Taking Action

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Greg, can you write here two sentences about what people will find in this section?

Your Mission

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Script


This video is called “Your Mission” and is the final video—[Foil: “Thank goodness!” {sobbing}]

[Aside:] I thought you’d gone. Anyway, this is the final video in the expansion pack accompanying the video “How It All Ends.” Actually, it’s not really proper to call it the final video, because it’s not part of a sequence.

You’re here because you feel highly agitated about the threat of abrupt climate change, and you need something to do with that energy. In the video “How It All Ends: The Solution,” I told you I’d give you a direction to point that fire hose.


After watching this whole series of videos, I’d like you to ask yourself: were my arguments and requests of the viewer reasonable? If you agree that they were in fact reasonable, then think about a person who would make it all the way through these videos and still claim to be so certain that human-caused global warming is not a problem, that it’s not even worth shifting some government resources to launch a Manpollo Project to investigate it further. Someone who is not willing to even acknowledge the possibility that they might be wrong, despite the fact that it’s the future of the globe that’s at stake. Someone who sincerely feels that their judgment of the evidence on a scientific issue is not only equal to, but is better than the judgment of—at this point—every credible scientific organization on the planet. [Google: scientific statements climate change.] In fact so much better that it’s not even worth doing more homework.

You’ve got to ask yourself—is that a person you want in any way influencing policies which might have a significant impact on you?

I’m very nervous about saying this next thing, because it could very easily be twisted or quoted out of context to seem megalomaniacal.

[Foil: “Megalahmamahma?”]

Kinda [Nordvedt’s hand gesture “Vvvvvt!”]

[Foil: “Ah.”]

But I think I need to, because after all my analysis I think that the stakes are so high that it’s not only my ethical obligation, but is also in the pragmatic best interests for my kids, to put aside my own fears and to do what I conscientiously judge is necessary.

[Foil: “What are you talking about already?”]

So here’s my radical request for you: if hard-line skeptics cannot be convinced by reason that action on climate change is in the best interests of all—that at the very minimum, a Manpollo Project studying the expected value of the various options, should be launched with the greatest urgency—then they must be eliminated from the discussion. They must be marginalized, so that their irrational, unfalsifiable, energetic claims do not prevent the rest of us from pursuing what we conscientiously believe to be the best interests of all.

They have had too much influence for too long. They have moved predictably through the three stages of denial of an environmental problem: there is no problem, okay there’s a problem but it isn’t significant, now it’s too big to do anything about. They have done anything, given any reason, to deny change or sacrifice. They have started from belief and been impervious to opposing evidence and reason.

And they have been thoroughly discredited. No one now denies that the filmmaker of “The Great Global Warming Swindle” made up data for the graph on sun activity, and flat out lied about volcanic emissions of CO2 being greater than human emissions—an objection you will still often hear people parrot. And remember that Heritage Foundation doomsday prediction I turned up from 1998, that the Kyoto Protocol would wreck the U.S. economy, for instance by leading to gasoline prices as high as $1.91 a gallon by 2010?

And people listened to them and their scare tactics. They accuse anyone concerned about environmental impact as being a Chicken Little or scaremonger, yet they hypocritically employ the same tactics they accuse others of, warning of economic doom if action is taken. But unlike the environmental Chicken Littles, the economic Chicken Littles don’t have even a shred of credible evidence to back up their claims! Yet they continue to have huge influence in the discussions. It’s time to pull back the green curtain, to deny them the power we have given them when we listen to their irrational objections and warnings.

Maybe I’m wrong. If you think my risk assessment is faulty, please tell me where and how. But if you’ve watched all these freaking videos, you can see that I’ve done some research and thinking, and perhaps you’ll understand when I say that it seems to me that anyone who still insists on obstructing any action on climate change—even a Manpollo Project—must either give compelling rebuttals to all the arguments I’ve set forth, or be dismissed as hopelessly irrational or intellectually dishonest.

Go read that online discussion I referred to in “No Holds Barred” on Grist.com’s “How to Talk to A Climate Skeptic.” [Google the exact phrase “We’re all seekers for truth here” WITH THE QUOTE MARKS.] I searched for a while in the thesaurus for words to describe the behavior of that wolf in a sheep’s clothing. But then I just ended up writing an angry diatribe that I had to delete. Anyway, once you see how deceptive that guy was, maybe you’ll be motivated to bring on the fight, like I finally am.

And this isn’t like us taking away their liberty to make their own choices about what risks to take.

[Foil: Yeah: Who are you to tell me I’ve got to wear a seatbelt—I’m free to make my own choices.]

The choice to not wear a seatbelt is a personal one, because it only places at risk the person who made the choice. But since climate change is a global thing, it’s not just their risk that they are influencing—it’s yours and mine. I’ve got no problem with them believing what they want. But if they place the rest of us at risk by preventing us from taking action because of their selfish refusal to even consider the possibility that they’re wrong, then that’s not their right. So they may not want to participate in the solution, but they don’t have the right to stand in the way.

We shouldn’t be dismissive, or cruel, or even angry with them, although we might feel like it sometimes.

[Foil: Or, often.]

We should just marginalize them, and stop allowing them to influence the discussion. We don’t listen to the people who believe the moon landings were faked when we’re making scientific policy, do we? We just leave them alone. We let them believe what they believe, and sideline them from serious discussion, because we’ve seen that their claims of conspiracy are unfalsifiable, and therefore, useless to even discuss.

But this isn’t like the moon-hoaxers, who, left to themselves, don’t harm anybody. Because the zealous deniers of climate science and basic risk management are influencing a lot of ordinary folks, who aren’t irrational or selfish, but still resist any sort of action. There are a lot of people who haven’t learned enough yet to realize the very real dangers involved here, and they are being duped by the impervious skeptics. So, these zealous denialists are preventing the culture as a whole from recognizing abrupt climate change as our greatest potential threat, and are thus delaying the significant policy changes which may be our only hope.

