Hush! Don't say it's a crisis

Yesterday I described a number of converging challenges we face in a fairly succinct fashion. It would be possible to use more dire language, and say much, much more about the state of the environment, about agricultural issues, about the stresses and strains on our educational system, about the effects of drought both here in the Upper Midwest and around the world, etc., etc., etc. And I didn’t say a peep about the international situation, wars and our part in them, about terrorists and what they want to do, or about politics and corruption. Don’t hide, because I’m not going there.

I’m not going to write about that stuff, because you, me and everyone else are tired of hearing about crises. “School Funding in Crisis?”—reads a headline in this morning’s paper. What does that make you want to do? Does your cup of coffee drop from your hand as, trembling, you grab the phone book to call, and register your concern with your elected official? Not likely. The more common response is to move to the next article, concerning the crisis in Iraq, to skim the editorial page, where someone is talking about the crisis in health care, to read Dear Abby, where someone is having a crisis with a 3-year old, and finally settle, with great relief, on Sudoku or the comics, where at least no one is trying to bum you out about anything. Or maybe you are like the majority of the population, tuning out the whole news enterprise, because there are too many real life diversions and responsibilities capturing your attention.

This situation is a real problem for people like you and me who care passionately about certain issues. We’ve got to find a way to frame the issues so they can be understood in bite-sized pieces. We have to find language that gains allies, rather than language that polarizes and turns people off. We have to ask people to do something they can do, so they can feel they are part of the solution. And we have to be willing to ask them nicely at least seven times, because marketing specialists say that’s how many repetitions it takes before an idea sinks in.

Yesterday was the last day of Try It! Transportation Options week in our fair city. I was going to call it Sustainable Transportation Week, but a marketing guru I contacted nixed that idea. “Nobody understands what sustainable means,” he said. “Why don’t you name the week after what you want people to do?” That marketing guru was Dick Brooks, of Action Media in Minneapolis. If you go to the website, you can get a great little book in pdf format. It is called “Defining We in Environmental Advocacy,” and it attempts to give advocates some ideas about framing their issues, so they can be understood, and heard. I heard Brooks speak at a regional meeting last December. He specifically said that advocates should avoid using the word crisis, because it means it’s too late.

So I made my best attempt to communicate around the issue of transportation. I pointed out that a lot of us could stand to lose a few pounds, observed that obesity was jacking up health care rates everywhere, reinforced the readily held opinion that gas prices are going to be volatile, and slid in global warming as a small subtext. There are some very simple things we all can do about these problems: we can walk more, bicycle more, take the bus, and carpool. I know from personal experience that the habit of carpooling takes some time to develop, even in a family of two. We just need to try it!

So, we got a start at tackling a problem that has huge ramifications. Now, I just need to find a way to ask people to Try It nicely, at least six more times.