahead of the curve. And now is a great time to be experimenting and finding new ways to connect. After all, with the current model in tatters the only way is forwards, right?

Recipe for a Successful Copenhagen

I'm tempted to show this at the event I'm speaking at Danish Embassy tonight (I'm sure they make funny videos featuring our hilarious British accent too ;) Seriously though does a great job of combining quite dense info & the limitless infantile joy of playing with food.

Green Books Campaign: Slow Money by Woody Tasch

This review is part of the Green Books campaign . Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally friendly way. Our goal is to encourage publishers to get greener and readers to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website .
EcoLibris Link


As the official blurb above says... I'm taking part in a global campaign today whereby 100 green bloggers review 100 green books. The campaign was put together by Raz from ecolibris through which you can plant equivalent trees for every book you read. Ecolibris are great supporters of the whole sector and I came across them when
their blog was one of the first to review The Green Marketing Manifesto

The book which I chose was:



"Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered" by Woody Tasch (Chelsea Green US)

There's only one catch. Unfortunately the book which was posted to me nearly a month ago hasnt arrived. It has most likely got caught in Britain's slow post (we've had a series of strikes here and 30m items are said to be held up). 99 book reviews doesn't have quite the same ring and I really didnt want to let the campaign down. So I am writing instead a (p)review to say why I chose this book to review and really want to read it when it does eventually turn up!

Why I thought this was the most important book to read at this time:

1. I've been working on a food project called Earth Open Source. I'm a city living green and was until then fairly ignorant of the critical importance of food, farming and especially soil in climate change, global justice and so on. Although even a city green would have picked up for instance James Lovelock's claim that food & farming were responsible for 50% of all carbon emissions. That's due to transport, the energy that goes into agriculture (farm equipment and chemicals), change of land use (aka loss of grasslands and forests). But the really big issue is our treatment of soil. The IPCC have now agreed to include soil sequestration in their next round of assessments after this letter by prominent scientists (full text, refs and commentary here):

Grassland Carbon Working Group
Soil Organic Carbon is the Future Beneath Our Feet 26 January 2009
To: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
c/o Dr. R. K. Pachauri, Chairman

Civilizations rise and fall with the quality of their soils. Soil organic carbon is essential to soil health. We are given one more chance to learn the lesson of history. This time the stakes are higher – soil degradation is endemic to every continent and we have created a new, atmospheric, carbon crisis. The presence of soil organic carbon can be the difference between life and death. Soils store twice as much carbon as global vegetation and the atmosphere combined. Loss of historic soil organic carbon due to degradative land use has been dramatic, resulting in poor soil fertility, environmental pollution, food insecurity and poverty. Soil organic carbon can and must be restored. Excess carbon in the atmosphere is a pollutant; carbon in the soil is a valuable ecosystem commodity. Healthy plants are the agents of transformation, converting the former to the latter. We consider grasslands in order to illustrate the potential of soil carbon sequestration in all agricultural soils. Grasslands cover one third of the planet’s 149 million km2 of land surface. A small change in soil carbon across this vast sink will have an enormous effect on atmospheric carbon. A 1 percent absolute increase in organic matter of grassland soils would sequester 102 Pg of carbon, removing 375 Pg of CO2 from the atmosphere(i).

...An urgent and pragmatic assessment of the role of soil carbon sequestration is overdue. Grasslands and all forms of agricultural soil carbon sequestration must be recognized as an important source of mitigation at the next meeting of the international conference of parties in Copenhagen, and this important mitigation strategy accordingly linked to financing mechanisms. We call on the IPCC to hold immediate talks to develop strategies for the implementation of soil carbon sequestration at full potential. On the basis of these talks, we encourage the formation of a new working group to meet prior to the meeting in Copenhagen in December and its action plan be reported at that time. We extend our assistance to the IPCC in this important matter.
Convergent crises provide unprecedented opportunities. The multi-functional nature of soil organic carbon provides answers to problems, which paradoxically in isolation may appear insurmountable.
Like the crisis, the opportunity is unprecedented.
The solution is in our hands.

For those who would like to follow this up grain.org have a great article on this subject which claims:

"According to our calculations, if we could manage to put back into the world’s agricultural soils the organic matter that we
have been losing because of industrial agriculture, we would capture at least one third of the current excessive CO2 in the atmosphere. If, once we had done that, we were to continue rebuilding the soils, we would, after about 50 years, have captured about two thirds of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere."

