Change Starts Here

Written on 07/12 at 11:00 AM by Andy Posner 171 comments

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Michele Finnel, Marie-Laure Couet (a fellow grad student at Brown), and I worked together to produce this submission to Current TVs ecospot contest. The idea of the contest was to create a 15, 30 or 60 second commercial that either highlights an environmental issue or has a powerful eco-themed message. The submitted videos will be evaluated by a panel of science, policy and activist experts, who will narrow the field of videos down to the top twenty. At that point users will be able to vote on the winner. The top prize is, perhaps ironically, a Toyota Hilander Hybrid SUV. The voting will take place here. I will update the results of the contest when they become available.

Our submission makes a connection between the devastation of our forests and the devastation of our urban landscapes, and makes the case that while we may feel overwhelmed by global environmental issues, we can take proactive steps in our own neighborhoods to make tangible improvements to the situation. There is an implied connection between what we can do as individuals in our neighborhoods and cities, and what we can push our business leaders and politicians to do on a regional, national and international scale. In other words, when we talk about global issues such as climate change, peak oil, and overpopulation, the individual is often made to feel that the problems are beyond the scope of his or her ability to act. This feeling is, in many ways, justified; after all, while individuals can take small steps to mitigate their carbon emissions or change their patterns of consumption, their capacity for action is far smaller than that of governments to set smart policies and businesses to capitalize on those policies. Are we saying that individuals are impotent in the face of global problems? Not in the least. (continue reading)

What we are saying, however, is that we shouldn’t confuse what we can do with what we cannot do on an individual, local level. The action taken in the video is powerful and empowering, and the idea is that while we do what we can on a local, individual level, we should push for change in the areas beyond our immediate control. That is to say, we should do all we can as individuals, be that making smart consumer decisions, planting gardens, composting or installing energy-efficient windows. But we should not confuse that with solving the global problems we face, because that requires much more: a restructuring of the economy, governmental policy, business practices and how we value, use and recycle materials. Clearly, such a restructuring is well beyond the grasp of the individual.

Therefore, our video attempts to capture the idea that local action can provide the template for, the consciousness of and the energy to bring about large-scale change. We recognize that “change starts here” is a cliche, but we believe the more subtle ideas expressed previously present a much more nuanced and accurate picture of the reality of the situation. We further recognize that by itself the commercial does not express all the ideas previously explained, but we hope that the commercial, together with this explanation, will precipitate a change in how we frame environmental problems. We are troubled by the fact that, at the moment, climate change is seen as an ethical problem with actions that are labeled as clearly either “good” or “bad.” However, the whole notion that a person is evil for purchasing an SUV and saintly for purchasing a Prius is, in our view, rather misguided. After all, the only difference is that the Prius is “less bad” than the SUV. It is very difficult to make environmentally superior purchases in a world awash in oil, coal and natural gas. Thus our ultimate goal in making this commercial is to seed the idea that individuals have the power to push for policy changes and ask for products that satisfy their desire for quality products that are environmentally superior, but that individuals do not have the power to solve a global problem merely by purchasing a certain type of car or turning off their lights more frequently. We therefore hope to re-frame environmental issues in terms of the opportunities they create for better jobs and products.

Enjoy!

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