“I laughed. I laughed because I did not believe that we could stop Mother Nature.”
The quote above comes from John McPhee’s The Control of Nature, a seminal account of various battles in which human beings pit their ingenuity against the Earth’s lava flows, flooding rivers and tectonic shifts. I discovered this wise and beautiful book when it first came out in 1989; I was fresh out of college and hungry to chart a new path, one no longer dependent on the place and people from which I’d come. Even then, I sensed that the hubris of the book’s civil engineers might be an echo of my stubborn relentless drive to control my own future. That intuition stuck with me and has become fundamental to thinking about human behavior and how to direct and harness it for the collective better.
1988 was the first year the global concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere averaged 350 parts per million, a level seen by some climatologists as the tipping point of irreversibility. The Exxon Valdez oil spill followed in 1989, and that same year was the last time the now-extinct golden toad was ever spotted. Where are we now? In May of 2019, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eclipsed 414 parts per million for the first time in human history. The temperature near the entrance to the Arctic Ocean in northwest Russia surged to 84 degrees Fahrenheit.
In California, where I live, drought, flooding and catastrophic fire may not be new phenomena, but recent devastating examples only make our efforts to establish dominion over nature seem that much more insanely self-defeating.
Scientific data confirms what we know inherently to be true through experience and observation: we are out of balance with ourselves, with each other and with the lifegiving force of nature. In seeking to wrest control, we have lost it. And, yet, here we are, agreeing that Conservation Matters Now! I am writing, you are reading, and countless others are working across all sectors of society and in all corners of the globe to restore the vital symbiosis between human and planetary health.
I look back over my years of tackling large scale social challenges and see a through-line; the environmental movement does not lack brilliant voices and compelling data, but it’s difficult to drive mainstream shifts in behavior and mass political support in that people tend to have a visceral dislike for the words “no” and “stop.” We act like teenagers resisting Mother Nature’s wise counsel. And, yet, it’s also clear that reconciliation is something we crave at a cellular and spiritual level. I’ve found that a gentle nudge is often more powerful than threats.
“How we connect each person to the plants, the ocean, the air that sustains us, is a creative challenge, but one we must meet.”
Depressing images and guilt-inducing appeals may work once, but generally they make people run away or give up entirely. Human beings like to feel good. The pleasure principle was a key element in the DNA of (RED), a pro-social brand collaboration that I launched in 2006 with Bono and Bobby Shriver. To date, (RED) has generated over $600 million and impacted over 140 million lives. At a certain level, the result of this movement has gone well beyond (RED)’s specific target of helping eliminate HIV/AIDS in Africa. Everyday shoppers now widely vote with their wallets, and more businesses see activism as an essential evolution beyond basic corporate responsibility. Key to this transformation was the notion of making the purposeful choice every bit as desirable — if not more so — than the generic alternative.
It’s up to all of us to seek and demand more truly sustainable alternatives. But for those of us who build companies and run nonprofits, let’s remember that human nature and responsible action will align if the message is positive. How we tell the story restores a sense of innate power. How we connect each person to the plants, the ocean, the air that sustains us, is a creative challenge, but one we must meet with the best of our inspirational and innovative capacity. Transformation depends on can-do energy. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the human spirit.