Sell health and happiness. Multi-solve climate crisis.
Keywords: climate change, health, wellbeing, multi-solving, policy, air pollution, nanny states,
I used to think that eventually we would accept the huge changes needed to put forward progressive climate policy to the general public. I was wrong. A decade has gone with very little effective action on the climate and ecological crisis.[1] And despite years of lobbying and campaigning we are still struggling for regional and national councils in many places to accept the inherent value of nature, clean air, healthy soil, mature trees, access to green and blue spaces. Conservation of nature always tends to be something someone else should be doing. This is no news to you but to recap; to combat climate change and biodiversity loss effectively (or climate crisis and ecological destruction - depends what terminology you want to use) or to adapt to changes already underway we need to act fast to cut down emissions in ALL spheres of life. [2][3][4] And if we don’t manage that, then, well the consequences are debatably somewhere between terrible and catastrophic.[5] You might think crop failures, unseasonal storms, or flooding. But you really ought to think in terms of heat-stroke, asthma, mosquitoes, and water-born diseases.[6] Despite the rhetoric, most planning policies still do not take environmental issues seriously. Infrastructure at all levels is always prioritised over wildlife or nature; greenwashing happens in tick-box exercises for construction and road building industries to mention just a few and road, trackside and land management and maintenance departments across the county have accelerated tree felling at an alarming rate.
This changes everything
To mitigate against and adapt the ecological crisis we’ve created, we will need to change how we work, travel (drive, fly), eat, do leisure, heat our houses, socialise, construct, communicate.[7][8] And we urgently need to halt further destruction of nature, wildlife and wild spaces, putting aside vast areas for protected areas with only limited human use and restoring degraded habitats.[9] Wherever you think we are on the climate change timeline, it does not matter because, to survive, we will need drastic solutions. We will need to radically change the way we live, starting now. We need to restore old ways of living, foraging, growing food, and caring for each other. We need to learn to live with less. We need to share, and we need to live lightly. So why aren’t we? Why aren’t we made to do so?
Who stole my cheese?
This ineffectiveness might be explained by the big business lobby from fossil fuels to logging, or by the effective populist anti-climate-crisis campaigning from anti-renewables to blaming it all on population growth (rather than consumption). But perhaps the biggest block for anything getting ‘done’ is bi-partisan politics hindering any politicians to take action that might be considered even mildly unpopular. Afterall, they’re all depending on the results of the next election. Looking after environment should not be a left only agenda, and tackling the climate emergency shouldn’t be seen as an election suicide. So why are the politicians still too scared to address this? Because we are seemingly all so reluctant to change our ways.[10]
Most of this will somehow or other change our daily lives. And we don’t really like change. We need to do all these things, but we are terribly good at resisting change and dislike having to sacrifice or give up anything.[11] [12]There are various podcasts and blogs about how to live ‘greener’ or to combat climate change, but studies show they are not effective to the extent that would make a difference.[13]We all (well most of us) know about what we ought to be doing for the oceans, plastics, etc. Most of us have started doing ‘our bit’ but we regress. We go back to the normal because going against the grain is quite tiring and sometimes downright difficult – have you ever tried to find a locally produced plastic free healthy snack for a screaming toddler at a garage shop. Life gets hard at times. Near on impossible. And sometimes we’re just plain lazy.[14]
Sadly, we are running out of time. We should not waste more time before tackling climate change and biodiversity loss head on. We just need to act, collectively, in a manner similar to wartime mobilisation.[15][16] But pretty much no one is willing to take on any more limiting restrictions to our daily lives. And we’re all exhausted after the 2020 Covid-19 sledgehammer year of multiple lockdowns, in which we have already mobilized, sacrificed and achieved a great deal. We just want a break.
Forget climate – focus on health
Which is why I think we ought to prioritise immediate, deliverable health policies over so-called ‘climate action’. We simply don’t have time to force feed people any more climate related doomsday reasons for eating, drinking driving, working, shopping and travelling differently. But everyone understands health. Hopefully more than ever. Only very few people still pursue that covid-19 is a hoax[17], even if many may disagree in ways that it has been handled across the world[18]. Even if the nanny state problem (“don’t you tell me what to do”) will still be an issue in countries like the UK[19], in many others, pursuing state-led health measures is more accepted, and this will allow us to multi-solve climate mitigation and adaptation, but in a more subtle and accepted way.
