The Sound Green

Nature is a PBS show that is in its 28^th season. The show is designed to bring the ‘natural world’ into people’s homes. It has received upwards of 450 awards. Does the number of awards it seems to accumulate mean that people do care about nature? Is the show soaking up the advantage of having a widespread audience to get out an environmental message for change. Messages need outlets to be heard and this show is a perfect one. It is an example of working with what is popular to make something else popular. I recommend watching a show!

http://ncseonline.org/NAE/envirojustice.html

Here is the link to some of the “alternative” environmental views of Native Americans. Essentially they look at humans, plants, and animals as equally important. I was actually talking to my roommate about this over the weekend and his response was, “Hey just like those blue people in Avatar.” This is absolutely correct, because the “blue people” of Avatar are BASED on the ideas of Native Americans, which many people don’t actually realize. This makes me think of the “Avatar Depression” people faced, where after seeing Avatar they became depressed they can’t live in a place like Pandora. When in reality there are places like this and Native Americans have been teaching these “alternative” views for a very long time.

For my project interview I met up with Janet Nazy from the Partnership for Water Conservation. The main purpose of the company is to bring together other companies and help communicate the message of water conservation. So of course, she had a wealth of information on good communication techniques. She noted that by far the most successful way to get people to agree with your message is by appealing to their emotions. I thought this was very interesting because we talk about this all the time in class. One example she gave is when she has a booth set up at a public event, she gets much more of a response when she includes disturbing pictures of what can happen if we don’t take care of the water. If she has no visuals, not as many people notice the booth or care to stop by. She said that through her experience most people out there don’t want to change their habits and could care less about water conservation. To change those types of people you just have to make it hit home, and the only way to do that is through an emotional response.

Here is the website to the Partnership for Water Conservation; they do some really cool stuff.

http://www.partners4water.org/index.html

Last night i was reading the Alex Steffen article preparing for the quiz today. Reading it right after the Gore article was very disturbing. Although I'm not sure i feel the same pending death and destruction the Al Gore does, i do feel that he is making a good point in that strong action needs to be taken to combat global warming. Steffen's article further made me realizes that drastic measures need to be taken in order to change the process that has already been started. The reason this is depressing to me is our government in its current form can not take dramatic action of any sort. If al Gore is even close to right about the seriousness of this issue then we are all doomed. Things are not going to change in the way Steffen is proposing, there are to many powerful interests opposing them. Real change can not happen if our government continues to work, or not work, as it does. I don't want to be a downer but i believe that our government in incapable of anything but the smallest of reforms, and if Steffen and Gore are right then we are f-ed. Change will not come, no we can't. Sorry but we are all going to die.

These are prototypes without knowing anything more, what do these make you think about???

20. You Must Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

19. Every Time History Repeats Itself the Price Goes Up.

18. Where Do You Think the Environment Is?

17. What Would Nature Do?

16. I Object to NOT Saving our Planet

15. Can You Hear the Eco?

14. Hear the Trees Falling?

13. Ignore It And It Will Go Away

12. What Will Your Children Breathe?

11. What Will Your Children Drink?

10. See Green, See Life

9. Melting Ice – A Hot Topic!

8. Delivering Environmental Innovation Through Sustainable Practices.

7. Kick the CO2 Habit

6. Green. That’s how we’d like the world to be.

5. Good Golly, Go Green Girl

4. It’s Cool to Be an Eco-school

3. Green for Bikes

2. Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

1. Will Work for Trees

I found these slogan approaches to be interesting and it got me thinking about what each of them is asking audiences to do or what exactly the slogan is getting at. Try to think of ways you react to these twenty slogans. The website below also offers some insight into what each one means or draws on.

One of the most interesting challenges that I have run into with my project is working with a government agency - Seattle Parks & Recreation.  From day one at my internship in social media marketing, I was so surprised that people would just trust me not to post inappropriate or irrelevant information through Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, etc, accounts.  I hold in my hands the passwords to dozens of accounts of big-named clients!  Working with the government is an entirely different story.  I thought it would be as simple as creating a Facebook page and Twitter account, making it look pretty, coming up with a good strategy, and approving it before going live.  In reality, the page has to be set up and branded as seattle.gov by one person for every single government organization that wants to go on FB, and after that's done, I have to go to their office and edit it from their computer on their account.  They are toying with giving me access temporarily as an admin of the fanpage.  They are advanced enough to have a social media policy, and I hate to challenge our government (Ok, no, I really don't) but Facebook changes every few months and they are not up-to-date to deal with it.  I realize now that it's a struggle because they have to bring up policy changes in official meetings which might be laden with pressing issues... but seriously, if they have a social media addict and professional come in to help for free, you've got to be able to accept their help!  This project might be more than just a temporary nice Facebook page... jobs in the parks department are just waiting to be cut, and if we can build a shown fanbase and outreach for events and classes at the Camp Long Environmental Learning Center, who knows, a few more naturalist jobs might be able to stay after all.  Get with the program, and accept my help already, Seattle, WA!