And if you really want to get to grips with the subject head over to the Rodale Institute.

All of which explains why in the Earth Open Source team we have come to the view that FOOD IS THE NEW ENERGY. Not that it's an either or but the preceding facts on the pivotal role of farming do argue that if a fraction of the effort that went into multibillion investments in solar were diverted to farming, food and especially soil done right, then we would be on our way to a solution, not only to climate change but feeding the 9 billion, right?

Well yes and no. because it depends what kind of investment - leading to what kind of farming.

2. The problem is that food, farming and soil done right requires a different model for investment too. As Tasch's book argues (as far as I can tell from the publisher's information, his speeches online and so on :) there is a need for slow money ie an alternative model to lean and mean free market capitalism.

Fast capital applied to farms demands maximum financial returns on capital (and did I mention "fast"?). These are achieved by
i. growing cash crops, those suitable for export or sale as commodities
ii. and growing them in an intensive, large scale, industrial monocrop fashion
iii. which in return relies on heavy use of machinery and agrichemicals, also potentially seeds that are under patent
iv. partly because machines are cheaper (per acre) than workers - in fact agribusiness generally quotes yields per worker to underline this being a key profit indicator

This last point also deliberately (some believe) obscures a fundamental finding. Small polycrop farms (ie traditional farms) are far more productive OF FOOD PER ACRE than big farms. This doesn't translate into fast buck profits for big investors. But it does translate into better diets and more secure food for people. Monocrop harvests are exported (often in developing countries as encouraged by the IMF - foreign currency to pay off debts). But even when eaten at home it's a meagre diet - as Michael Pollan pointed out: the main thing you eat in almost every food in the USA is corn. So much corn syrup is used in fact that the average US citizen eats 1.1kg of sugar every week.

The finding that small farms are more productive (in every sense except return on investment capital) is well documented. As George Monbiot wrote in an article entitled small is bountiful:

"Though the rich world’s governments won’t hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership. This reflects an unexpected discovery. It was first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen, and has since been confirmed by dozens of further studies. There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield. In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are twenty times as productive as farms of over ten hectares. Sen’s observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Phillippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere."

Nonetheless fast capital and the so called 'industrial model is growing, in the face of all this evidence. Why? because investors love it. Especially now that there is a biofuels boom, global food prices spiked (in 2008) and according to the FT hedge fund and VC money has been rushing into investments in farming (following 30 years when the sector was less popular). For instance the FT reported that:

"Emergent Asset Management is even more ambitious, with the British hedge fund manager aiming to raise €1bn (£787m) over the next year to put into sub-Saharan African farmland. "The cost of land is very, very low," said Paul Christie, marketing director of Emergent. "We want to make the land more productive. It is industrial scale farming and it is going to make a big difference down there."

Taking these points together the crux of the issue is as follows:
BIG MONEY = INDUSTRIAL FARMING = INSECURE, UNHEALTHY FOOD SUPPLY & HIGH CARBON EMISSIONS
SLOW MONEY = SMALLER, OR MORE CAREFUL FARMING = SECURE FOOD & MASSIVE CARBON SEQUESTRATION

Not all the fast money is chasing planet suicide. For instance Craig Sams former Green & Blacks founder has started a (Silicon Valley VC backed) biochar company. As reported in the Independent. But it's a fair bet that slow money is the much more likely to help build a vibrant farming community, who nurture the soil and save us all.

All of which explains why I was very keen (out of a long list offered) to read and review Tasch's thoughts on the subject. Not just a pundit or bystander (like yours truly) Tasch is chairman of a circle of investors who have already put $130m in farming done right. And I believe from other genuine reviews he is a lyrical writer, especially on the subject of soil. Here's a quote I picked up from lavidalocavore

"You wouldn't use a 747 to go to the corner store for a quart of milk. You wouldn't use a backhoe to plant a garlic bulb. You wouldn't use a factory to raise a pig. You wouldn't spray poison on your food. You wouldn't trade fresh food from family farms down the road for irradiated or contaminated or chemical-laden or weeks-old food from industrial farms halfway around the world..."

Part of the problem is we urban types are so alienated from what we eat and what impact it has that we probably would (I see plenty of people in jet sized cars for a start). We have lapsed into what British food policy professor Tim Lang (in a recent talk at NEF's Bigger Picture) called "A 70 year fantasy that we can buy what we want, whenever we want, from wherever we want."