[Foil: “Help me, Obi-Won Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”]

Wouldn’t you agree that at this point, the die-hard skeptic’s outright rejection of the statements from AAAS, NAS, and USCAP essentially amounts to a conspiracy theory? And you should be aware of how influential they can be: there are members of the U.S. Congress who fall into this category.

We need some Information Warriors out there doing battle for the cause of evidence and reason, for risk management and forethought, for sacrifice and generosity. Not so much to defeat the impervious skeptics—who appear to be unreachable—but to protect the innocents from the skeptics’ unreasoning faith. Because if you simply ignore the hard-line skeptics and let their comments stand, the next unsuspecting viewer who is inclined to not be concerned about climate change will have their misperception reinforced by the skeptics’ comments.

So definitely do not ignore the skeptics. That would keep them from influencing you, but many of their arguments sound very convincing to the casual observer. They need to be actively countered, so they stop having an influence on the people who hear them. Online, they need to be followed and rebutted in discussion groups and video comments. In the grocery store line, where conflict is less comfortable, maybe a simple “I don’t know. . . seems like it’s better to be safe than sorry” is a good option.

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to track and counter the hard-line skeptics at every turn online and in the media. Keep them from influencing the undecided. Drown them out with deliberate, level-headed, informed arguments, like a fire extinguisher of reason and logic. Their irrational and unrepentant comments online should be immediately smothered by a deluge of civil, well-informed, and logical responses from multiple Information Warriors, so that they realize the culture is no longer receptive to their dismissive attitude or militant apathy, and so that onlookers can see what a clear-headed assessment of the threat reveals. Demand that the media stop giving “the other side in the climate debate” equal time, because to continue to pretend that each side is equally credible at this point is dishonest and destructive. A reporter isn’t obligated to interview a Holocaust denier every time she does a story about Israel, is she?

I want to be clear, because such a proposition is very tricky. It could easily be (and sometimes is) leveled at those of us on the other side of the debate. The warmer says to the skeptic: “I’m going to try to get people to ignore you, because it’s no use even arguing with you. Whatever evidence or reasoning I come up with, you come up with a flimsy way to either explain it away or just plain ignore it.”

And the skeptic says to the warmer:

[Foil: “That’s funny, I was just going to say the same thing about you.”]

So why am I asking you to conclude that it’s the skeptic who’s in the wrong? I’m not. Who the heck am I to tell you what to believe? I’m just some guy on the web.

[At board, with Spy Vs. Spy] What I am asking you to do is trace the points back and forth—to track the skeptic’s rebuttal to the warmer’s argument, and then the warmer’s response to the rebuttal, and then the answer to the response, and so on. And I’m confident that you’ll discover for yourself that it is the skeptic who falls down first, who dodges the rebuttal of their point by changing the subject, or—here’s the most common stumble—by simply reasserting their claim, but in a different way. Usually that’s your clue that they don’t have an answer, and are basing their claim on belief, or a bias, rather than evidence and reasoning.

Make sure you watch all the other videos first, especially the ones for the skeptics, so that you know what you are up against—the strength of the logic they are impervious to—and so that you are well equipped to kick some tootie in the discussion forums. Remember, you are unlikely to convert a hard-line skeptic. Your mission is to show to any onlookers how nonsensical and extremist the hard-line skeptical claim has become once all the good-sounding fluff is stripped away.

Here’s what I mean. You may recall some of the following quotes from people regarding my “Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See” in the Spring of 2007:
“I truly don’t care how many scientific organizations line up for global warming, I still think column B would save us.”
“Don’t you know that the AGW spin is nothing more than a socialist/communist attempt to take over the world? They are playing you!”
“So what we have witnessed in the Global Warming debate is a perfect storm of anti-Christian philosophies parading as science. Materialists, Socialists, and Left-leaning types found common cause with neo-pagans and anti-Christian spirituality to advocate a New World Order dressed as a movement to save the planet.”

Pretty clearly irrational. “I don’t care how many scientific organizations line up. . .” On a scientific issue. Is this someone want influencing the public which then decides on the policies that affect you?

Now it’s critical here to realize that these were not the comments that these people made at first. Here, I’m going to use some figurines to help keep things straight. This is me, this is Joe Schmoe on the web, and this is the hard-line skeptic.

At first, these people were bringing up some the common objections which sound reasonable to someone who’s on the fence, and hasn’t done much homework—that is most of the population of the U.S. Things like: “humans are too small to change the planet,” “climate is always changing, so this is natural,” “taking action would doom our economy”—you’ve heard a ton of them. All of which sound very reasonable to anyone sort of cruising by.

The comments I just shared came only after long-back-and forth exchanges, where I was able to counter and take away every one of those reasonable-sounding, but in the end insubstantial, objections. And what they eventually fell back to—and revealed to everyone looking—was their actual motivating beliefs: “It’s a communist plot to take over the world.” “I don’t care what scientists say about the science. . .” But it took dogged effort on my part to get there. That’s why we need you.

So this is your mission—by knowing your stuff and being persistent, you sort of publically prune away all the easy excuses, so that the onlookers who were influenced by the reasonable-sounding objections these guys make—realize that at their core, these guys aren’t reasonable, and therefore, maybe the case to be made against action on climate change isn’t nearly as solid as it seems at a casual glance. That allows these people to be open to learning enough to make their own rational decisions based on the statements we’ve already got out there from AAAS, NAS, USCAP, the Pentagon, and even Exxon. In a nutshell, your mission is to smother the numskull comments and attitudes with a fire extinguisher of civil level-headedness. Deny them their audience.

