My friend Franke does it again, riffing on her experience seeing Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Kingwell (don’t know who he is) talking about initiating social change. Her illustrations tell the story much better than I can so I’m just going to add a little of my perspective to her observations.

Franke is Canadian so maybe things are different across the lake but I doubt it.  Simply put, Gladwell argues that awareness is not enough to change behavior and Franke notes that sometimes a threat or pain point must be reached.

I’ve been noticing a lot more Euro-versions of cars appearing on the streets in Rochester- little tiny Hondas, Toyotas, Fords, etc. These cars are literally a fraction of the size of the SUVs they are hopefully replacing. So why are they appearing now? Could it be $4.25/gallon gas? Even a wealthy SUV driver might have issues with paying five bucks for gas to run out to the store or a movie…

A point I’ve belabored here is that change and response to  climate issues will only be driven by economics. Americans don’t want to believe it will affect us so our politicians won’t act. Awareness and acceptance of the issue is there but there isn’t any urgency- until we get hit in our wallets, painfully.