Re-Branding Sustainability For The Great Majority

This whole sustainability thing is in need of a major branding overhaul. When you let scientists and policymakers control the sustainability conversation 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 already sold which means they’re rarely the ones driving around in SUVs and kicking it in McMansions. We need leaders who understand that creating an inspiring environmental vision and appealing to enlightened self-interested are the most effective tools for getting those SUV driving, McMansion aspiring 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 this planet for a long time. But a movement that only promotes the goal of being able to live here for a long time 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. Only 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 make things better, not just prevent them from getting worse. And make 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, healthy homes, lower utility bills, cool cars, etc.

This might all sound like semantics but it’s hugely important. Unless the environmental movement examines its communication strategies, it will never attract the type of widespread acceptance necessary to be effective on the scale required to solve the enormous environmental challenges we face. Moral imperative environmentalism is whiny. Carbon counting environmentalism is obscure. And Polar Bear saving environmentalism is trite. It’s all too niche. It holds no sway over the great majority of Americans who (despite the media hype and market research reports) are not yet living green in any meaningful way.

It’s time 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 if I’m a parent in that community where do I want my kid to go to school? He or she damn sure better be in the “eco” school because 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? Maybe 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” because 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 message the sooner Americans will get on the green train (spurred on by incentives like free Wi-Fi as in cities like Boston) and the sooner we’ll make some real progress.

-- Josh