We should patiently, compassionately educate those who are misinformed or misguided. And those who are left—the unrepentant and unreachable—we should deconstruct or smother, so that they no longer influence others who are listening. They should be bulldogged until they finally reveal to all listening how irrational or biased they are.

The image that I just can’t get out of my head is from the movie “Demolition Man,” where Sylvester Stallone’s character in the future is in a car wreck, and instead of there being air bags that deploy in the car, there’s some high-tech foam that instantly yet gently fills the compartment, and then solidifies fluffily so that he can break out of it when the impact is done. But, he was isolated from touching any part of the car during the wreck. That’s the picture I get in my head about what I think should happen when someone pops up with a numskull comment or attitude, you know [psssshhhhtttt]. It’s gentle, so they have a chance to reconsider, maybe become less confident, and are inspired to reflect on it more. But if they refuse to even consider that they might be wrong, and remain recklessly irrational or selfish, then they’re effectively isolated from influencing others around them. So it’s not violent—just overwhelming.

[FIGURINES: Information Warrior: “Climate change is a pressing problem, and we should take action.” Skeptic: “There’s no debate that the globe is warming, but there’s lots of debate about what’s causing it.” I.W.: “Actually, no. If you google it, you’ll see from the AAAS and NAS statements that say there’s overwhelming agreement amongst scientists.” S: “Of course—it’s their gravy train. It’s just common sense that we’re too small to affect the planet. I.W.: “Actually, if you look at the Keeling graph and ice core data, you see that’s not true. Besides, why do we need to be convinced of all the details—don’t the statements from AAAS and NAS make it seem prudent to do some basic risk management?” S: “Shut your pie-hole already you moron! Mars is warming, too you know. I suppose we caused that, huh?” {psssshhht with whipped cream}]

We’re not out to indoctrinate anybody—cuz history shows that always backfires in the end. But we are out to dispel the fog that a well-funded misinformation campaign has caused, supported by a small but vehement number of people who confuse their hostility towards government with uncertainty in climate science.

I should warn you: I made a mis-statement in the video “No Holds Barred.” I told the skeptics that the only feasible way of accomplishing the skeptic’s agenda of convincing the rest of us to not take action is a Manpollo Project. But that is tragically, dangerously, not quite true.

Because the denialist’s agenda is not to convince the rest of us to not take action, it is simply to prevent or delay action. And that can by accomplished by simply mucking up the works: time is on their side. Every day that we debate about what to do, is another day that we haven’t taken action. So they can actually accomplish their agenda without convincing anyone of the validity of their argument. All they need to do is continue to muddle, question, and confuse. As long as they keep alive a shred of doubt in the public’s mind, they win. As long as they can keep people scared with their threat of harm to the economy, they win. As long as they can sow confusion and doubt—a task all too easy—they win.

[Foil: Oh really?? For certain??]

And we all—probably—lose. They do not need quality evidence or reasoning. That is why our task is so urgent, and we need to enlist people to the effort. The viewpoint of the hardline skeptic cannot be extinguished, because their claim is not falsifiable. Therefore it must be marginalized, so that it no longer affects people.

As you get ready to go do Information Battle, I want to share some insight from a commentor that has been tremendously helpful to me in keeping some perspective on online debates: “[Hard line skeptics] will stick to an opinion, right or wrong, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. And you can’t tell them that because they will accuse you of the same thing, and then all logic falls into a death spiral. And yes, they’re caught in the death spiral too, but they’re crying “Wheeeeeee!!!!” all the way down while you’re left trying to shout above the noise with whatever counter argument you can come up with.”

So don’t quit, but don’t expect to convince them either. Remember, your mission is not to convert the hard-line skeptic, but to expose their nature to anybody else who might be listening or reading, so that their opinions are made irrelevant, and the rest of us can get policy changes implemented before it’s too late.

[Foil: Too late? What’s our deadline? How much time do we have?]

Unfortunately, in a complex system like the global climate, the only way to identify a tipping point is on the other side of it.

[Foil: As in “Oops—that’s where we should have stopped?”]

I’m sorry if I don’t sound very compassionate or warm and fuzzy here. But when people are either too selfish, or too irrationally stubborn to be reasonable, and that threatens me and mine, then I’m going to bring the fight. Please join me. It is our best hope. We cannot know the future for certain, but we can change the probabilities with our actions. Let us choose the actions which maximize the probability of a positive outcome. I need your help—if nothing else then, in coming up with a better rallying call than “Let us choose the actions which maximize the probability of a positive outcome.”

[Foil: Yeah, I don’t really see that coming across well on a t-shirt.]

So, the next time you hear someone saying or writing that human-caused global climate change is bunk, remind yourself—they just might be correct. Remember, truth is more likely to come to the humble. But at the same time, the question that you should ask them—publically, and in all seriousness—is: “What are the reasons why I should give your statement more weight than the statements of the two most well-respected scientific organizations on the planet?”

[Foil: Yeah, and if you want to be sassy, you can say something like: “So, are AAAS and NAS corrupt? Or just stupid?” Hey—maybe there’s the t-shirt design! “Skeptical of climate change? Check one box. . .”]

Your bottom line mission as an Information Warrior is to help bring about nothing less than a change in the culture, so that we as a people finally have the political will to enact significant action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, in order to reduce the chances of abrupt and catastrophic climate change.

Saying all this makes me extremely anxious, because there are some irrational people with very strong beliefs out there that this subject really riles up. I’ve had oblique threats made to me because of my videos. Used to be that wouldn’t have really rattled me. But I’ve got two little girls that I love more than life itself, and it scares the bejesus outta me that someone might even make a joke about doing them harm.

