My first thought was, “Wow, that was a fast turn around,” believing that somehow the Hon. Stéphane Dion, Canada’s former federal Minister of the Environment, and a pretty cool dude, had penned a treatise on his very recent experience chairing the climate conference – COP 11 - in Montreal last December.
Then I read the subtitle: Insights into meeting with captains of industry, government big-wigs, and environmental gurus to find long-term solutions to end climate change. Hmmm … didn’t seem like the Hon. Minister to me.
And then the kicker: If you want an easier way to fight global warming, donate to us. With your funding WWF-Canada can do things that you wish you could. The ad directed people to visit saveourclimate.ca to donate.
So when I got home that night I went to saveourclimate.ca, and contacted WWF to request PDF’s of their ad. (They are on the web page…) I had learned from a colleague that this particular ad was part of a series of radio, TV, and print ads that were airing in Toronto. (The second book was bathroom reading: 2352 Easy Ways to Make Fossil Fuels Extinct.)
The goal of the campaign is to raise $200,000 for WWF to use to combat global warming, with a particular focus on Canada’s north.
To say that the ad miffed me would be an understatement. The message that oozes from the ad is that the average citizen 1) isn’t clever enough to understand the complexities of global warming and its solutions, 2) isn’t motivated or interested enough to take action, and 3) they don’t need to anyway, because WWF can do it all for them. So hand over your money, and go about your lives, citizens. The Panda is on the job.
Now before I go any further, I want to say three things: First, when you visit www.saveourclimate.ca, the message found on the billboards isn’t reiterated. In fact, it’s a reasonably good, interactive website. There are things for people to do there other than donate. There are some tips for conserving energy. You can sign on online petition. There is a letter that can be printed and mailed to your Member of Parliament. In my book, the site gets 7 out of 10 for creativity, and 5 out of 10 for engagement. Not Bad.
Secondly, I don’t dispute WWF, or any other organization’s need or right to raise money to do its good work. When I was an executive director, I had to raise about $1,500 a day, every day, to pay for the operations of a very small national conservation group.
Thirdly, I’m not anti World Wildlife Fund. Not specifically. They do good work. In the late 1990’s I worked to protect areas in Alberta with WWF’s provincial rep, Peter Lee, one of the most effective advocates for nature in that province. Today they are focused on a couple of key issues – the Mackenzie Valley pipeline and global warming, to name two. Very important issues to which they contribute significantly.
But these ads are not a significant contribution. They are a set back. They roll the clock back a good, long way in how Canadian and North American conservation organization’s work with and engage the public.
These ads say, “We don’t need you. We’re so big and smart and connected and influential and effective that all we need is your money and we’ll solve these problems all by ourselves.”
I hope this is not what the good people at WWF really think. I hope that this is a case where the fundraising staff, and the advertising firm, got way out in front of the thinking at the organization, and that they now need to be reined in. Fast.
For the last twenty years the environmental movement has accelerated its professionalization. We’ve hired staff, created a brand for our organizations, started sophisticated marketing and fundraising campaigns, and in doing so put miles between ourselves and the mom and pop operations – the kitchen table activities – that gave us the first Earth Day in 1970, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and the Endangered Species Act in the US, and Canada’s marvellous National Parks system in Canada.
But to keep pace with the threats that we face – loss of biodiversity, the extinction of species, the impact of global warming – we’ve had to professionalize. The scale of the problem demands that we have people able to wake up every morning thinking about solutions. In 1996 I took my first paying job as an activist and I’ve never looked back.
But somewhere along the path to professionalization, we’ve forgotten that our real power as a movement is with people. People in communities. People who see the impact of climate change as shorelines erode, or as animal migration changes and habitat disappears. People who can taste the air. People who feel the assault on their bodies from toxic waste and who fear for their children’s future as smog pollutes their lungs.
We’ve forgotten that power is only useful when it is disseminated, when it is dispersed. When it is given away.
When an organization grows and gains power
it should become like the ocean
so that all streams will run downhill to it
The larger the organization grows
the lower it should stoop in humility
Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching, 61
In Carry Tiger to Mountain
If we’re going to effectively combat the impact of global warming, then we’re going to need people to feel empowered, not powerless. We’re going to need to turn to communities – to tens of thousands of communities – and learn from them what needs to be done to dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and then help them implement their ideas. And we’re going to have to learn to trust them.
We’ve got to understand by now that ameliorating the impact of climate change isn’t going to be accomplished by screwing in what my colleague Marc Stoiber calls “squirrelly light bulbs.” It’s going to take a sea change in our thinking, in our action, and in how we make decisions as a society. To do that, we’re going to need everybody working as advocates, not just WWF.
Organizations like WWF, and other large, national brands, have an important role to play in that effort. We need to empower our grassroots community activists. There ad says that people can go about their lives, drive their SUVs, buy their plasma TVs, so long as they donate twenty bucks to WWF. Visa card absolution.
This is not the way to build a movement in Canada, and across North America, that can tackle global warming. But what is?
What do you think the environmental movement needs? I’d like to hear from you. I’ve also given WWF an opportunity to post their response to my thoughts here, which I very much hope they will do. And I’ll be posting further thoughts in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