In summary I would LOVE to read this book and I urge everyone else who reads this post to do so. We need to get a critical mass of recognition behind the following key points:
1. industrial farming and poisoned soil (more than even coal and oil) are the KEY problem driving climate change
2. patient small scale mixed crop farming, done the organic &/or traditional way are the KEY climate change solution
3. the type of investment is critical to the transition from 1. to 2. - as the title says it takes slow (ie patient) money

I would add that community and cooperation are key. Much of the research behind this (p)review came from from my own forthcoming book "Coopportunity". Supermarkets are predicated on choice. Fine, let us choose good food from good local farms. If we choose it they will have no option but to sell it (or if they dont, their successors will). I know growing your own is tempting, but don't miss the chance to buy from community supported agriculture, or to demand healthy, seasonal, local organic food from the major retailers too. (Much organic food in the UK is imported which rather misses the point as far as climate solutions go). That's something we are focusing on with Earth Open Source. But we need to get the investment model right, otherwise there will be no local, small farm, healthy and soil respecting food left to demand!

So buy this book, plant a tree (via EcoLibris) and demand better food from better farms. And if you have cash and a conscience consider getting into farming done right. That's about it. A full review of the actual book to follow when slow post allows.

Cop15 Videos/Campaigns

Would be interesting to discuss these - a mix of promo videos, personal testimonies & some which are both - to see what's working for people & why?



















...and speaking of 350 dont forget the International day of (photographing a '350' in a public place) Climate Action this Saturday http://www.350.org/

Legal Disclaimer

I've been contributing a few posts to the green awards blog. Checking in on the site I just happened upon their legal disclaimer - it's an absolute thing of beauty. Placed next to the possibly naive feeling of freedom in blogging (except in China where a contact tells me Greenormal is blocked by censors) it strikes me as something like the old Swedish comedy show which featured a couple of guys roaring around in a Volvo that happened to be encased in a jumbo mattress. A thing of beauty anyway. (I get it, but cant help smiling at the need for it). Here it is....

Blog Disclaimer

The opinions expressed here are the opinions of the writer and are not the official position of the Green Awards. The information contained in this Blog is for general guidance on matters of interest only. The application and impact of laws can vary widely based on the specific facts involved. Given the changing nature of laws, rules and regulations, and the inherent hazards of electronic communication, there may be delays, omissions or inaccuracies in information contained in this Blog. Accordingly, the information on this Blog is provided with the understanding that the authors and publishers are not herein engaged in rendering legal, accounting, tax, environmental or any other professional advice and services. As such, it should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional accounting, tax, legal, environmental or other competent advisers. All information in this Blog is provided "as is", with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information, and without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including, but not limited to warranties of performance, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will the Green Awards, its related partnerships, agents or employees thereof be liable to you or anyone else for any decision made or action taken in reliance on the information in this Site or for any consequential, special or similar damages, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.

New Article for Mediacat Magazine

Climate Change – The Creative Brief

It is said that "the journey of a thousand miles begins with a step". Actually that isn't entirely true. As storytellers know the journey of a thousand miles begins with a need to be a thousand miles away. A murder. A loved one a continent away. Or a job transfer. But anyway a human necessity to get there.

The long awaited United Nations Climate Change Conference ‘COP15’ is approaching. The goal is to agree a framework to replace the Kyoto treaty so that nations can work together on averting man made global warming. This is a political matter. But after the targets are agreed (at Copenhagen or later) what then? I’ll argue actually that this then becomes a marketing issue - creating public and business movement to match the ambitious objectives. But as in any good brief let’s focus on the Why? before the How?

The COP15 coverage has focused upon the nation state politics. Can a deal be reached with India and China? Will America make real commitments? Is it fair for the developing nations to be asked to cut emissions? Should the richer nations who are responsible for the bulk of emissions bear the load? That is an inevitable consequence of staging a multi-nation event aimed at brokering a deal. But it’s also potentially the wrong frame. Climate change is not an issue (like trade) about the balance or deal struck. Climate change is like a dark wave rolling towards us – we need to link arms or all be swept away.