But I can’t just sit still. They are the reason I’m doing this, because I want them to have a decent world to live in. So I’m trying my hardest to be brutally thorough and honest with myself in my analysis, so that I get the answer with the best expected value. And what my careful, rational assessment of climate change has revealed. . . scares the hell out of me. So now I’m putting aside my ego, my fears, my sleep, to fight like hell to make the best happen.

You wouldn’t do any less for your kids.

[beat]

Thank you for taking the effort to watch all this. But I think its worth it, because we are in a time like no other. It is time for the best in us to come out. Now it’s up to you. I’m going to go get some sleep so that I’m not so. . . what was that word?

[Foil: Megalomaniacal?]

Yeah. That. Good luck.



Comments


Youtube Comments: Part 1
Youtube Comments: Part 2

Operation Saturation




Script


PART 1

Welcome to “Operation Saturation: On the Threshold.” Have a seat; your briefing on your mission will begin in a minute. First, I want to share some good news from the from.

I think we might actually be able to do this. I mean for us--you, me--to literally change the world around this whole global climate change thing. We just might be riding the wave of history here. I know that sounds delusional, but I’m going to share some recent events that I think demonstrate that--although it is a longshot--it is also a very real possibility. And, just in case it inspires you to renewed effort in spreading the word, I’ll also share some more tools for doing so that have come up since I finished posting that whole bruising series of “How It All Ends” videos in October. [By the way: kudos to those of you who’ve actually watched all six hours--you got stamina.]

Before I give you the updates, keep in mind that what we are passing on--this viral idea that we are hoping will spread like wildfire--is not a call to action on climate change. Those have been issued repeatedly for years, and the body politic has shown itself to be immune from that virus. The potential here for a torrent--for real viral growth of this particluar idea--comes from its unique feature that it cuts through the deadlock by changing the issue from the typical question of “Is it happening?” to the untypical question “Can we afford to ignore the possibility?”

So it is not a statement that we are passing along; it’s a question. And I think that’s partly why the message has done well so far.

Bad News

Okay, so here’s the update. There is really good news, so hang in there, cuz first we’re going to cover some really bad news. First up: last summer showed record melting in both Greenland and the Arctic, on a scale and pace that stunned the scientific community. When I learned of this, and particularly when I read the reactions of the research scientists who are familiar with those areas, I had a sinking sense of “Ucchh, is this it? Is this the moment that history is going to look back and point to, saying ‘This is where it all started to unravel?’”

See, the reason I’m so agitated about the possibility of catastrophic climate change is not just the scale of what might happen, it’s how immanent and sudden it just might be, it’s the possibility of hidden tipping points and abrupt climate change. The image that comes to mind is of us industriously striding right into a mine field, without even breaking pace--we might indeed make it out the other side unscathed, but with every step, I wonder “Is this it? Is this it?”” Maybe you can understand why I feel a little panicky about getting the word out ASAP.

Then there’s an absolutely stunning statement from the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, the parent company of Shell Oil, in which he sketches out two possible scenarios for the future, which he calls “Scramble” and “Blueprints.” It almost knocked me out of my chair. In it, he called for all the things that huge multinational companies are supposed to be against: regulations, cross-border cooperation, efficiency standards, taxes, and--get this--an effort to transform our energy economy comparable to the Apollo Project! And the last thought he leaves with his reader? “Companies can suggest possible routes to get there, but governments are in the driver’s seat.”

“Oh my god,” I thought when I read it. “Things must be even worse than I thought.” I mean, for someone that entrenched in the status quo to say things that radical, really is extraordinary. Check it out for yourself--the link is in the video description. Next time you come across someone parroting Michael Crichton, claiming that global warming is a hoax by scientists to keep the grant money flowing, whip out this statement and ask them how likely they think it is that the chair of the 7th largest company in the world has been so completely suckered.

I also came across two more heavyweight reports from sources contradicting their normal bias (remember how I suggested we put such things near the top of the credibility scale in the video “Risk Management?”).

The first study called “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change” is from a think-tank funded by the Navy, and involved all sorts of top-ranking retired military guys--the lowest ranked guy there was a Lieutenant General. (It must have really sucked for him when the other guys kept trying to send him out for coffee.) Their assessment echoes the 2003 Pentagon Report that I shared in the video “Scare Tactics,” but carries more heft, and is more recent--2007. I’ll let you explore it in detail on your own--link in the video description--but I’d just like to point out that when military commanders characterize their conversations as “sobering,” that should catch your attention. Career military planners aren’t exactly known for being all that hysterical in the first place.

And the other study, called “The Age of Consequences,” is a collaboration between two global security think tanks, conducted by a multidisciplinary team of high mucky-mucks, including not just climatologists, but also a historian, the head of the National Academy of Sciences, a Nobel laureate economist, a former CIA Director, a former Chief of Staff to the President, and a former National Security Advisor to the Vice President. Not exactly a bunch of environinnies. (In fact, it looks surprisingly like what I had proposed for a Manpollo Project, except tiny.)

Their purpose was to [PROJECTOR] “employ the best available evidence and climate models, and imagine three future worlds that fall within the range of scientific plausibility.” The report points out that “the scientific community has been shocked at how fast some effects of global warming are unfolding. . . . Recent observations indicate that projections from climate models have been too conservative; the effects of climate change are unfolding faster and more dramatically than expected.”

[DESK] And then it goes on in that happy tone to envision three future scenarios: the “expected,” the “severe,” and the “catastrophic.” Oh boy did that put a pit in my stomach. I have a sort of funny, macabre story about that. I was approaching the end of the middle scenario, the “severe,” which looked way too much like my grid’s “worst case” scenario--when I read these lines: [PROJECTOR]“The consequences of even relatively low-end global climate change include the loosening and disruption of societal networks. At higher ranges of the spectrum, chaos awaits.”

