Making people “Environmental by Accident”

Remixed from fidothe's photostream

From Kosmos 9 comes Environmental by Accident:

People do not like to be told what they have to do, especially when it means reducing their impact, cutting back on and changing their capitalistic lifestyle. (A friend recently said to me: You know, I really like your blog, but with the straight razor you went a little too far.) So what do we do? We tell them NOT to be green? Not quite, Caroline Fiennes from Global Cool believes, but the solution goes into this direction. “We can get people to live sustainably by not talking about sustainability …” .These words are part of an inspiring talk she gave at TEDxWarwick, called Promoting a Green Lifestyle Choice. …

[S]how people how cool it is to wear warm clothes (and turn down the heating) in winter, how cool it is to travel by train (and not by plane) or how cool it is to cruise around your bike (and not drive a car), etc. In short: Global Cool makes people to become green without noticing it. They call it creating accidental environmentalists.

Read the rest here.

The trouble I have with making sustainability “cool” is that, with all things called such, there’ll come a time when it’s no longer “cool”—then what do you do? If environmentalism is a trend (and not a value or lifestyle), how long will its shelf-life be?