This is nothing new, scientists and policy experts have been calling for an integrate policy approach to maximise the co-benefits of climate policies to health and vice versa, for some time. For example, air quality co-benefits on morbidity, mortality, and agriculture could globally offset the costs of any climate policy.[20][21] Most health improving policies will simultaneously tackle climate issues, tackling air pollution being one such measure as air pollution (along with effect from climate change) is one the most serious environmental risk factors to our health.[22] It is worth pointing out that environmental factors account for quarter of all deaths worldwide and 28% of deaths of children under five. Getting rid of fossil fuels would pay for itself in clean air alone.[23] In addition, heart and lung diseases and conditions top the causes of death worldwide with cancer being third main killer especially in the more affluent countries.[24]
For all those, healthier lifestyle is the number one recommended preventative measure as well as a key factor in their treatment. Tackling health issues will mitigate against climate crisis but tackling climate issues will positively affect our health also – as climate change and its consequences are estimated to affect our health and wellbeing in myriad ways.[25]
We need policies from top down to curb the availability of all this ‘stuff’ that’s bad for the environment and climate, but it needs to be sold not simply as climate ‘friendly’ but as health friendly, or the very least needs to be advertised as both. Multi-solving is the way forward for action-led thinking to appeal to as large a crowd as possible. [26] And it is not an automatic voter repellent.
From Badvertising to Goodvertising
We need to identify and advertise on a large-scale climate solutions that make people’s lives easier and healthier and happier and sell that. No-one wants to sacrifice the little things that make our lives more bearable. Climate and happiness and nature needs to be sold to us, since we are so daft that we won’t choose it for ourselves. We will happily buy another pair of (probably unethical, both socially and environmentally) trainers or get a new (incredibly environmentally destructive) smart phone every two years. Neither of which we need but are so embedded in the consumerist paradigm that we honestly believe buying stuff makes us happier.[27] The manufacturing industry has perfected their advertising over the past 70 years so well that the consumption of new goods has become engrained in our lives, even the healthy ones! [28] Try starting a new heathy hobby without being told you need to buy a tonne of kit to do it. Think different leggings or shoes for every activity, smart watches, dry bags, helmets, jackets of different materials for every possible weather, and even the simplest of all past times that ought to require minimal gear, like walking or sea swimming have entire sections dedicated in sports shops. And I wont even go into the SCAM we have been sold in the form of gender specific baby stuff. Stuff that we don’t need anyway, but apparently now should be buying in different colours for different sex babies? A ‘boys’ high chair?? What!? Does it have space for their little balls? Sorry, I regress.
We need to utilise the existing cunning of the advertising industry and turn it around. We need to be advertising and selling non-material happiness. Satisfaction that is not based on buying new stuff. The stuff that is literally choking us and our planet alive because most of us simply can’t see the connection between the stuff they buy and the global ecological and climate crisis.[29] The advertising companies have perfected their pitches over decades of consumerism. There are degrees you can take and hundreds of books out there teaching how to sell unnecessary stuff to people – it should not be that difficult to sell useful, helpful and necessary concepts to us? Those that does not involve manufacturing new goods on a resource and energy on a limited planet.
