I have to admit that, like many people, it was only recently that I woke up to the importance of global warming.
Before that, environmentalism was always someone else's issue. Something I was sympathetic towards, but in a vague kind of way. I recycled, poorly. I argued with my parents about their recycling habits (because, hey, what good is having parents if you can't act like a self-righteous teenager with them, even when you're a full-fledged adult?). But that was about the extent of it.
Like many people, I woke up one day about a year and a half ago, following a hurricane and a brilliant documentary, and found that suddenly, everyone seemed to finally admit that global warming was a problem. My mom had suddenly bought a Prius. Because, she told me, it was the right thing to do. (The right thing to do!) Green websites were sprouting up like, um... weeds.
But it was only when moving to London last year that my behavior really began to change.
While America has older and more developed green NGO networks than the UK, environmentalism has worked its way far deeper into everyday British life. For example, I went into a large supermarket chain in London to get groceries a few months back. When I checked out, I noticed that in addition to giving me a very thick grocery bag I could reuse indefinitely, they also threw an energy-saver light bulb in my sack.
"That's not mine," I said to the check-out guy, confused. "It's a freebie," he replied. A promotion, obviously, but this stuff is in your face here in a way I'd not encountered before.
Likewise, in the office of the non-profit where I worked downtown, there were constant reminders to be aware. The light switches, for example, had stickers on top, with a short reminder, which read simply, "climate change." I can assure you that lights in that office were rarely on when they didn't absolutely need to be.
The garbage area in the office even had composting, despite some logistical challenges in that regard (and everyone in the building knew to take out the orange peels from the compost because they did something bad to its chemical make-up.).
There was also the famous tub for "washing-up" your dishes. In the office, the tub had signs above it reminding us to save water by washing our mugs in batches. But the washing-up tub is also a ubiquitous feature of most British households.
Mind you, I've also been chided several times, gently and not so gently, for my behavior. I stayed with a wonderfully generous (and very environmentally conscientious) woman my first few weeks here. One day, when coming back from dumping our recycling in the bin for the apartment complex, she came back with a furrowed brow on her face. "Paula," she said (and I could tell she was searching for the right words), "you haven't really gotten the hang of recycling yet, have you?" And she proceeded to explain that if I didn't wash my yogurt pots before putting them in the recycling, the food residue would basically contaminate the whole lot.
Other friends have had long arguments with me about my flying habits (which are mostly for work, but still pretty heavy).
Researchers have spent decades perfecting methods for how to change people's behavior on a given social issue. The basic answer, though, is fairly obvious. As every marketeer knows, people have to hear about an issue over and over and over -- getting it from all directions -- before they will even consider taking action. Most importantly, they have to hear about the issue from people they know and trust.
My experience is a perfect example of this basic lesson. If the green movement were charting their target audience, I would be at the forefront of their second tier. I'm not a born environmentalist, but as someone who is deeply concerned with global poverty issues, I would naturally be sympathetic to the cause. And yet, just watching Al Gore's film was not enough for me. What ultimately got me to change my behavior -- to screw in that energy-saving light bulb, or to reconsider whether I really needed to rent that car for a recent business trip -- was being surrounded by a dense network of people who educated me about the importance of these choices.
I shouldn't overstate the case. My life hasn't changed all that much. I still forget my cloth bags fairly often when going to the grocery store. More importantly, and outweighing all the rest of my environmental impact combined, I haven't stopped flying. (But that is a complicated subject, a dilemma best saved for another post.)
But I am more acutely aware than ever of how much further we have to go. And I am more willing than ever to support a process which will help us put our money where our mouth is politically -- to accept the tradeoffs we'll need to create economic incentives for the adoption of green technologies.
I am willing to do so not because of some deep, inbred ecological awareness... not because I always knew this was the right thing to do. At the end of the day, I am willing to do so, basically, because my friends and colleagues -- my network, in other words -- convinced me.