[DESK] And I stopped reading, thinking “I just can’t take more. This is the middle scenario! ” Then I thought “No, no, it doesn’t serve you to shrink from reality, no matter how unpleasant,” and made myself read the next line, which is what gave the me macabre little chuckle. [PROJECTOR] “The question is whether a threat of this magnitude will dishearten humankind, or cause it to rally in a tremendous, generational struggle for survival and reconstruction.” [DESK] Yeah, well, we have our answer about how this little piece of humankind reacted to that picture.

That section goes on to say: [DESK] “If that rally does not occur relatively early on, then chances increase that the world will be committed irrevocably to severe and permanent global climate change at profoundly disruptive levels. An effective response to the challenge of global warming cannot be spread out across the next century, but rather must be set in place in the next decade, in order to have any chance to meaningfully alter the slope of the curves one sees in the IPCC report. We are already in the midst of choosing among alternative futures. The onset of these choices is rapid, and the consequences are likely to be irreversible.”

[DESK] Uuuuuuuuuunnhhhhh. . .

Can you see I get just a little bit frustrated when someone just casually dismisses my concerns, saying that I’m over excitable, or that I’ve been duped by the environmentalists and the liberals? Recall who wrote this report--it wasn’t the Sierra Club.

And I’m sorry, but I failed you. I just couldn’t bring myself to read the third “catastrophic” scenario. Not just yet, at least. I guess in that I’m not a very good role model. I did catch in the introduction that when the participants were discussing the third scenario, one of them actually made reference to the movie “Mad Max,” just like I did in my videos. That’s just yucky. Cuz’ I keep hoping that I am just overexcitable , and so it sucks when I keep finding credible sources who come to the same conclusions I did.

Seems like every time we look, the picture is worse than we thought it would be. So we adjust our expectations for next time. And when we look again, it’s even worse than that.

But we can’t afford to just roll over. We’ve got to avoid falling prey to those three stages of denial of environmental problems that I shared in the video “Your Mission.” Do you remember them? Stage 1: there is no problem. Stage 2: okay, there’s a problem, but it’s not us, or it’s not significant. And finally Stage 3: now it’s too big for us to do anything about. We’ve got to insert a stage two-and-a-half in there--time to stop dithering and get off our butts.

And that is what you and I are doing here. Because there is hope. And that’s what I want to talk about now. I’ve given you some serious doom and gloom, so now let me tell you about some really heartening developments in the last couple months.

PART 2

As I film this, it’s been 6 months since I posted “The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See,” and 3 months since I posted that whole slew of “How It All Ends” videos. In that time, “The Most Terrifying Video” has garnered over 5 million views on various websites. The exact phrase “Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See” gets over 100,000 hits on Google, and the word “Manpollo”--a word that didn’t even exist 4 months ago cuz I hadn’t made it up yet--now gets over 3,500 hits! That all started from me--a Joe Schmoe! Imagine what can happen if each of you adapts the message to your strengths and puts it out there in ways I can’t even imagine!

Several websites have sprung up around the videos, including an amazing community of people collaborating on projects at manpollo.org. (And I’m getting tired of saying “links in the video description.” So if I say refer to something, and you’re interested, check the video description for a link.) Amongst other things, they’re working on producing a professionally-packaged box set of DVDs of the videos with bonus features. And every time someone buys the DVD set, an extra copy is automatically sent to that person’s representative in Congress or Parliament. There’s a facebook group called The Manpollo Project, with a subgroup called “Operation Fire Extinguisher” (which only makes sense if you’ve watch the video “Your Mission”--and then its hilarious). Someone even wrote a facebook app called manpollo.

I’ve been contacted by people from all over the world. I get messages from teachers saying they’re using the videos in their classes, and messages from students asking for help with those assignments! I’ve lost track of all the languages that people have asked my permission to translate the videos into: french, spanish, german, dutch, chinese, bulgarian, swedish, maybe italian, maybe portugeuse. (By the way, no permission needed--go for it! You might want to check in at manpollo.org first, to see what’s already been done.) I was even contacted by one of the lead authors of the Stern Report!

All of the videos are available for download in medium resolution, and people are making DVDs on their own and handing them out. High resolution versions are now out there, too, waiting to be seeded as BitTorrent files. There are even iPod versions are available on iTunes!

Mainstream media coverage of the videos--mainly centered around the success of “The Most Terrifying Video”--was sparked by a blog on the Huffington Post, which lead to an interview on a Canadian radio station, which lead to an article in the Toronto Star, which lead to an article in the Portland Oregonian, which the AP picked up, and the next day I had two television news crews in my classroom, resulting in a local TV news story aired that night, and a story on the ABC National News webcast. Somewhere in there a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor followed me around for a day, resulting in an article in one of the most influential papers out there.

And, while I’ve been contacted by several other media that didn’t follow through--including a phone call from “Good Morning America”--all the contacts were very exciting. I did end up for 2 and a half minutes live on Canada’s version of “Good Morning America,” named “Canada AM”--which, I’ve gotta say, is a deceptive title, because it sounds a lot like a radio show, doesn’t it, especially when you’ve been fielding media calls all day? And, having been interviewed already by “Montreal 940 AM,” maybe you can understand how I showed up at the uplink station at 4 a.m. for the live interview, unshaven and in a t-shirt, only to find it was actually a television show. Luckily I happened to wear the same t-shirt as in the videos, so--while I may have been a slob--at least I was an “on-message” slob.

