shopping-carts

On Thursday, bloggers around the world united to write about one single topic: climate change.  It was an act of solidarity organized by the folks at blogactionday.org.

Every year, a major social topic is selected and willing participants around the world discuss the issue on their blogs on the same day in an attempt to raise widespread awareness.

Unfortunately, little old me didn’t know such a day existed until it was too late. Even though I write about this, one way or another, every day, lets consider this my belated contribution.

I learned about this year’s blog action day from Chris Guillebeau while perusing my new favorite site, The Art of Nonconformity. There’s always some great discussion over there and one comment in particular caught my attention:

Yet again the focus is on the little guy. Does the little led on my TV really matter when cities the world over are full of high rise offices that leave their lights on 24/7? Manufacturing and business produce the most harmful emissions and yet the emphasis is on the little home dweller?

This really got me thinking. Was he right?  Are we picking on the little guys when the the big boys are the ones causing all the problems?

What difference does it make that I turn off all of my lights when the office buildings down the street leave theirs on all night doing 10,000 times more damage than I ever could?  Who cares if we buy an electric car when all the electricity it produces comes from a wildly smoking coal plant hundreds of miles away?

Why should I bother?

Here’s why: because you and I are the most powerful change agents that exist on this planet.

You may think that you can’t make a difference and that some guy in a suit sitting in an ivory tower that doesn’t care about you is calling all the shots, but it’s not true.

We own that suit.  We own that ivory tower.  When we say jump, that guy listens. The only reason he isn’t jumping yet is because we haven’t told him to. Maybe we’ve started, but we haven’t raised our voice yet.  You and I hold all of the power. Let’s wield it.

How corporations work

The  #1 responsibility of every corporation that exists is to make money for its shareholders.

Sure, they all have noble secondary goals that tout their value to society, but the one, big, underlying goal that every single one of them is a slave to is to make lots of money for the people that invest in them.  The beauty in this is that, usually, the very noble secondary goals must be met in order to generate that profit.

They have to provide us with something that we find valuable enough to trade our hard earned money for.

You see, you and I don’t really care about shareholders and all those shinanigans.  How much money they make doesn’t bother us so long as we think we’re getting a good deal for something useful. In fact, if we decided to pay attention to all that, we might even be happy that these businesses that are making our lives so much better are making tons of money.

This is where we get to step in and call the shots.

Why you and I are responsible

Like I mentioned above, if a business must attract tons of our money to return great amounts of it to shareholders, it has to impress the heck out of us. To impress the heck out of us, what it offers must deeply connect with what we value the most.

Whatever it is that you and I find the most important in life, a company must provide to us in order to rise to the top.

So the buck stops at you.  It stops at me.  What do we really care about?

Do we care that Corporation A runs a sweat shop filled with incandescent lights that stay on all day and night? Does it matter to you that Corporation B swallows up tons of resources and spews out waste at an alarming rate?  What about Corporation C that produces its own energy with wind and solar power and recycles all its waste back into its production stream? Does any of that actually matter?

What I believe the commenter on Chris’ post points out, inadvertently, is that it does not. We all say we care about and want the best for our environment, but is that really true?  Every marketer out there that’s worth his weight in salt knows that what we consumers say we want and what we actually want are oftentimes very contradictory.

McDonalds knows this better than any business out there and they openly admit it.  Their customers say they want salads, so McDonalds offers just enough varieties of them to get you to come in and buy a cheeseburger.

If we really, truly, in our heart of hearts, valued Corporation C above, that business model would be the industry norm.  But we don’t and it isn’t.  What we really care about is money and giving up just enough of it to get something just barely acceptable in return.

We care about this because it strengthens our ability to do it again and again. We’re consumers.  Now, don’t get offended. I’m guilty as sin.  Luckily, there’s something we can do.

The power we wield

What we seem to fail to realize seemingly over and over again is that the cheapest things in our lives are the ones we buy the most often.

Even though they’re made from recycled materials, sourced from renewable resources, and manufactured with renewable energy, the most sustainable products and businesses out there are still more expensive than their opposing counterparts.

If you and I decide, together, that a shoe made from recycled car tires by union employees is what we really value, then it won’t take that long for such a product to become less expensive than a plastic one made in a sweatshop by 8-year-olds as the economies of scale push the cost of such a product lower as we buy more of it and less of the other.

And that’s just the thing. We have to actually buy these products - not just say we will. Actions speak much louder than words and this all ties back to the concept that spending more upfront can often save us bundles down the road.

Nope, the little things don’t matter

“But I’m just one person.  What difference can I make?”

Well, I suppose that depends on how you interpret the question.  The little steps you take to improve your awareness and value for the environment will never add up to much. All by yourself you will never make a difference, and that’s OK.

Big changes are bigger than you and me. What you do doesn’t really matter.  Who you influence does.

If only one person reads this post (I’m secretly holding out for more than that) and decides its worth their effort to try something new, then I have doubled the effectiveness of my minuscule efforts.

If that person influences someone else they know to change as well, I’m three times as effective. By acting on my values with sincerity, however little they’ll accomplish on their own, I have the opportunity to attract many others that are predisposed to my message.  There’s little else I have to do as others will take over the cause for me.

If you do this right, you can be the head of your own multi-level marketing scheme, tell all the CEOs of the world how you want your fair-trade coffee served, and finally buy an organic cotton T-shirt for a reasonable price.  And while you’re at it, you can let them know they need to turn off their lights when they go home.

Can ya dig?

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I’ve had some great responses to the survey I posted on Tuesday.  Thank you so much to those of you that have participated.  If you haven’t yet taken it and would like to, please do so now. I will be closing down responses on Wednesday.

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Shopping cart image by just.Luc (just.Censored)

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