This article first appeared in the Work-Life issue of Design Mind, the publication of the global innovation firm frog design.
There is much talk about changing how we live to address climate change. Given our resource-constrained world, it has become clear that we must redesign the way we run our homes, businesses and cities to waste less and conserve more. Indeed, many exciting technological breakthroughs in energy efficiency and management have enabled shifts in our behavior. But just because change makes rational sense -- and despite the solutions at hand -- we continue to follow the same routines we've followed for decades. Collectively and individually, we are reluctant to alter our lifestyles. We like what we know and tend to do things as we have done them in the past. But what if changing the way we live and creating a carbon-free world turned out to be healthier, saved us money, and proved even more comfortable? It can. We just need to make it work for people.
Rethinking Our Approach
Growing scientific evidence tells us that climate change is becoming a more substantial and imminent threat. I am acutely aware of this fact because I have been to many climate change meetings and summits and, for the past two years, I've worked for Al Gore‚ helping him build the Alliance for Climate Protection, a social-marketing campaign to mobilize people around solutions to the current crisis. It can be depressing sometimes. As we rush toward the cliff as a society, the average person seems to be either unaware or unconcerned. Exhibit halls at clean-tech conferences are filled with the latest energy-efficient light bulbs, electric vehicles, and demonstrations of how we might live someday. Everywhere we turn‚ there are magazines with celebrities fighting climate change or articles about the coming clean-tech revolution. It seems that at least one "green" TV show is on every hour, extolling the virtues of emerging technologies. However, it all doesn't seem quite real for some reason. Why not? Advocates and entrepreneurs still haven't found a clear, compelling way to make this future a reality for individuals on either a local or global scale -- or how to do it fast enough to make a difference. So most people still aren't convinced that we need to change the way we live.
What's missing from every conference panel, in the exhibit halls, and on the nightly news is a fuller discussion about how we can effect change right now. Never in human history have we deliberately tried to change the fundamental way our economy works and our society consumes. Yet we haven't put enough thought or effort into how to shift the human dynamic to enable a revolution. We know that without widespread market adoption, no technology will proliferate and become standard practice. While policy and innovation are clearly important, what we primarily need to focus on is how we as humans adopt and adapt to change. We need to better understand what motivates us as people, how we live today, and what our relationship to energy is.
Understanding Energy Use
Tons of human energy and social capital are being spent to reach a global political agreement on climate change that will set targets for emission reductions. This in turn will spur countries to establish new rules that drive capital toward non-carbon producing industries and technologies‚ and create predictability in the market. This needs to happen: We have enough experience to know that predictability and rules can help shift markets. Meanwhile, early investors in clean tech are betting that the markets will indeed shift, fueling demand for their low-carbon alternatives. This is sound thinking -- and likely time and money well spent. But what if the average consumer doesn't want to change?
While pushing for global consensus and regulation, we need to spend an equal amount of time and money on figuring out how to redesign our current existence. We need to better understand how we live, work, and interact with energy right now. If we examine what the average person in any society doesn't like about how they currently live, what annoys them, and what they want improved, perhaps we could find answers in clean, healthy alternatives. Additionally, we need a deep understanding of the cultural and political obstacles to change and determine the best ways to break these down. I'm not suggesting focus groups or polling for attitudes. We need practical research that involves experts and people working together to identify what works for individuals and communities -- and what doesn't. We have millions of smart‚ creative professionals who spend their time and billions of dollars figuring out how to get consumers to buy the latest car or embrace the next mobile phone. Imagine if we could get these same folks to apply their energy and talent toward convincing consumers to embrace a more sustainable way of life.
Shifting the Global Mindset
Until that happens, however, we can't assume that anyone will want to manage their energy use just because some new gizmo offers them a window into the smart grid, or that we'll rush to retrofit our homes and office buildings on the promise that it will save us money down the road. And we can't count on massive behavior change based on a collective realization that we need to change in order to preserve the planet. What we need to do is come up with a practical means of shifting mindsets across cultures. We need both innovative tools and motivation for implementing them in a way that works for real people.