The videos have been covered by more blogs than I can track, including being named DeSmogBlog’s “#1 YouTube Global Warming Video of 2007,” beating out, I might add, the clip of Senator Barbara Boxer layin’ the smack down on Senator James “Global Warming is a Hoax” Inhofe during Gore’s testimony to Congress. I’m not sure if I get a statue with that award. I’m still waiting.

Yesterday I was interviewed by an editor for the German version of Men’s Health magazine, and today I just got done being interviewed by a crew from an international satellite TV network I’d never heard of.

I’m told that for a period of a day or so, a story about the videos and me was featured at the top of the Yahoo homepage. I never saw it, but judging from the serious kink it put in my graph of views of “How It All Ends,” I believe it. (graph) There’s the bump from when the Oregonian story hit the AP wires, for comparison.

As a result of all this hubub, a literary agent contacted me, suggesting I turn the videos into a book. I said no way man, I don’t want any more projects, I just want to go back to my wife and kids. But since then I realized that it’s a way to reach a whole new segment of the population, and this time I could at least get compensated for my time, and then donate the rest. Mustn’t look like I’m cashing in. So I’m working on the proposal for that. In fact, if you think you would buy such a book, leave a comment on this video--it would help to show a publisher that there’s interest out there.

Here’s funny story: I got a letter with a return address I didn’t recognize, and the envelope had was a little lumpy. Now, because of my videos I’ve attracted some pretty out there people who feel very antagonistic towards me, so I was careful. I don’t think anyone’s going to send me actual anthrax, but who know what else someone might come up with, so I shook the letter and was careful as I opened it. It was a very nice card from a woman thanking me for the videos, and it turns out the lump was my favorite quote from Edward Abbey, wrapped around two twenty dollar bills! She told me to take my wife out to dinner or the kids out to a movie! And I had just been thinking about anthrax. So there are a lot of selfless, thoughtful people out there. Keep that in mind as you bang heads with the numskulls. Along those lines, I’m happy to say that I’ve received way more positive comments than negative comments this time (the proportions were flipped with “The Most Terrifying Video). And, interestingly, some of the most persistent, hardened denialists who had been dogging the comments on “The Most Terrifying Video” did not move over to “How It All Ends.” I don’t know whether they saw it as an unbeatable argument, or whether the “foaming” that I called for in the video “Your Mission” and executed by a dedicated few Information Warriors did its job, but it is heartening to know they can be neutralized, and prevented from influencing casual passersby with their reasonable-sounding but ultimately flimsy arguments.

And I almost forgot to mention: you know how punishingly thorough I was in looking for all the possible counterarguments to my main argument, and then addressing those pre-emptively in the 6+ hours of expansion pack videos? I was trying to put out there a robust body of analysis for the world to reference, develop, adapt, and use. Well, it turns out I did a pretty good job. Within a few days of posting “The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See,” the “bulletproof” argument in that had been fatally poked full of holes, due to an assumption I didn’t realize I had.

But as of this filming--and I guess you’ll just sort of have to take my word for it--I have yet to hear an objection to the argument I present in “How It All Ends” that I have not already covered (effectively, I think) in the expansion pack videos. What I’m saying is--I think they got nuthin’. The only issue that people are challenging me with that I didn’t already have an answer to as a result of my research is what one of them called “The Reset Theory.” You can pretty much guess from the title what that is: humanity needs to go through a cataclysm in order to be purged of the traits that got us into this mess. And I’ll admit, I, um, hadn’t formulated a response to that in the videos.

So that’s the good news. I think it all serves as a sort of “proof of concept” that demonstrates there is a very real possibility that we can change the world. So let’s talk about how to go about doing that.

If you’re like me, all the bad news may make you feel very closed in, very trapped. Almost everybody feels that yesterday they had more space, more community, more safety, more opportunity. It seems we’re up against the limits of growth on a finite planet. Wouldn’t it be cool to go back to that feeling of “The future is wide open, limitless?”

I think we can do that, if we allow ourselves to be free to choose new definitions, like that Hal Harvey quote I shared in the video “The Solution,” where just realizing that people want light, heat, and mobility, rather than barrels of oil or kilowatt-hours of electricity completely opens up the picture of what’s possible. So if we’re up against the limits of growth, maybe we can sidestep that by focusing on quality of life rather than more growth.

I subtitled this video “On the Threshold,” because I think we may be on the threshold of a whole new way. I’m no expert, but looking at the issue, it sure seems like the crisis of global warming may change all sorts of things. Not just our energy economy, but our ideas of community, our governance structures, our political philosophies, our views of liberty and security, our economic models.

We are on the edge of the undiscovered country. But that’s not necessarily good news. On the other hand, it’s not necessarily bad news, either. It’s just really high stakes news--that the stakes in the game have gotten much higher than they have ever been before. So if we want a happy ending, we’d best keep our eyes on the road. This is not about politics. This is about pragmatism.

So what do you do from here?

PART 3
Well, the main title of this video is “Operation Saturation” because that’s the image I want to plant in your mind. The goal is to end up a culture saturated with this idea of risk management that’s at the heart of my videos, to have everyone thinking through for themselves this central question: “With the uncertainties and risks of climate change, is it wiser to oppose action, or to demand it?” Again and again, polls show that the uncertainty in climate science is what’s been holding back the general public. This question fixes that, by dodging the need for certainty.

So there is your simple idea that may save the world: that we should be talking about risk, instead of about certainty.

The ultimate goal is to eliminate the possibility of that lower right hand corner of the grid. In my assessment (as always, feel free to do your own), the situation is likely bad enough that getting us into column A is going to require massive action. The only way to make that happen is to spread the demands out amongst everybody, so that the demands are at a tolerable level. The only way to do that is policy changes which restructure our energy economy. And the only way that’s going to happen in time, is if the people demand it from their policymakers. So the vision here is bringing about a wholesale change in the culture so that a policymaker can’t turn around without having a clump of people in their face, saying “What are we--you--going to do about climate change?” Hence, “Operation Saturation.”

