Recently read a Guardian environmental blog story on a new movie with a fantastically catching title: Greedy Lying Bastards: U.S. Filmmaker Attacks Oil Industry. Who could pass up reading that? Certainly not I.
The story is about an upcoming documentary film from American Craig Rosebraugh that “highlights the ‘influence, deceit and corruption’ of fossil fuel industry.” YouTube clips preview some of the interviews the film will contain. Smart previewing.
What a perfect excuse for a follow up to my Jan. 14th post on FUD!
You remember FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt. It’s a natural reaction to the new, the unknown, the untried, the different. We may not like the status quo, but we know it. “The devil you know …” attitude. It’s one of the hurdles blocking the way to change of any kind.
Anyone marketing innovative ideas battles FUD. Sometimes, marketers that benefit from the status quo intentionally leverage that. Most of the time, those marketers are just trying to protect market share. In this case, the battle is more fundamental. If a majority of developed nations’ citizens agreed burning fossil fuels is a primary cause of global warming and that we have to act now to mitigate the resulting climate change — and actually did act right now — then the mega companies that make up the fossil fuel industry would soon be penning their own epitaphs instead of writing annual reports touting their stunning profits.
They’re fighting for survival. Surviving often requires fitting dirty. That’s exactly what the fossil fuel industry is doing. And they’ve got an enormous war chest to finance the battle. They’re even taking the fight into the U.S. public school system. Check out this New Scientist story, US Education Advocates Tackle Climate Change Skeptics, to get the dirt.
Why, then, is it surprising that they’re spending a fortune creating FUD around global warming? It’s a very effective strategy.
If you’re a clean tech entrepreneur, a politician, a philanthropist or an environmental activist, the problem is a tough one: how do you battle an unscrupulous street fighter?
It takes commitment, tenacity and unfortunately time. It’s the same scenario we saw play out with Big Tobacco. It took decades just to get warning labels on cigarette packages. A lot of bad things happened to individuals during those decades. This time the extinction of myriad species and the livability of the planet may be at stake. We don’t have decades to defeat these war lords.
You expected me to tell you how to do this, didn’t you? I wish I knew with certainty. We’re all a bunch of little, semi-organized Davids fighting a team of Goliaths. There are so many battle fronts. I’m beginning to come around to the view of Gernot Wagner, author of “But Will the Planet Notice?” He essentially argues that our most effective battle plan may be to get market dynamics involved. We need to put a price on greenhouse gases. If we could do that would it no longer matter if people “believed” in climate change or global warming? Could we get the behavior change we need without having to change attitudes?
What do you think?