When people in my country imagine climate change (I know this because I’ve conducted focus groups on the subject) they see it was bringing hotter summers and milder winters, and at worst potentially some increased flooding. And they see these changes happening over 40-50 years. They know that the effects may be much more extreme for “poor farmers and polar bears”. But they are not exactly losing sleep over the issue.

What I think this picture misses is the extraordinary degree of volatility and interdependence in our globalised economic world order. It’s like looking at a human body and saying ‘what difference could just a few degrees higher make?'

In 2008 the price of oil, some poor harvests, demand for biofuels, a flight of investors into safe commodities… produced a global food crisis which according to the UN doubled the number of people going hungry, while halving their supply of food aid. Why? There was still enough food for everyone. But the price of food increased. In poor countries food can account for about 30% of household spending. Hence an alarming increase in the numbers who could no longer afford 3 meals a day.

Those are the kinds of emergent effects I think you need to imagine to ‘get’ the impact of climate change. Human societies are like the climate itself. I picture both systems having a ‘whip’ like effect. When the atmosphere gets a little more energy and humidity on average the knock on effects on storms, floods, droughts and so on are not gradual and linear, they are dramatic and destructive. And we know it's the same with economies don't we? The knock on effect of some dodgy American home loans being a near meltdown in the global economy, also in 2008.

Politicians understand this. This is why when the UK parliament was surveyed in 2006, all but one of the 315 MPs who answered said that climate change was THE single most important issue facing our generation. A position that has only been reinforced by the Stern Report which warned that a failure to invest 1-2% of GDP now could lead to a loss of up to 20% of global GDP later. We have lived through a profound global slump this year. But the GDP still rose (according to the IMF) by 0.5%. Imagine it fell 20%. So that in some countries it would fall 40, 60, 80%. The socioeconomic impacts would be unimaginable. A whole world out of work, public services at a standstill, a mass extinction in many business sectors (ironically except possibly oil?) Imagine the fall of Soviet communism then times it by ten.

When you see that this is how even relatively mild (2 degrees, IPCC) predictions of climate change would play out – pretty much like a 2 degree rise in our body temperature compared to normal functioning – you realise how hugely important it is that we find some solutions fast. The good news is that many such solutions already exist. But taken as a whole it’s a radical shift. It’s about more than changing energy sources. It’s about a total redesign of society. Especially when you consider the next most pressing issue after climate change is probably the end of the era of cheap oil. Then there is food, water, biodiversity... the list goes on. We are running out of world and running out of time.

This transition in business, government and throughout society cannot happen until there is (in Al Gore’s words) a climate for change. And this is the heart of the creative brief for climate change. Politicians may see the medium term risks. But the public absolutely do not. In a Pew poll in the USA in 2009 the US public ranked climate change 20th out of 20 priorities for their government to tackle. Why? Because it doesn’t really seem like such a big thing to worry about.

I am not advocating mass panic-inducing alarmism. It’s actually potentially an exciting phase in human history. One of people rising to a proper challenge and feeling part of an epic achievement. One where some of the other imbalances such as the global wealth gap may get addressed. We do have the solutions if we can change our worldview enough to seize them. And we also have human ingenuity, and enough necessity to fuel huge invention.

So the crux of the creative brief is this. How can we help people in very large numbers grasp the necessity of human change in response to climate change? How can we help people prioritise it?

People who ‘get’ that this is a priority don’t have to become eco saints. We will still have lives, loves, and all too human inconsistencies. But it is a straightforward thing to want a better life for our children, to have worked on things that matter in the longer term, to have each in our own little ways been a part of the history of our times. It is as one commentator said a ‘simple matter of self esteem’.

Ultimately this is a marketing challenge. And I hope you’ll feel inspired (if a little daunted) to know that post Cop15, or whenever the targets are set, the next challenge largely may be down to us!

Climate by Numbers

Numbers are important in creating climates for change. Especially countdowns and the notion of approaching limits. For instance the Y2K bug meme persuaded governments and businesses to take urgent action because of a countdown to 00:00:00:2000. There was a common understanding that at this time, if urgent precautions were not taken, computer clocks resetting could trigger effects in critical applications such as hospitals, nuclear power stations, bank records.

350.org (as many readers will know) takes the view that the 'red line' of climate safety is 350ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is the number put forward by James Hansen, Director of the NASA Godard Institute (although he also says we really have no idea if anything above pre-industrial levels is 'safe'). Hansen's view is that we are in imminent danger of triggering runaway climate change due to positive feedback effects; where warming produces effects leading to further heating: ie tipping points - one study from the Potsdam Institute pointed to nine of these potentially being triggered in the next century.

