Why are environmental activists so clueless at marketing climate change solutions?
Virgin Blue, the Australian extension of Richard Branson’s airline empire, recently launched a program to allow passengers to purchase carbon offsets when they book a flight. That’s nice. But what struck me was this quote from Greenpeace’s energy campaigner, Ben Pearson: Virgin should not be criticized out of hand for this scheme, but it promotes the idea that dealing with climate change is easy and cheap rather than being about the difficult task of changing consumer behavior, government policy and investment. Let’s take the Pepsi Challenge. Pretend I just told you that I have a problem that I’d like your help in fixing. To address this problem, we have to pick a course of action. Which course of action sounds more appealing to you: • Easy. Cheap. • Difficult task. Changing consumer behavior. Government policy. Investment. I confess that I find criticisms like Ben Pearson’s utterly baffling. Of course addressing climate change will be difficult. Of course it will require changes to co
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- Why are environmental activists so clueless at marketing climate change solutions?
