Most people reading this are probably visiting from the Pluspora social media network, where I'm modestly active. It's an acceptable substitute for Google Plus, mainly thanks to the community more than the site itself (which is, frankly, crap). You can get some genuinely intelligent, protracted discussion going there about all kinds of topics, largely without having to deal with trolls or lunatics. Challenge someone's argument and most of the time it at least doesn't immediately descend into a shouting match. That alone is more than adequate compensation for the interface that looks like it wandered out of the mid 1990's having forgotten to put any clothes on.
Nevertheless, at times scrolling through the feed is highly unpleasant. Not because the content people post is wrong, and only in part because a lot of it is very bad, but mainly because so much of it is damn depressing.
When I say "bad", I do mean bad. There are opinion pieces masquerading as fact. There are random, unsourced factoid memes aplenty. There's activism championing a plethora of moderately interesting causes. And there's a tonne of stuff which does literally nothing at all except evoke an emotional response.
What exactly am I supposed to do with this ?
I have absolutely no idea. There's a lot of stuff which seems to be intended just to make people angry, or blame some group for the follies of some other group. I don't doubt the sincere intentions of those posting it, nor do I even doubt the validity of most of the claims made, but much of it has simply no real function. It makes me momentarily angry, then I forget about it, and after a while I just feel depressed because of the horrible things going on in the world. Most of it is utterly irrelevant to my day-to-day life which is, to be blunt, really quite a pleasant experience, but much of social media seems to be hell-bent on convincing me that it isn't and/or isn't supposed to be.
Look, according to my feed for the last twelve hours, I should be worried about :
- Algorithms ruining privacy
- Overgrazing by cattle
- Drug-resistant microbes
- Amazon's efforts to suppress a book about capitalism
- Climate change
- Kids falling behind in school and how we should blame the parents
- Men not being in touch with their feminine side
- The difference between Republicans and Democrats both being ineffectual in office
- Men shaming slutty women too much
- Some weird shit about 8-inch sharks in goldfish bowls
- Republicans not caring about anyone except billionaires
Again, it's not that I doubt the validity of the causes. It's just that it's stuck forever on the "raising awareness" stage, with no concrete plan forward, no concern for whether it's preaching to the choir or actually having a meaningful effect on people who might actually benefit from it, and most of it really boils down to a simple expression akin to saying, "I HAVE AN EMOTION RIGHT NOW". A great deal of it is so petty that it almost makes Harry and Megan sound interesting. Sometimes, it's all feckin' exhausting.
This leads me on to... energy supply ! Of course, what else ?
Bear with me just a little longer. I promise this will all tie together soon.
We've learned two relevant but completely disparate things from the pandemic. First, that most people are in fact content to follow the rules. What they won't necessarily do is volunteer to do anything beyond them. And that's perfectly understandable : if the rules say it's safe to meet up with another household, a relatively small proportion won't take advantage of this. And second, we've seen that energy supply is by far and away the dominant factor (leaving aside agriculture and industry and other factors in climate change) that needs to tackled if we're to move to a greener future. Getting people to reduce their energy usage just isn't going to cut it - not even close.
What's the connection between all this ? Well, the article linked below finds that if you change people to green energy, most people won't voluntarily switch back, despite it being more expensive than fossil fuels. Like organ donation, it's far better to have an opt-out model than opt-in. The burden of switching, even if not particularly difficult, is enough to put people off. And people are willing to pay a bit more for cleaner energy. Of course, we shouldn't judge those who do switch back to fossil fuels - I would bet heavily that most of them simply can't afford the extra expense.
So why don't most people voluntarily switch to green energy in the first place ? The same reason they don't get organ donor cards : it takes time and effort that they don't have. It's not that they don't care. It's that they're overwhelmed with other things to do. This is why the burden should lie firmly and specifically with those who make the rules, not (only) on the general public. People are pretty good at following the rules, but they expect those rules to be sensible. That they don't voluntarily switch to cleaner energy doesn't mean they don't want to, or even that they're put off by the higher prices - it's just that they're overwhelmed with other things. They don't have the spare energy left to give it its due attention. They're busy satisfying their own needs, not because they're selfish, but out of raw necessity.