Slightly worryingly we passed 350ppm in 1987 or so. Some runaway climate change effects, such as that associated with methane clathrate release (marsh gas released from Siberian permofrost due to warming), have been claimed (in a recent study published in Nature) to have resulted in shifts of tens of degrees within decades in past geological eras. And there are some worrying signs on that front too.

All of which should be cause for URGENCY - the factor in human organisations (according to John Kotter's recent book) which gets things done. And 24th October is one chance to spread the word (or in fact the number - 350) as it's International Climate day of Action. Basically place the number 350 somewhere public, take a pic, and upload it to their site. And perhaps also chat to people around you about why you are doing this - spread the word. More details at http://www.350.org/

All part of the countdown to Cop15. But more importantly part of starting a tide of public opinion and motivation that can carry us beyond target setting to some urgent action. If you are busy on the 24th, are one of those I keep meeting who shy away from the more alarmist views on climate change, and/or want to commit to a sensible and serious series of personal actions next year then 10-10 is for you.

We Are One

I'm not usually a huge fan of coffee table books but this one looks almost worth buying a (second hand or otherwise responsibly sourced) coffee table for! Here's some details from Jo Ede who created and edited this book & has been working with and filming indigenous peoples:

'We are One', the book on tribal peoples I have created and edited, is being published in the UK and Holland this Friday 16th October. It will be available in most bookshops nationwide.

We are One is a collection of previously unpublished statements from the world's tribal peoples, from the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon, to the semi-nomadic Penan of Malaysia and the Innu of Canada's sub-arctic tundra. These are supported by powerful essays photographs from authors, campaigners, politicians, philosophers, poets, artists, journalists, academics, anthropologists, environmentalists and illustrated by beautiful images by international photojournalists. We Are One celebrates the lives, homelands, rituals, languages, ideas and values of tribal peoples and explores the relevance of their wisdom to the present time. It is both a portrait of the beauty and diversity of tribal peoples, and a call to arms that examines many of the contemporary humanitarian and environmental issues inherent in their fight for survival - such as climate change.

Every single article, literary extract and photograph has been generously donated, in recognition of the 40th Anniversary of Survival International, the human rights' organisation that campaigns for tribal peoples (www.survivalinternational.org). All royalties from the sales of the book go to Survival International. We are One includes contributions and extracts from: Richard Gere, Zac Goldsmith, Colin Firth, Bruce Parry, Jane Goodall, Joanna Lumley, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Damien Hirst, Satish Kumar, Tony Juniper, Colin Samson, Jonathan Porritt, Vandana Shiva, Kari Herbert, Sydney Possuelo, Carlo Petrini, Wade Davis, Arundhati Roy, A.C. Grayling, Roy Sesana, Laurens van der Post, Doris Pilkington-Garimara, Eduardo Galeano, Robin Hanbury-Tenison and many others. Photographs by: Sebastiao Salgado, Mike Goldwater, Steve McCurry, Mirella Ricciardi, Carol Beckwith, Yann-Arthus Bertrand, Tim Allen, Claudia Andujar and others.

For further information, please either contact Jo Ede on (+44 (0) 7721 093067, (j.eede@virgin.net or je@survivalinternational.org) or Miriam Ross at Survival International on (+44) (0)20 7687 8734 ( mr@survival-international.org)

Draft Article for Sublime: Hope Issue

Dystopia? Utopia? Myopia? (Wetopia?)

When you imagine life in the year 2030 what do you see?

A. Dystopia? Climate change, peak oil, biodiversity, food, water, ecosystems collapse, tipping points: “A perfect storm by 2030” according to the UK chief scientist, Sir John Beddington: Or “A global Somalia” according to James Lovelock: Hell and high water, either way.

B. Utopia? A low carbon society will mean flourishing, elegant, harmonious, low carbon cities – with wonderful air quality, green spaces, cycle ways and free electric transits, mixed use campus-style neighbourhoods. Children, cats and handcarts loaded with fresh produce chase each other up grassy streets, while adults stroll between work places, symposia and city farms.