Now, how do go about saturating the culture? Well, you’re already familiar with how videos can go viral. If we want this idea to go truly viral, culturally viral--to break out of the internet and enter into the mainstream--it helps to think in some detail about the nature of a real virus.

A virus has no resources of it’s own. All it has is instrucitons--a blueprint on how to make another copy of itself. So how can it cause an epidemic? It infects a host and uses their resources, their experience, their contacts, to make many copies of itself, [WHITEBOARD: exponential growth] and those copies go on to infect others, where they do the same thing, multiplying again and again. The original virus doesn’t need resources, just information, because it hijacks the resources of its hosts along the way.

That’s how this can work: That’s how we can change the world without having a huge organization or a massive budget: you “infect” ten people with the same motivation and information you have, and each of passes it on to ten more, and each of them passes it to ten more, and on. As I’ve pointed out before, in just 5 steps, that’s over 100,000 people who’ve been involved. If that sounds like a Pyramid scheme or a chain letter, that’s because it is. Except this one may save our collective neck.

It’s a little tough to talk about this without getting so wound up about the possibilities that I sound like I’m about to break into evil genius laughter. I mean, it’s a longshot, but this could literally be the biggest, most pervasive PR campaign in history, with zero initial resources and organization. That’s cool to think about. And it may be our only hope. (That is, besides hoping really hard that all those eggheads, military brass, and historians are wrong about the whole thing. Oops, our bad.)

So you’ve been infected with the idea. What you do now is brainstorm: “What resources do I have, what talents do I have, what contacts do I have, that I can use to spread this idea?” You guys have done an incredible job already. So now let’s supersize it, shall we?

In this amazingly interconnected world of communication, each of you has so much power. Let me back that up with an illustration.

Remember the kink in the graph caused by the story being featured on the Yahoo homepage? That single event--that decision by a single person who was in the right spot at Yahoo --had a huge effect. That event garnered 50,000 views for “How It All Ends” in a single day. Fully a sixth of the video’s total views collected over 3 months came in that 24 hours.

And that’s what I want to highlight for you: the power of “multipliers”--people who are in a position to spread the word widely. So if you find you are re-invigorated in wanting to spread the word, go beyond the injunction to simply “forward the video to your friends and family.” Think big, get creative, brainstorm ways to involve some multipliers, and get them on board. Lobby people like celebrities, journalists, executives, elected officials, bloggers, vloggers, talk show hosts (t.v. and radio), charities, nonprofits, your favorite actors (write that fan letter that you never have, saying “I like and respect you so much, I really want you to see this”), advocacy organizations, think tanks, lawmakers, musicians, “experts” you see quoted in articles, presidential candidates, producers, directors, authors, columnists, athletes. Re-post the videos on other video sharing sites or on Digg or Reddit or Stumble, enter them into contests, borrow the arguments and make your own videos with your own spin and enter those into contests. According to WhatAreTheyWaitingFor.com, the five biggest television political reporters have asked 3000 questions of the presidential candidates, and only 6 of those questions have been on climate change. Change that. Saturate! Think big! I mean, just imagine if this got on Oprah--BAM!--mission (of changing the culture) accomplished.

As you go about this, it might help to keep in mind what one teacher wrote to tell me. He said he thinks the videos have gone big because of something his students shared with him. They told him: “He asks us to look at the question ourselves, rather than shoving a bunch of facts down our throat.” So if you refer people to the videos, maybe don’t say “This guy is right--you’d better listen.” Instead ask them “Hey, what do you think about this?”

Although at one point I almost took down “The Most Terrifying Video” because it has a hole in the argument big enough to drive a Hummer through, I now acknowledge that it might in fact be more viral than “How It All Ends,” even though that one has a better argument. Anyway, since “The Most Terrifying Video” now points pretty directly to “How It All Ends” and it’s expansion pack, pick whichever one you think is more likely to spread, and use that one.

Here’s another suggestion: maybe use some of the verbal jujitsu of the political marketing guru Frank Luntz. There’s a link to an interesting program about him in the video description. He’s the guy who managed to change the term “estate tax” to “death tax,” “oil drilling” to “energy exploration,” and “tax cuts” to “tax relief.” Perhaps start talking about climate “destabilization,” or “chaos,” or something better that you come up with. I made up a word, and now it gets 3,500 hits on google. See what you can do. For some ideas, I’ve provided a link to a discussion on manpollo.org that’s got lots of great phrases and taglines.

Get the discussion away from the word “consensus”--because by some definitions, it will be simply impossible in science--you can always find someone who is going to disagree--and instead talk about the “overwhelming agreement” in the scientific community. It’s a stronger phrase, and can’t be disproved, because no matter how many dissenting scientists the denialists can scare up, there’s 144,000 members of AAAS who would vote the board members out on their ears if they made a radical statement that didn’t have overwhelming agreement from the membership. In fact, that’s exactly what happened with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

PART 4
AAPG recently had to change it’s official assertion that humans don’t significantly affect the climate, because the membership got ticked off at such a scientifically flimsy statement being issued in their name, and pressured the board. They even made the board change the name of the award it gave to Michael Crichton for his novel “State of Fear” from the “Journalism Award” to the “Media Award.” Funny!

AAPG was the last holdout, so now, as a result of the changed statement, there is not a single reputable scientific organization in the world which rejects the conclusion that humans are influencing the climate. All that’s left at this point to make that claim are individuals, and think tanks. That is a stunning fact--use it. Link in the video description.