It isn't only social media, of course. It's everything. Not only are you supposed to work hard and long hours, but then you're expected to listen to the endlessly depressing news and then you're expected to care about a billion different causes of which pretty much none are either relevant, important, or anything you can do anything much about anyway. Modern society -at least in its virtual incarnations - is a bit like being trapped in an orphanage for depressed lepers who run an animal sanctuary but is now on fire. Pratchett said, "do the good that's in front of you", but bloody hell it's hard to know where to start.
In Utopia for Realists, the author makes the point that many impoverished people do not claim benefits they're perfectly entitled to : the burden of filing the claim is just too much, especially given the circumstances. And in The Happy Brain, the author notes that even being happy continuously is a tiring process. So I would suggest that a variant of compassion fatigue can affect everyone. If you're being asked to continuously care about everything, to have a passionately-held opinion on just about every possible topic from toxic masculinity to unjust labour laws in the cheese-making industry, you'll end up doing... nothing. It's like being pulled in a dozen different directions all at once. If you were asked instead to just do one simple thing, I suggest the results might be markedly different.
This is not the only possible interpretation, of course. It's also possible that this is just sheer human nature, that we tend towards inaction unless a specific threshold is reached - either that of a reward or a punishment. But I would suggest that compassion fatigue does at least play a role in shifting that threshold if nothing else.
And all this goes both ways. It's possible that most of those who don't switch back do so for the same reason, and if they were less overwhelmed with other things, they might actually prefer to have cheaper but more polluting energy. But here too the burden must fall on the politicians and energy companies. A vast reduction in personal energy use, or other lifestyle changes, is simply impossible. Leaving it up to individuals or corporations is as loopy as saying that people should follow their "common sense" during a pandemic. It just won't work.
Thankfully there's a positive take-home message form all this : changing the rules does work. People are reluctant to change voluntarily but they will change if gently prodded. And there are very easy ways to prod them so gently that they don't even notice, like making green the default. So stop badgering people. Stop shaming them for not cutting back on energy use. Pressure instead governments and energy suppliers to default to green options, giving opt-out options for those who really need them. And surely this is where all activism must ultimately focus : not on changing the attitudes of a weary populace, but in the actions and policies of those with the capability to effect real change - part of which should be designed with the goal of making said populace considerably less weary.
Climate change: 'Default effect' sees massive green energy switch
When Swiss energy companies made green electricity the default choice, huge numbers of consumers were happy to stick with it - even though it cost them more.
I think how to get "people" to use green energy is a bit of an irrelevant question, what people want is just ENERGY, ANY ENERGY. The main thing lacking isn't people choosing to switch to green supplies, the thing missing is the availability of green supplies at all. I think this pandemic has taught us that while some people will follow rules a minority, and one which strengthens with time, really does not like being pushed around, and the consequences we'll see starting to emerge when the full cost of lockdown really becomes apparent will be a realisation that coercive and socially disruptive government measures to handle ALMOST anything cause more harm than the thing they were designed to control. The way out of the climate crisis has to be, not one of coercing people, not one of even nudging people, but one of improving infratructure. The change we need is not at the level of people but at that of infrastructure, in the end the governments of the world need to stop wasting money on schemes of social control, roll-back their interference in private lives, and spend all the spare budget which doing that would give them on building nuclear and renewable energy infrastructure. Especially in putting a hydrogen pump at EVERY petrol station, and setting up a few huge h20-->h2+o2 renewably powered* electrolysis plants to supply them.
ReplyDelete*whilst you'd need nuclear for baseload in electrical grids your h2 production wouldn't be responding to realtime demand so could likey run off renewables as and when they were providing power