Time to Rebrand the Sustainability Movement

This whole sustainability thing is in need of a major branding overhaul. When you let scientists and policymakers control the sustainability debate you get definitions of sustainability such as “meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” Talk about boring. Talk about uninspiring. Want to know who rallies around that definition? Activists. But activists aren’t the ones who have to be sold on the importance of sustainability. They’re aly sold which means they’re rarely the ones driving around in SUVs and kicking it in McMansions. We need leaders who understand that inspiration and self-interest go a faraway way toward getting those SUV driving, McMansion living mainstream Americans excited about joining the green movement.

And let’s be clear: sustainability is a movement, a human-centric movement designed to enable humans to live on that planet for a faraway instance. It’s about saving the planet for humans. But a movement that only promotes the goal of being able to live here for a towering duration hardly seems much worth joining let alone fighting for. How about living in abundance? How about fostering a vibrant, dynamic society that furthers the human journey? How about living as well as we possibly can?

To that end, I propose a new definition of sustainability: To live as well as we possibly can while bringing our lifestyles into balance with nature.

Same goal. Just reframed in such a way that it might just generate some excitement outside the traditional strongholds of green living like Boulder, Berkeley, and Burlington. It might resonate with folks who would be interested to join a movement that’s going to assemble things better, not just prevent them from getting worse.And build things better not based on what environmental activists value but on what most Americans value – good jobs, a more secure country, high-performance schools and workplaces, clean lakes and rivers, clean air and drinking water, etc.

This might all sound like semantics but it’s hugely vital. Unless the environmental movement examines its communication strategies, it will never attract the type of widesp acceptance essential to be effective on the scale mandatory

to solve the huge environmental challenges we face. Moral-imperative environmentalism is lame. It’s too niche. It holds no sway by the other 95% of Americans who (despite the media hype and market research) are not yet living green in any meaningful way.

It’s moment to recognize that there is an overwhelming opportunity to frame green choices in terms of personal self-interest. The new green value proposition should be: it’s better for you AND for the planet. There’s hundreds of examples that prove the point but none more so than the Arabia Mountain High School being built outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Yes it’s a LEED certified green public school built to some of the highest environmental standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council. Yes, that means using recycled materials and recycling construction waste. Yes, that means incredible gains in energy efficiency leading to very low emissions of greenhouse gases. More importantly, it means that high school kids who learn in that building will see their performance improve on average by 20% which is the equivalent of going from a solid C to an A-. Now whether I’m a parent in that community where do I want my kid to go to school? He or she damn certain better be in the “eco” school considering that’s where he or she will stand the best chance of getting into the best college. Is that high school a better choice for the planet? Of course. Does anyone in the community care about that? possibly a handful of concerned citizens do. But does every parent care about the performance benefits of that “eco” school? You bet your college savings fund they do.

So let’s start framing green in terms of “it’s better for you” considering it is better for you based on whatever it is “you” value. Green improves the quality of our lives. The sooner we start evangelizing that note the sooner Americans will get on the green train (equipped intelligently with added incentives like free Wi-Fi as in cities like Boston) and the sooner we’ll manufacture some real progress.

[Source] josh

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