Armstrong

Are there too many climate campaigns?

Just as we’ve been publishing our ever expanding lists of campaigns in the run up to COP15, and as we’re on the verge of launching our own one, Arts for COP15, Green.tv asks the question “Are there too many climate campaigns?” [Their blog is currently down today… so you’ll have to take my word for it]. Have we become “bored” with the issue of climate change because of campaign overload?

For climate campaigners the real frustration is the slowness of change. The public still seem reluctant to clamour at politicians in the way we’d like them to. Could this be because they are just getting too many messages? That list of sixteen actions for COP15 is by no means exhaustive. Is this a case of too much information?

I don’t think so. Three reasons:

1) For a start, the nature of social media means that this fragmentation is going to happen, whether we like it or not. For better or worse, there will no longer be a single source of authority on any political discussion like this. On the plus side, climate campaigners like Franny Armstrong have shown how incredibly effective social media are for spreading a message.

2) Secondly, though the campaigns are diverse,  climate NGOs are showing a great deal of resourcefulness. Most of the campaigns listed below are actually partnerships between several campaigns – Greenpeace, WWF, Oxfam, Age of Stupid et al. Charities usually have a parochial tendency to defend their own turf with one eye on their own future fundraising – but in this case there is a lot of sharing going on.

3) So what’s the problem? With all this heat being created why aren’t more poeple taking action? Perhaps in this case we’re blaming the medium, not the message.  Most campaigns on energy and climate do not interest the mass of the people worldwide. The avaaz.org map of actions for Monday 21 September is worth looking at. Why is there a huge disparity between the numbers of actions being taken in different countries? We have to think hard about what messages appeal to the mass of people who are more aspirational than ourselves. (That’s not to say they need to be directly aspirational messages; the most effective political campaigns in recent times have usually been based on fear.)

We are in a research period, still looking for the right message. We have not found it yet. Now is not the time to start cutting down on the multiplicity of voices. Eventually one of us is going to get the right campaign, the killer one, the one that convinces more than just our friends.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

10:10 campaign launch: the video

Another hastily filmed Flipcam video. I am clearly no Franny Armstrong:

10:10 campaign launch, Tate Modern, London from RSA Arts & Ecology on Vimeo.

The strategy is to create enough of a mass movement to make people feel it’s OK to make changes in their life, and to give Ed M. the kick in the pants he requires to move forward. I’m not sure how successful the event was in achieving that. It was great to get the front page ofThe Guardian and a page in The Sun but because news of the event was sprung on most people yesterday, the event seemed a little thinly attended. It didn’t feel like the mass movement we need – not yet anway. It felt mostly like people a bit like me.

It’ll be interesting to see how many people have signed the pledge online…

[Takes a look]

6,472 so far. Less than one in ten thousand.

It may be early days, but given how well it was publicised, and the readership of media partners, The Sun and The Guardian, I would say that’s a little disappointing but I’ll leave the last word to the hardcore transitionist at the end who said, “When you see lots of other people getting involved it gives you confidence that you’re not a freak, you’re not out on your own.”

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Ed Miliband, Mark Lynas, Pete Postlethwaite & Franny Armstrong

If anybody hasn’t seen this, here’s Franny Armstrong, Mark Lynas and Pete Postlethwaite ambushing Miliband at the London premiere of Age of Stupid last weekend. It needs to be said, Miliband was there, he takes it on the chin and responds well. The political reality is that until movement that Armstrong and others are building really achieves a critical mass, he’s always going to be forced to acquiesce to the more pro-business agenda of Peter Mandelson, as cabinet did over the third runway at Heathrow.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Age of Stupid as a model for climate activism

Armstrong filming in New Orleans, 2006Armstrong filming in New Orleans, 2006

On the eve of the premiere of Age of Stupid, an email from director Franny Armstrong:

Tabloid Revolution: Three million people will have choked on their cornflakes this morning when they read Pete’s column in the Sun. See attached. “We – that is humanity – have only a couple of years left to act if we are to stop catastrophic climate change causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.” In The Sun.

Pete being Pete Postlethwaite. The column is an achievement in itself in a paper that last year published a column by Kelvin MacKenzie  headlined Global Warming Doesn’t Exist.

The Age of Stupid has been an exemplary campaign, from the crowd-funding strategy that raised £450,000 to meet production cost, £130,000 to meet distribution and publicity costs and a further £164,000 for political campaigns running alongside the movie, to an incredibly efficiently run grass-roots internet strategy to get the words out.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology