FuelMonger

www.cnn.com
Air travel has been targeted recently as one of the largest contributors to global warming. Earth friendly travelers have been trying to remedy this situation by purchasing carbon offsets. Is this really enough to counter-act carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions from flights? And how do you go about choosing the right company to purchase carbon offsets from with so many to pick from?

www.nytimes.com
The struggle over a proposal for a huge coal-fired power plant on a Navajo reservation is a homegrown version of the global debate on climate change. For the Navajo nation, energy is the most valuable currency. The tribal lands are rich with uranium, natural gas, wind, sun and, most of all, coal. But two coal-fired power plants here, including one on the reservation, belch noxious fumes, making the air among the worst in the state. And now the tribal council wants to build another one.

The tipping point, according Malcolm Gladwell is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Malcolm Gladwell attributes social epidemics to the three basic characteristics – contagiousness, the fact that little causes can have big effects, and that change happens not gradually but at one dramatic moment. He contends that many social changes were not brought about by huge advertising campaigns, but rather by word of mouth. One person talking to another, spreading the idea around. Gladwell argues that the start of an epidemic is generally attributed to one small change which profoundly impacts its surroundings and that this one small change causes a rapid transformation in ideas or people.

The Tipping Point is a book that links Hush Puppy shoes to the rapid decline of crime in New York City to the children’s show Blue’s Clues to the epidemic of syphilis in the city of Baltimore. The book delves into what caused these and many other phenomenons to spread. Yes, I realize at first glance that this book doesn’t seem to have much to do with energy or the environment, but what we really wanted to examine and discuss with this first book was ideas. Yes, ideas. We wanted to take a closer look at how and why an idea spreads.

There are three “rules” to the Tipping Point – The Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. These three rules help explain the phenomenon of epidemics. The Law of the Few states that just a few small people can be major players in helping to spread an idea. Paul Revere was given as an example of this rule in The Tipping Point. He was just one man, but through the connections he had with people, he was able to quickly spread an idea and cause hundreds of people to take action. Al Gore, with his continuous promotion of the threat of global warming can be considered one of the few people making a big impact on the environment. However, the few don’t necessarily have to be famous. A high school science teacher who opens his students’ eyes to environmental issues year after year could also fall under the category of the few.

The second rule is The Stickiness Factor. With this rule, Gladwell is referencing the fact that when people receive a message, it actually needs to stick with them to be effective. Americans are inundated with so much information that it is very easy for us to weed most of it out. For an idea to “tip” it needs to be presented in a way that it sticks out from the rest of the ideas being thrown at us. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is one of the stickiest green ideas of the past century. Her book on the dangers of DDT, first published in 1962, is considered by many to be the start of the environmental movement.

The third rule is the Power of Context. It states that human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem. The example given in the book is of the New York City crime scene. In the 1980s, the city of New York decided to take an entirely different approach to fighting crime. Instead of waiting for people to be murdered and then going out, finding the murders, and punishing them, the police force would concentrate on making an environment where people would not commit the murders on the first place. They cleaned up the city graffiti, fixed windows on old buildings, and started punishing minor fractions such as failure to pay a subway fare. According to Gladwell, we are so sensitive to our environment that it is possible to be a better person on a clean street than in one littered with trash and graffiti.

The real question that we want to examine after reading this book is what is going to be the tipping point when it comes to creating a clean, sustainable Earth. Are you going to be the Paul Revere that spreads the word so that people actually want to take action? In what way to we need to package the green message so that it sticks with a large number of people and in what context do they need to receive that message? Rachel Carson’s book was a good starting point and certainly tipped people in the direction of becoming environmentally aware. However, now that we are all well aware of the need to have a sustainable way of life, what is going to be the message that finally tips us as a society to take action?

Gladwell closes his book by stating “Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push – in just the right place – it can be tipped.” While he was not directly talking about green thinking, it is applicable here. The right message is out there, the stage is set with the majority of people aware of the negative effects humanity is having on the earth, and there are plenty of people talking about it. What do you think is going to be the tipping point in green thinking? Do you even think we will be able to tip people’s thinking on the environment? Do you think we will be able to create the tipping point before we have done irreparable damage to the earth or do you think it will take a catastrophic event to get people to really act? Join us in our discussion.