C. Myopia? 2030 is only 20 years away. Things will change but life will go on. There will be cars (now electric), supermarkets, offices, homes. Many of them still using today’s buildings. Some things will look advanced and some retro – just as if we’d peered ahead from 1990 to today we’d have been struck both by the iPhone and the number of cyclists.

D. All of the above? (But strangely reconfigured).

Any of A, B or C on their own are imbalanced (which would you choose – depression, mania or neurosis?) I am going to argue for D. I call this more panoptic viewpoint Wetopia; as the important shift could be from excessive ‘everyone for themselves’ competition to more joined up co-operation.

I agree with A that there is no change until denial is overcome. I agree with the B that there is no motivation without hope. I agree with C that the extremist views (A or B) largely go over the heads of most people. But that’s why we need a mix of all three. And we need to take them as ingredients for a recipe that is wholly new and strangely reconfigured. Because we need to adjust well to a fast-changing set of realities.

The either/or arguments that break out when these positions hit policy makers are so draining:
A. We MUST help the public understand the chasm of risk.
B. We MUST sell the public the dream of a better quality of life.
C. We MUST reassure the public that it’s not the end of the world.
With the three views pressed vehemently in every meeting on climate change, it’s no wonder decision-making becomes paralysed?

These are the wrong MUSTS. They assume a ‘public’ rather than a global village of fellow human beings. They assume propaganda, mass psychology, manipulation and spin… where conversation could be. They assume passive consumers, voters, viewers (who need to be sold a problem, a solution or a status quo)... where citizens could be. A citizen being defined as one who takes responsibility for the common good.

What’s missing from public engagement with the risks we face is a lack of citizenship. It’s not that people haven’t seen the melting icecaps, forest fires, floods on TV. They just don’t have a way to take any of this in and respond. Society is figured as a malfunctioning machine and they don’t know how to tinker with it – or even know that they could. I can’t think of any way through this except a return to participative democracy. Something that seems underway already; the democracy 2.0 of #iranelections, myobama.org, moveon.org and we20.org; the transparent scrutiny applied to policing, corporate human rights and MPs’ expenses.

Where eco-techno utopian fantasies fall short is they portray only the ‘lifestyle’ surfaces of society. This is still nuclear age thinking; complete with futuristic gadgets, energy and cars. They are hence less utopias; more product catalogues. Great if you sell cycles, solar panels or electric cars. And lovely stuff - I’m all in favour of all of this. But arguably these artefacts are about as pivotal as the props in a Shakespeare play. To be optimistic about a better quality of life, shouldn’t we rather be looking at new human systems; looking forward for instance to a more co-operative economy? With short working weeks, mutual company ownership, communal facilities, radical re-localisation of food, manufacture… everything geared to maximise wellbeing? Most utopias were radical plans for social equity. Plans like the Diggers of 1649 (if enough people joined self-sufficient food-growing communities the aristocracy would follow suit for lack of anyone to grow their food). Plans like the Rochdale Pioneers of 1844 (co-operative shops as stepping stones towards new “colonies” based on co-operation).

It’s the same obsession with surface that limits the myopic view. Yes we will likely re-use current buildings. But that doesn’t mean we will use them in the same way. St Luke’s (a company I co-founded in the 1990s) was an employee owned co-operative. We moved into an office, which had already been fitted out by a conventional company. But we just used it differently – turning what would have been directors offices into project rooms, an open floor into a library. It’s the configuration of social relationships that is plastic and subject to rapid change. It might take 200 years to replace our housing stock. But we could see the molecular (communal) household replace the nuclear household in a few decades?

Wetopia isn’t that new an idea. A version of this shift from hierarchy to co-operation has been the core idea in most of the alternative visions put forward over the last 500 years. It’s what Ghandhi meant by Swaraj or ‘self rule’: Meaning not a top-down India Congress (as proposed by Nehru) to replace the British Raj: But rather government that welled up from villages, people and ultimately the Hindu concept of Self as seat of moral certainty.

Not a new idea then, but to quote Ghandi again – when asked what he thought of Western Civilisation – “I think would be a very good idea!”

John Grant’s new book Coopportunity (Wiley) is out in January 2010.

Sublime Magazine Article (Art & Philosophy Issue)

The Original Copy

A security guard at the Tate Modern gallery came over to ask me politely but firmly to stop taking pictures. The irony being that I was photographing No Ghost Just a Shell initiated by Pierre Hyghe and Philippe Parreno, an artwork exploring the subject of replication and intellectual copyrights. They had purchased the copyright for the image of Annlee, a Japanese anime figure (from Ghost in the Shell) and invited artists to use the image free of charge in their own video creations.