Along those lines, someone there came up with a really punchy draft of this text for a flyer. [Show flyer.] You hear people shouting about it everywhere: (("Global warming!" "Hot air!")) Cutting through the backtalk seems impossible, so you ignore it. But nobody's perfect. Could you be wrong? With the uncertainties and risks of climate change, is it wiser to oppose action, or to demand action? Everyday people like us must change our question from ‘Is it going to happen?’ (which we can't know) to ‘Can we afford to continue to ignore the possibility?’ (which we must know). Are you so sure that you'd bet your family's lives on doing nothing? Because we only get to play this game once. How lucky do you feel? Manpollo.org Get informed, and let it change you.” Man, I get inspired every time I read that.

Here’s chore that needs doing, if you’re interested. You could produce a more accessible and thorough index to all the “expansion pack” videos accompanying “How It All Ends.” Right now, if someone has a particular objection, they have to watch the ten minute video “How It All Ends: Menu” to find the name of the video that addresses their question, and then slog through who-knows-how many parts of that video to find the answer.

As a result, right now the views for each of the expansion pack videos are only in the pathetic little thousands, compared to the hundreds of thousands for “How It All Ends” and the millions for “The Most Terrifying Video.” I think they would be WAY more accessible if there was something like hypertext document that someone could look through for their criticism, and then they’re given not only which video covers it, but also which segment, and a time index in that segment, maybe even clickable! Cool! Sounds like a hell of a lot of work. I’m not doin’ it. Maybe split up the task with others, coordinating through manpollo.org.

Take the message and put your own spin on it. Develop it, mutate it to survive when resistance to it is developed, or so that it can flourish in new environments. For instance, find a way to capitalize on the fact that the scientific models are much more confidant of the threat of climate destabilization than the economic models are of the threat economic harm resulting from curbing carbon emissions, as I detailed in “Risk Management” and “Get What You Want”

For instance here’s another possible way to frame the discussion: What would you do if human-caused global climate change were true? What would you do if human-caused global climate change were false? Where do those circles overlap? That part surely you could do now.

That makes me think of something the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell wrote in that statement I mentioned earlier: “After 2015, easily accessible supplies of oil and gas probably will no longer keep up with demand.” That’s not a typo folks--that’s seven years from now. Climate change or not, we’re going to stop burning it anyway, soon, because we’re going to run out. How sad would it be if we hosed our climate in order to eke out just a decade more of business as usual?

Here are some more seed ideas to take and adapt:

Environmentalists are already on board. We need to expand the issue; we need soccer moms and good ol’ boys too. So let’s change the idea that this is about the Environment. This is not about the Environment with a capital “E,” as in “good for the Environment.” This is about our environment, with a lower case “e” as in the totality of our physical setting. This is not about loving your mother, or wilderness, or living lightly on the land, or being eco-friendly. This is about what we see, taste, touch, smell, and hear, and the setting that we depend on to breath, eat, bathe, drink, and shelter in. This is not about an ethos. This is about the bed in the saying “Don’t poo in your own bed.”

This isn’t about preserving the earth over time because that makes us feel good. This is about pragmatically preserving our quality of life. This is about happiness. “Feel happy?” “Got happy?” “No happiness in a chaotic climate.”

This isn’t about being Green. That time is done. This is beyond Green. We need a new word. What’s beyond green? Red, orange, yellow, green, blue. . . Blue. How about blue? We’re beyond being Green, we need to be Blue. Get Blue! Code Blue! Better blue than through! Blue is my favorite color!

If I’ve said anything that offends you or you disagree with, then fix it. Use that to spread the meme--the viral idea--that we should be talking about risks, instead of certainty. That’s what a virus is all about--the weaker versions are replaced by stronger versions, and the message continues spreading. So take this as your own, and go for it.

And I want to warn you: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. You don’t have to bike to work and eat vegetarian and recycle religiously and compost, and sit in a cold dark house before you can speak to a co-worker about climate change. Make the changes that you are comfortable with, and then, instead of spending a bunch of energy making changes you aren’t yet comfortable with, spend that energy spreading the word. Because the net impact will be greater if you do so. Decide for yourself, I suppose, but I think the biggest “bang for your buck” is using your limited energy to spread the word, so that we get a change in the culture, so that policy makers are forced to take significant action, so that massive action can happen without too great of a burden on individuals, so that we can get the heck out of column B, which is where we sit now, enacting our daring action plan of simply hoping that most scientists are wrong or corrupt.

Rosa Parks was an ordinary person whose action in other circumstances may have gone unnoticed. But the avalanche was already set, and she happened to be in the right place at the right time when she took action. She kicked some pebbles down the slope, setting off the avalanche, and history has traced back an entire social era to that moment.

Could you be a Rosa Parks on this? Could you be someone who stands at the nexus of history, unaware of their own significance in the whole picture, but whose single action might change the course of the world? Are you the missing piece in the torrent? Probably not. But, possibly so. The only way to know is to go ahead and kick those pebbles down the slope. And I know how busy most of us are, so it’s easy to think why bother if the chance of your action having significant consequences is so small?

Well, there’s a line from a Dave Matthews song that has been running through my head since I started this whole video madness, and which keeps me going when I really feel like stopping: “Did I do/all that I could?”

So, for me, at least, that’s why it’s worth making the effort, even if the chances of success seem so small. Because I imagine how utterly tragic it would feel if the carbon hits the fan, and I am haunted by that question. “Did I do/all that I could?” When I read things like that “Age of Consequences” Report, and I get despondent about the future, it brings me some calmness to know that if the worst comes does to pass and it’s clear we could have prevented it, at least I can hug my two wonderful daughters and say “I am so sorry, sweethearts. But I did all that I could.”

So why not at least try kicking some pebbles? After all, what’s the worst that could happen?



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