#123) Malibu Lagoon: How to Combat Environmental Disinformation
March 25th, 2011
“Total Tactics” is something you can see at work in the efforts to fend off the disinformation campaign assembled around the Malibu Lagoon Restoration Project. Which is cool.
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A 5 MINUTE VIDEO with environmental senior statesman and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Mark Dowie. He talks about the importance of “total tactics,” which is something every environmental activist should know well.
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#122) The Battle over “the facts” at Malibu Lagoon
March 17th, 2011
Given they have Pamela Anderson on their team, the issue almost seems laughable. But it’s not really that funny when you consider the 10 years of hard work and diligence by the environmental community around Malibu, California that is now teetering on the edge of collapse as a group of opponents attempt to stage a last minute attack. The environmental side has failed to engage in any sort of mass communication until now — in large part because they assumed the community was with them. So I convinced them to support me in making a short video that addresses the 5 major distortions of the facts that have been occurring.
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The 5 minute video I directed to help convey the basic facts about the Malibu Lagoon Restoration project which has been increasingly distorted by local interests.
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We’ve finally posted to Youtube a video I made nearly 20 years ago that features three women scientists who are still amazingly contemporary in what they have to say (which is maybe not entirely a great thing for women in science).
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PART I: Ignore the parts with me (I was just learning how to make videos) — just get to where they are talking — the three of them are really great. The video is a discussion with the late Ruth Turner, Cindy Van Dover, and Colleen Cavanaugh — all women scientists who work in the deep sea submersible R.V. Alvin.
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#120) Sawing Logs on a Burning Planet
March 10th, 2011
It’s so boring. I’m sorry. I’m just going to keep on saying this. It’s the 500 pound gorilla nobody wants to talk about. Everyone would rather get together at their environmental film festivals and coo over the latest majestic environmental home movies about climate change than admit it’s a deadly boring subject. Why is this on my mind? I heard another data point this week to add to the pile.
What if “THE END OF THE WORLD” was too boring for anyone to take an interest in it?
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#119) Climategate and Al Capone’s Vault: Same Story
March 9th, 2011
I knew I’d heard the Climategate story before, it just took a while to finally make the connection. The basic story is, “Big, suspenseful media event produces huge audience, but in the ends everyone is forced to admit, ‘There’s nothing here.'” But it doesn’t matter because the event itself becomes the story and produces that most cherished resource in today’s society — ATTENTION!
LOTTA NADA. Geraldo Rivera held the world in suspense in 1986 as he blew open the doors of Al Capone’s vault and found … nuttin’. Same thing happened with the stolen emails of climate scientists in 2009, which proved to be smoking gunless.
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Something has to change. You can’t just keep sounding alarms. The public isn’t responding. They are saturated. “But it’s the truth,” might work for you, but it’s not enough for them. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. There are basic storytelling dynamics behind much of the problem. So what do you do when you need new approaches?
THE BIG “SO WHAT.” The environmental movement put a lot of chips on the Tennessee Snail Darter in the 1970’s and lost. Then they put their chips on “An Inconvenient Truth,” and lost. Now they can’t figure out why their predictions of future doom, such as the demise of coral reefs, are going unheeded.
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Oh, what’s that deranged idiot Charlie Sheen talking about now? And how come everyone in this country would rather listen to him than Steven Chu, the Secretary of Energy. I just don’t get it. Why are people so stoooopid.
WHO’S HARDEST TO TAKE YOUR EYES OFF?
IRRATIONALITY WINS
He stole the limelight from the Oscars. The biggest night of awards on the planet. But the morning after, more people were talking about Charlie Sheen and his IRRATIONAL behavior than they were about the big show.
What does this tell you about human nature? Very simple. Irrational behavior is endlessly fascinating. Rational behavior isn’t.