All life is based upon reproduction. But life’s idea of copying is far from (only) mechanical. For a start there is a wisdom in the fact we descend from several parents rather than being cloned. And also in that every cell in your body may have the same dna, but they are fabulously diverse in both their specialized functioning and interrelationship. In living systems, copying is just one part of the broader webs of emergence, adaptation, growth, interdependence, self-repair and so on. The simplest thing to say about this is that life is not mechanical. It is something else than that.

Life’s copying began with our molecular progenitors in a primordial soup and has been rushing ever since onwards and upwards, asymptotically towards us - and also presumably past us to some destination unknown. But if it was only copying life would be static, always forever the same. Instead it is a living process of both replication and ramification; in constant conversation with the ecosystem. And it is always evolving, mutating, re-shaping. This works because of imperfection, variation and chance. Through this a dance of intricately connected life-forms emerges. A caterpillar ‘learns’ (through selection of those who evolve this behaviour) to hang by a thread to avoid predators on plant stems. A species of wasp ‘learns’ to climb down this thread to inject its eggs into the caterpillar. Another species of wasp observing this scene ‘learned’ to reel in the thread and add its own eggs – whence its larvae will feed on the other wasp’s larvae that feed on the caterpillar. It’s horrifying from one point of view, but a miracle of co-design from another.

Let’s call the alternative to this living, evolving form of copying: ‘dead copying’. Dead copying is mechanistic and dead to its surroundings. It is death as in statis – no further change being possible. It is dead as in plastic bags, just sitting almost immutable in landfill. Dead copying is monoculture wheat fields, loss of biodiversity, rows of identical plastic toys, genetic modification, nanotech, pesticides, learning by rote, sterile digital media recording… Dead copying is the perfect opposite and enemy of life. Most environmental problems have something to do with this: society as machine, people and nature as economic parts. Dead copying even strips time of its significance, each moment in a climate controlled mall being the same as the next (it’s always ‘Christmas’ – and hence never inwardly that festive?) Malls, car journeys and whole cityscapes rob us of the the rain on our faces and daily experiences that root us physically in the living world. A development the slow movement are encouraging us to turn back from. Still living in cities, but savouring life, local and seasonal foods, passing pleasures.

In psychological terms dead copying is the enemy of feeling alive. Subjectivity is lost as our experiences and thoughts become alien to us - as if mechanical parts. We do have a replicating culture of artifacts, manners, idioms, writings and styles. But this reproduction is part of a living system - kept alive through human identification and subjectivity. Stone Age people making successive daubs on cave walls would not simply be copying. But rather re-experiencing; identifying with both the other and also their subject – a deer or bison, perhaps. Their copying was ritual participation, through an animistic worldview - whereby your own subjectivity was constantly mingling with others’ – that of your ancestors, prey animals, even the stones. That’s our inheritance too, something the school of phenomenology attempted to recover. When we encounter another person – or indeed any sentient being – we imaginatively identify with them, through a process of inward and even muscular mimicry. What might it be like to be you? Psychoanalysts say that we discover our own identity through these identifications with the other. But to identify is not to become identical. Each such identification is subtly different. Two people watching someone riding a bicycle will not have the same subjective response. One for instance who had been involved in a past accident, might watch with unfolding horror as a car approached the bicycle at a junction. Another might be drawn into a reverie based on the big red bike they got as a 7th birthday present.

Postmodernism was the artistic and philosophical climax of a reaction to and against this mechanistic trend. It was fundamentally about recovering subjectivity, even within a world of mechanical reproduction. I say ‘was’ because it seems we may be moving past this. Towards something like a new folk culture. Partly through a dawning awareness of the damage done by our split with nature (and human nature and community). It’s not all about slow food and handiworks either. Folk culture is flourishing in web 2.0 where self made media and the ability to share good content bypass the old media pyramid schemes, that replicated content to make money. That is for me, as one subjective observer, the implication of No Ghost Just a Shell. It is actually about reanimation; a coming back to life.

New Article for Medicat Magazine

LOYALTY

You’ve been inundated with ways that marketing can help sustainability, not least by your humble columnist here. But have you stopped to think about how sustainability could transform your marketing for the better too?

