A new brand promise

I'm constantly amazed that world is full of hope and beauty despite overwhelming evidence that our existence on this planet – a struggle to survive despite ourselves – is about to come to an end. I know this because history has shown us that everything eventually ends although our reign here so far has been but a blip on the billion-year timeline of our incredible planet. Despite knowing this and a little else, we’re still rubbish at predicting the future. Even things that we think we know and control are beyond us. So we’re in a curious place right now, a moment in time when we’re being asked to believe two incredibly difficult things: 1) That the way we live is destroying the one place that makes life possible and 2) That we can do something about it.

An unbelievable amount of change has happened in public opinion in the last couple of years. People now accept, at least in part, that we are a complicit partner in global warning. But it is still a very ambiguous concept to most people and it is only part of the picture. The bigger picture is a shift in perception, a belief that the world gives us life and that we should be grateful for that gift. It’s gratitude not entitlement that should drive our interactions with our planet and our fellow inhabitants. I'd wish the Christian Right were half as diligent about protecting plants and animals as they are unborn children, and would like to see corporations caring at least half as much about keeping people safe as they do in raising their profits, and wish government kept half a mind on how to create a new world economy while they send people to die for the old one.

I think the big picture has not been effectively branded or marketed. The focus has been on what will happen if we don’t stop what we’re doing, the effects of what we’re doing, and how we can replace what we’re doing with something else. What I think we really need is a brilliant future to believe in. Why are we bothering to save the wretched institutions we have like cars and freeways instead of committing to high-speed rail, for example?

I swear, if I read one more article about how scientists are working around the clock to make a car that doesn’t use gas I’m going to puke. What about all the other bad things about cars: #1 cause of death for young people, huge waste of natural resources, loss of farmland to build roads and parking lots, and loud crowded cities with poor public transportation infrastructures? Even if we build a car that uses no oil, China will have to pave over their food source to drive them!

We need to think much bigger than just keeping what we’ve got because if we really can mobilize the entire planet for change, why stop at the status quo? I’d like to imagine a world where animals aren’t kept in cages for our entertainment or experimentation, where rivers are sacred and not a place to dump toxic waste, where people understood the purpose and origins of food – real food that comes out of the ground and off the trees – and grew it for themselves, where forests and oceans were considered riches as they as are and not as they can be exploited and destroyed, where people’s senses became finely tuned to the natural life buzzing around them and preferred it to loud cars, strong chemicals and a flood of artificial light.

The difficulty, I suppose, is imagining people wanting to take better care of their planet than they do themselves, or to have a more daring vision for the world than they do their life. But I think we’re a product of our environment and even though we’ve created it, it shapes us, which is why this idea is so empowering. We have the ability to re-imagine our entire universe. All we need is something we can all believe in, and just like every marketing piece supports a brand promise, every action will support our belief.

In thinking of a brand promise for this movement, I came up with this: “I believe the world is a beautiful miracle, created by God or by accident, and as long as humans are given life I believe it is our duty to care for this planet and all of its inhabitants.” Greenpeace and
the United Nations both have pretty compelling mission statements, by the way. The truth is, we probably aren’t clever enough to care for this planet but if we measure all of our actions against this promise, we can at least say that we did our best.