What motivates us? A call for thoughts

I received an e-mail a few weeks ago from Donna LeGrand, a retired lawyer living in Raleigh, North Carolina. She said that she wanted to try to move towards living trash-free! How amazing! She later called me, and we talked for about an hour about her life and her thoughts. I asked her what motivated her to think about doing something like this. She said that she had been doing much to decrease her environmental impact and trash production. But one fine day, just like any other day, she opened her kitchen pantry, and saw this....

She thought to herself, "Look at all of this stuff I have to throw away." I am not going to write more of her story here, because her story is best told by her, and I hope she will write a piece to share with everyone. But I wonder what it was that day that made her say that to herself.

I have tried to think about what motivates and encourages us to make changes in our lives. There are of course incredibly thoughtful people that have thought about these things before, and have made efforts to make other people change their behaviours. This can take the form of little signs or thoughts, as has been done at Georgia Tech. It seems like the motivations or the triggers exist all around us, yet we are sheltered, and we live overloaded lives. Motivation can also come from people we love, people we respect, and people who we don't agree with. What is interesting is that we are surrounded by all of these potential triggers and stimuli all of the time.

One time occurrences, such as weather events, of course at the other end of the spectrum, and are the most vivid cases that may result in behaviour changes, particularly because they can etch themselves in people's minds. Events, such as weddings and birthdays and parties and concerts can do that, too. But with environmental issues, particularly those with large characteristic times for their unfolding, such as climate change, it is hard to point to individual events as outcomes of our behaviour. It would be hard to convince people in the US that they are being oppressed because of climate change, especially because climate change isn't as visceral as an F5 tornado.

But the problems exist, and people need to be motivated to act on issues that they may or may not be affected by. This is a difficult question, and I cannot say I have much to say at this point, or today. (I will think about this and share some more thoughts if I think of anything.) Therefore, I am hoping that you will be willing to share your thoughts with on what motivates you. I will leave this question open ended, and you are encouraged to write about most anything. What would be particularly interesting to share are those key events that impacted you and your beliefs and your behaviour. If it is something environmentally related, that will be awesome. If you have pictures to share, that works, too.

Realising change in reflection

If you observe much of what happens in nature, there is a spectrum of timescales. There can be abrupt events that occur over the course of seconds and minutes, like earthquakes - a quick release of energy. We have events that happen over the course of days, like hurricanes - a slow buildup of energy release from latent heat, and a movement across water, potentially hitting land. Some events happen over the course of weeks and months, like seasons and the falling of leaves - there is an almost imperceptible change from day to day, just like the changing height of a child. Changes in climate and population occur at an even slower timescale; it takes many decades for the radiative effects of carbon dioxide to be felt, and unless for some reason there is an extinction, masses of fish can slowly grow or decline over time. In general, though, it seems that nature operates at timescales that are too slow for us to flow with. It seems as there each day and week is a new local, momentary equilibrium. What happens in most natural phenomena, except say earthquakes, volcanoes and bombardment by coronal mass ejections, is that there is a constant feedback between various forces. There is a constant tug and push of daily influences of solar radiation, changing vegetation patterns, changing ocean acidity, and, whether we like it or not,constantly rising carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on the year and the ocean capacity, fish populations may rise slightly one year, but then the next year, because of say, a decline in plankton, the populations may drop. Feedback is at play, and natural systems respond according to the sum of the positive and negative feedbacks; systems are dynamic and ever-changing. 

I am reading a draft of an article by Professor Princen, in which he talks about feedback in our social constructs. He mentions that in economies that are centred around resource extraction (our economy), during boom times, positive feedback is immediate and clearly tangible - we get 8% return on investments, gasoline prices drop and everyone is happy. Positive feedback makes us think that more of the same can never be bad. (And regardless of whether we have Democrats or Republicans in office, we have more of the same.) Negative feedbacks in our society are either one of of two: diffuse (slow rates of cancer rise because of petrochemical release into waters) or abrupt (like earthquakes, miners getting stuck underground for more than a day, huge oil wells blowing out). Unfortunately, our society is adept at avoiding the internalisation of negative feedback. In the end, it is difficult for us to recognise, realise and admit that the sum of these feedbacks is changing the landscapes we, and other living and non-living beings inhabit. For all of our instant access to information today, we have to reflect back on vast amounts of time to make any meaningful decision about where we are headed and what we should do. Yet at the same time, the signs pushing for change are constant - miners continue to die, thousands per year (you just don't hear of them), constantly increasing rates of obesity and cancer, and year after year of record high temperatures and seasons.