Attention Deficit Disaster

In our last post, you saw — unless you are very unusual — that you can't hold your attention steady for a minute.  We also said that to stabilize our species in sustainability would require sustained attention by the public for a century.  We asked, if attention can't be sustained for sixty seconds, what could possibly sustain it for a hundred years?

The obvious answer is — nothing.  And if that's the case, we're doomed.  So let's see if we can find a non-obvious answer.

Attention is drawn by change.  Immediate change.  Change now.  That's true of individual human attention, and also of the baby bottle from which we all nurse, media attention.  Environmental changes are monumental, but for precisely that reason they are generally not fast — at least on the scale that captures human attention.

For example, global warming should register in human consciousness as a HUGE change.  And when we hear about it or think about it, it does, and we realize it requires a huge response.  But as we continue to hear about it, it sounds more and more like NO change.  Even the weekly ice-sheet collapse soon sounds like just more of the same. 

And then our attention shifts.  "If the economy tanks, I'll lose my job."  "Who's winning American Idol?"  Attention — how fickle it is!

From the standpoint of long-term planetary health and human survival, nothing is more urgent than green issues.  But from the standpoint of human attention — in the face of war, recession and football — nothing may seem less urgent than green issues.  The ark which must save our species (and other species too) floats on the green wave, which is fed by the fickle waters of human attention.  If  those waters change their course, the green wave subsides, and the human experiment fails.

Of course, after each time that the green wave subsides, it will arise again as another environmental crises hit us.  But then each time, it will be swamped again by boredom, distraction, attention fatigue and other personal and community crises — for example, the current economic meltdown.  So the wave will rise and fall.  Even if it grows overall, it will grow unevenly, in fits and starts.

Systemic Action And Science

This will cause the kind of erratic response that is our habit, causing both inefficiency and ineffectiveness.  That will be compounded by competition for resources.  As the 21st century unfolds, and crises increasingly crash upon us on all fronts, there will be insufficient funds to deal effectively with each of them symptomatically in a crisis-response level.

Resources will be sufficient if — and only if — problems are dealt with rationally, strategically, systematically and systemically at a root-cause level, for two reasons:

1. Proactive preventive action is more cost-effective than reactive crisis response.
    
2. Even though each problem has multiple causes, most of our major problems have several causes in common.

Unfortunately, everything in our history, habits and nature suggests that in the long haul, over the course of this century, we will not achieve the sustained public attention required for this rational, strategic, systematic and systemic approach, but will instead continue to respond with erratic crisis management.  If so, we're sunk.

But it's even worse than that.  Dealing with problems rationally, strategically, systematically and systemically requires more than just sustained attention on the problems from an action point of view.  It also requires sustained attention from an analytic point of view, in terms of sustained, well-funded scientific research.

Changing a situation strategically requires understanding its causes.  Otherwise, we're just flailing in the dark.  Effective environmental action — whether by government, industry or individuals must be based on good science, good sources and good sense.

Unfortunately, the science on which effective green action depends is also at risk.  In fact, at this very moment it's under heavy fire..  Republican presidential candidate John McCain rails repeatedly against "pork" and "earmarks" in the federal budget, but there is one example he pulls out almost every time to show how ludicrous our budgetary waste has become.

John McCain:  We're never going to spend three million dollars again to study the DNA of bears in Montana.  I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue, but it's not going to happen again!

He makes it sound so silly.  Bear DNA in Montana!  But this is not a paternity issue or a criminal issue.  It's science regarding an environmental issue.  And it's McCain's favorite example of the kind of "pork" he'd totally eliminate from the federal budget! 

If he were to state the facts of the case and argue it on its merits, that would at least be honest, but it's revealing that he feels no need to do so, and disturbing that he's right.  As I write this, it seems likely that McCain will lose the election.  But the very fact that he can win cheers again and again with this insidious line — playing upon public ignorance — shows how precarious the funding for green science is over the long term.

This is not just serious.  It's ominous.  Poisonous!  See our next post for the antidote — and how it involves you.

Keith Borden, Consultant
Brilliant Green Marketing