Shooting the Messenger #101

More on Gore

There a very good, US-based, free eco-newsletter called GRIST. I like what they are doing. I like their style. Usually.

'You are bang on. The best way to handle attacks is with good nature. And the best way to promote good nature is with humour (there’s not enough ‘u’ in humour, for the benefit of some of our US friends... evidently).

However, I would suggest that on its own this is not enough. You also have to listen (not in the way our government here does, which is without hearing, so as to keep on doing what they would anyway), engage and communicate. Or at least make the effort. Which means getting inside various heads you may not wish to (which now makes me realise why my government doesn’t hear: there’s nothing to stop anything that goes in one ear go straight through and out the other!).

And that means dealing in facts. Not just the facts of the matter, but also the facts of how matters get reported these days.

Even in the old days, which I still hanker after, this held true. I recall a Rolling Stone ad campaign... Perception: Reality. There’s what is. There is what should be. There is how what is should be reported and is. And there is appreciating that fact.

We are in a hype-driven, celebrity-obsessed culture. There is a vast industry feeding off it, with a serious interest in keeping a lot of folk employed and paid very well on the incoming, ongoing and departing antics of those selected or who volunteer to be the icons. Hence you can carve some serious column inches, readership, broadcast minutes and ratings with the ‘problem’. Then you can keep it bubbling in the same way for a while with ‘awareness’, usually surrounding the icon, and then when it gets a bit tired you can feed off the decaying bits by turning the icon info a fallen idol.

Which is why I get a bit concerned by the various icons the common man, woman and child often get presented with. Here in the UK our very own PM is shaping up as a ‘Green Ambassador’, but only once a few things that are a ‘bit impractical’ to his personal social life and professional career have been established as ‘not applicable’. Mr. Gore is different. When it comes to the environment he has form, and it is long-standing and mostly good.

However, we are living in the today of the media spotlight, with all those (purely personally opinionated) factors ranged at a public figure, ready to boost and then burst at will.

Look at this very blog and posts. What has happened? What are the %ages ‘pro’ & ‘con’? And this is a specialist eco-publication! I don’t know about rearranging deckchairs, but it reads more like shuffleboard to the death before the thing sinks. What on earth is a semi-informed, give-a-hoot populist press and TV news industry going to make of it all (from my reading the ‘tabloids’ here they could have cared less, and the ‘qualities’ such as the Times. Telegraph and even greener, more liberal, papers like the Indy and Guardian went pretty much with the ‘bubble prick’ side, I’m afraid. As did the BBC)?

That is an inconvenient fact of life. No point railing against it. It’s here to stay. And will get worse. So to manage it you have to play the system with skill. Which means everything from the selection of your candidate to working with the media by their rules... and be purer than the driven snow. Circling the wagons and retreating inside a comfort zone of like-minded huggers may offer respite, but won’t deal with the real, harsh world. You need to get out and deal. But you need to be consistent. ‘Hypocrisy’ is a very sticky brush to get tarred with, and difficult to remove. Worse even than doing wrong, so long as you do not commit the heinous crime of changing your mind, as our Leader of the Opposition will find should he come down hard on drug use having been given free pass for indulging while young, silly and very rich.

Speaking of which, while no fault of the individual, and no valid reason to not have an opinion or wish to express it, rolling in it does carry certain problems when telling, or even suggesting how other folk should, or need to behave. As does celebrity, which these days does tend to equate to rich, no matter how gobsmackingly unworthy it may be.

Because there is a slight tendency for a bit of a ‘them’ and ‘us’ thing getting set up from the get-go; more than happily exploited by those who can feed off the tensions created.

To save the future, we are realistically looking at some ‘doing without’, which does not quite gel with global population expansion, economic growth, greater (ie: powered) efficiencies, etc, but there you go.

And to paraphrase another intense farm book wildly, ‘Some can do without more easily than others’. It’s all relative. For every downshifting Pious Prius Person living a posh urban lifestyle, there is a Fairly-concerned Fiesta (it’s a small Brit Ford) Family who may not mind a bit of upward mobility and find it a bit rich that, while flying private jets is OK to spread the word about not flying is necessary for some, it’s not any more for their two week bit of sun a year.

You lead... by example. And hence you need to ask whether the EnviROI (Environmental Return On Investment) is worth the ‘awareness’ of the ‘problem’ vs. the sense of discord sown.

We are starting to get more and more celeb ‘green’ stories and events, and it is striking how the media who get invited into the inner circle (I almost fell off my chair laughing at one gushing report from the backstage VIP ‘Green room’, which had to be cordoned off from the hoi polloi who wanted to see their idols scoff eco-canapés and bubbly) are quite happy to be part of this elite new ‘club’. While a few, either without an invite or with a few remnants of journalistic integrity, do wonder how a PR from a non P-on going from a Hummer to a Lexus Hybrid 4x4 a) warrants a story, b) is in any way making a sacrifice or c) helps the planet, lugging a big battery down the motorway.

So it is perhaps reasonable to expect our ‘green’ ‘leadership’, self-appointed, thrust upon us or, fingers crossed, worthy, to at least try to do what they say we should do.

I don’t really think Gandhi would have quite got where he did with his cause if he decked a few folk who got in his way and then justified it because he was carrying an important message on non-violence, so you just gosh-darn well cut him some slack... or else. Equally any of his entourage. And I do believe if he, they or indeed any supportive entity had tried to argue otherwise they would have got short shrift. Too much flailing about and saying ‘look who’s talking’ just comes across as a tad holier than thou, and not a little defensive and indoctrinated.

So, in such a case, are questions on the validity of the messenger’s effectiveness in bearing this message ‘an attack’?

Looking at the originators (speaking of tarring with broad brushes what is a right wing vs. a left wing think tank anyway?) of the piece, it is probably meant to be so. And I am grateful for a level of back story insight from this and other blogs to have a better idea of the facts. Plus a very reasonable, and unexploited (even here, beyond the original poster, though some have posed questions I hope will see answers to clarify doubt) explanation of high usage to supply a home office (as is mine, hence running the house utilities 24/7) and a staff, though I might need security at some stage for having doubts others would seem to wish to deny me on some issues.

Because some remain, and it really doesn’t matter to me who started what or said what once the debate is engaged if certain facts are established. And beyond the energy usage one that will never change is the media. Was this managed well? About as well as the UK government handled road pricing, I’d say. A sensible notion for future transportation now an electoral albatross to any who dare mention it, even in more considered terms.

I too favour personal responsibility for actions, and by my lifestyle would estimate my family will do quite well from most initiatives.

However I still have a lot of doubts as to who gets to decide (there are also a few Kalahari bushmen may wonder why they don’t get to trade a holiday to Aspen with a broker from Brooklyn flying overhead to sort out some carbon credits between those who have them to trade), as an ex-engineer who dealt in numbers and efficiencies, and a current ad man and green-lite writer who understands short-term politics, corporate activist priorities and corporate PR/CSR greenwashing only to well.

I know it won’t... can’t be 100%, but I don’t want to see any efforts in the name of green on behalf of my future generations carved up between government, NGO and financial trading empire builders’ departments, staff, pensions, comms budgets, fact-finding tours, climate change conferences in nice sunny places. Or subsidising celebs and their massive support systems and sycophantic media camp followers, to have nice parties to boost ‘awareness’ of how much they need to do this so we can’t .

Do what you do best. Live the life. Share it online. Do before you talk. And if it’s worth it, fun and inspiring, people will want to read about what you do.

They may even follow your example.'

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