Al Gore often quotes an African proverb: "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." When it comes to combating climate change, we need to go far together -- but we need to act quickly. In other words, we must collectively work toward understanding our own behavior on a global scale -- and figure out what it will take to prompt rapid, widespread adoption of a new way of living. We can jump-start the clean-energy revolution and address the challenges of a resource-constrained world if we work together. Let's get to it!.
Brian Hardwick, formerly of Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, is a senior vice president at Kratos Global Strategies, where he directs the clean-tech practice. He is also a consultant for frog's energy expert group. www.kratosglobal.com
Follow Brian Hardwick on Twitter: www.twitter.com/briandhardwick
We do need to work fast to bridge the gap between "how we might live someday" and actually using these technologies to improve quality of life and halt climate change. If the average consumer doesn't want to change their behavior we need to create tools that make change desirable and seamless - products that are sexy and easy to use - something that will be eagerly anticipated and sought after - and when the next smart grid home interface is left on a bar stool in Redwood City, people will clamor for the first glimpse.
What an exciting time to be alive. I am hopeful that we'll see firsthand how a knowledge of ingrained human behavior coupled with inspired human innovation will propel us into a greener future. Happy Earth Day!
For example, as a part-part time mixologist I know that every night in every bar across the United States and beyond, bartenders at the end of the night use HOT water to melt unused ice in their wells. Imagine if this one wasteful act was ended by the entire industry.
If every bar/bartender started recycling their unused ice at the end of every night, there would be less waste, energy used, right? I think so. I also think you begin to change the way everyday people/barmen and women view their resources, which hopefully would leave the bar with them.
I believe there are infinite examples like this to explore at the practical level, that achieve both conservation and mind shift.
Although not yet widely believed by scientists, water can replace oil as fuel.
Future cars might become substantial power plants when suitably parked, ending any need to build coal or nuclear plants and demonstrating far less expensive alternatives to fossil fuel. Eventually, automobiles may pay for themselves.
See Moving Beyond Oil and Running on Water at: http://www.aesopinstitute.org
To learn more about water as fuel, visit the website of parallel technology developer, BlackLight Power.
Scientists understandably have a hard time accepting fractional Hydrogen, the basis of this radically new energy.
Laboratories should repeat the fractional Hydrogen experiments published by Rowan University and successfully repeated by GEN3 Partners, who advise Fortune 100 firms.
National labs should perform those experiments as well as design their own.
As technology using small quantities of water as fuel is demonstrated and reaches the market, it will become increasingly difficult to ridicule, ignore or deny.
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, within a few months a bomber rolled off an assembly line every 59 minutes.
These radically new technologies are much simpler and inherently cost-competitive.
Let's have an all out effort to develop them without delay!
There will be widespread support to end the rising price of imported oil - which threatens to abort economic recovery.
Rapid reduction in the need for fossil and nuclear fuels can be led by consumer demand.
The simple truth is that people want a DEMOCRATIC, not AUTOCRATIC energy model, which means Chevron Solar Solutions and the others I listed (including their pseudonyms like Bright Source and Cogentrix) can NOT BE SUPPORTED in their massive, hugely wasteful, expensive, destructive Big Solar and Big Wind boondoggles.
The DOE has proven that 100% of the US' electricity can be produced using cheap thin film on EXISTING ROOFTOPS IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT. So why are WE, the ratepayers, homeowners and taxpayers denied the proven programs that would quickly, cleanly, democratically and INCREDIBLY CHEAPLY get a national 33% RPS online?
I'm referring, of course, to PACE style loans and feed in tariffs. If we had those, energy consumption would drop dramatically, property values and local jobs would hugely increase, and all the "profits" would be to local, real people, as disposable income, which means economic stimulus. No dead wilderness, depleted water, SF6 pollution, or monopoly control.
So, why aren't these policies being pushed by the hundreds of "green" organizations instead of Big Energy profiteering in our wilderness?
Thank you for your insights. Totally agree that local solutions that are sparked by policy will be key in getting this done. The green groups are spending most of their resource and energy on a global deal and passing a federal climate bill at the moment. Your point that PACE financing and other local initiatives may ultimately be more effective at driving the change we need.
-Brian