And what’s more, we got the Influencers. They are a bit like influenza, spreading fast and making a killing in the process. Only we can use them. Where traditional advertising won’t reach, these single human cyberspace dwelling advertising machines will.[30]
Of Monsters and Men
So how do we go about selling health and happiness? Looking at it systematically, one would evoke the power and brilliance of multi-solving whereby we examine every need we’re responding to and look at what other issues we could be addressing at the same time. There should never be just a single aim for any policy or a project. Everything we do from now on, needs to address several issues at once. We just don’t have the time, money or people to do otherwise. The Big 3 of urgently required climate action are: 1) reducing energy consumption in general, but specifically of fossil fuels (household, industry, agriculture, transport); 2) reducing resource demand for manufacturing goods (and restoring currently exploited resources) and generally reducing manufacturing of certain good and cutting down the cycle of endless consumption; and 3) reducing the consumption of meat and dairy and transforming food production systems. All these could be sold to us through series of trendy actions disguising health policies and the very practical tasks of reducing air pollution levels to insulation, restricting driving and car ownership, free and much improved public transport, improved cycling infrastructure, four-day workweek, increased working from home allowance, embracing circular economy in manufacturing, improving livelihoods of both farmers and their livestock by actively encouraging smaller farms and community agriculture.
The health service is a monster of a thing. So huge that any prospect of change can feel insurmountable. It does wonderful things, but it is not very good at change, especially if no one is calling for it.[31] There are plenty of trusts who are taking action to cut down their carbon costs[32] but for the trusts to effectively generate change in the general public, the public health strategy as a whole needs to guard against health risks due to climate change. The public health strategy needs to align with government action to tackle the Climate Big 3, and this needs to be explicitly communicated to the wider public. Influencers get paid in money and products for their endorsement value. We need to embrace it. Pay for influencers to use public transport. To have meat free Mondays. Advertising works. Just count the shoes you own.
[1] 2021 Is The Year We Turn A Corner On Climate Action (forbes.com)
[2] (Climate change: 'Exceptionally hot' 2020 concludes warmest decade - BBC News)
[3] UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’ – United Nations Sustainable Development
[4] www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cb1929en
[5] Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
[6] RSPH | Guest Blog: The Impact of Climate Change on Public Health
[7] Adaptation to climate change | Climate Action (europa.eu)
[8] Mitigation and Adaptation | Solutions – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet (nasa.gov)
[9] Climate Solutions | United Nations
[10] Johnson, Spencer (1999) Who moved my Cheese?
[11] Why Do Smart, Caring People Ignore Environmental Issues? | Psychology Today
[12] Why People Aren’t Motivated to Address Climate Change (hbr.org)
[13] Why People Opt Against Going Green | Fox Business
[14] 'I just can't be bothered': why people are greener at home than in the office | Guardian sustainable business | The Guardian
[15] What would 'wartime mobilization' to fight climate change look like? (grist.org)
[16] Wartime Lessons for Industrial Mobilization in a Time of Pandemic - War on the Rocks
[17] Coronavirus: More than a fifth of people in England believe Covid-19 is a hoax | The Independent | The Independent
[18] Liverpool has been hit by both Covid and its mismanagement | Financial Times (ft.com)
[19] Are nanny states healthier states? | The BMJ
[20] Air quality co-benefits for human health and agriculture counterbalance costs to meet Paris Agreement pledges | Nature Communications
[21] Health and environmental co-benefits and conflicts of actions to meet UK carbon targets: Climate Policy: Vol 16, No 3 (tandfonline.com)
[22] WHO | Air pollution and health: Summary
[23] Air pollution is much worse than we thought. Climate change is far from the only problem with fossil fuels. - Vox
[24] Preventing disease through healthy environments: a global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks (who.int), What are the biggest global health risks in 2019? | The Week UK The top 10 causes of death (who.int)
[25] The health case for urgent action on climate change | The BMJ, Climate change | The King's Fund, WHO/Europe | Health in focus at the UN Climate Change Conference.
[26] Multisolving (climateinteractive.org)
[27] Sociological Perspectives on Advertising – ReviseSociology
[28] Why do so many brands choose to evoke happiness in ads? - Unruly
[29] https://youtu.be/9GorqroigqM / Homepage - Story of Stuff
[30] Selling health and happiness how influencers communicate on Instagram about dieting and exercise: mixed methods research | BMC Public Health | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)
[31] Nuffield Trust Briefing December 2017. Falling short: Why the NHS is still struggling to make the most of new innovations. By Sophie Castle-Clarke, Nigel Edwards and Helen Buckingham
[32] Sustainability and public health: a guide to good practice - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk), Sustainable Development Strategy (sduhealth.org.uk)