Most marketers I have ever come across think it is their job to be recruiting new customers. It may say in their targets that they need to increase brand share, profitability and so on. But what they have in their minds when they see these tasks is getting customers in through the door. What other reason would you use advertising media for after all? If you wanted only to reach your existing customer you could advertise on pack, in branch or through a beautifully designed newsletter or something like that.

For the customer the experience is rather like being married to someone who is out every night chatting up other women. Or seeing a friend at a party, but she keeps looking over your shoulder to see if there is somebody more important or interesting there? Anyway you get my point – it’s slightly annoying apart from anything else?

When you scratch the surface of most markets you find that, conversely most of the money is made through loyal customers.

UK banks have recently woken up to this fact and started charging cheaper rates to existing customers. They have said publicly that this is because known customers are a better credit risk. Even the ones who do get into credit problems tend to pay off their bank first and companies they have no other relationships with last. But that is not the whole story. I interviewed some bank marketing directors for a report a few years ago. One of them told me that they had calculated that 90% of their profit came from the 6% of their customers who bought 2 or more products from them. Firstly the 6% is incredibly low, it’s almost like the customer is ruling out existing providers because they sensed they would get ripped off if they didn’t shop around. Secondly it should put an incredibly high value on loyalty. Every 1% they could add to the "2+ products club" would create huge financial returns. Plus the benefits of more predictable, less price-war dependent income streams.

The bad news for the banks is that people think of them as ‘all the same’. You know why? Because they are in fact all the same. At the height of the housing boom there were mortgages available from over 8000 providers. And only a couple of these (like Virgin’s “Offset” mortage product) were anty different to any other, except on price.

There is one exception though; the Co-operative Bank. They are a past client of mine so I’m not in a perfect position to judge. But that goes for five other banks and it’s not like I buy lots of financial products from those too. But I buy two or three products off the Co-operative every year – travel insurance, car insurance, the sorts of things where I could shop around for the best price but instead I go to the Co-op. Why? As their advertising campaign says they are “Good with money”. Specifically they have really tough sustainability standards, which they apply to all their investments and other commercial relationships. They do lots inside their own company, for instance with renewable energy and staff volunteering. And they do lots for the ‘sector’ too – for instance as a writer I rely on their annual reports into the UK Ethical Consumer.

I’m not sure if they sent me a letter asking me to donate to their company I would. They are still a bank, still have shareholders and so on. But I am very happy to buy things off them at an okay price, rather than shop around for whoever is the absolute cheapest. It affects how I expect to be treated by them too – if I ever have an insurance claim to be settled. Anyway my experience so far is that their people are pretty nice on the phone. Working with them as a client I found quite a few people had gone to work for them for similar sorts of reasons – "okay it’s a job in a bank, but at least they are doing some good too". The Co-operative Bank has been doing really well commercially during the banking crises of the last year. They have stood out as one company people could trust, on all sorts of levels. And in classic brand terms they are simply differentiated. All the other banks are ‘blue’ and they are ‘green’.

There was a ton of other stuff I wanted to do with them as my client to make loyalty (not recruitment) their key marketing objective. Like customer-help-customer schemes. And promotions where you club together with others in your local community to do something good for the area. But once you’ve decided to be about sustainability you have lots of such options, and not just in the traditional ‘green consumer’ niche either.

The moral of this little story? When you look at sustainability through the old marketing lens of projecting an image to attract new customers it looks either weak, or like a recipe for greenwash. But the more you look at sustainability through a customer loyalty lens, the more sense it makes for your business. As well as saving some of what’s left of this fragile planet for our grandchildren, which is of course worth giving a thought to too!

UK Bookseller Marketing Award - Guess the Winner

I'm presenting this award tonight and it's actually a fantastic shortlist - as you'll see from the shortlist below. I've no idea who has won. Tweet @greenormal with your guesses before around 9pm and I'll give someone who gets it right a collectors edition Green Marketing Manifesto (I've got one where the cover is upside down - a bit like a misprinted penny black?)

Amazon.co.uk, Amazon Vine

The Torbay Bookshop, Independent Booksellers Week

W H Smith,
Christmas Books Campaign 2008

Waterstone's,
The Waterstone's Card

Borders,
Where's Wally on Google Earth

Blackwell,
Espresso Book Machine Launch

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