This is an extract from a new essay published on The Earth Blog, which addresses the vital question, “How can we ever hope to change enough people’s minds so that catastrophic environmental change can be prevented?”

On March 11, 2006 – just over two years ago as I write these words – I published an article on The Earth Blog called, “Why The Public Won’t Change”, opening with the words:

Watch the streets around you – do you see a concerned populace, driving little, walking lots, happily queuing for buses, fighting for renewable electricity, demanding local produce?

Of course not – the general public really don’t care about the climate. Campaigners can try and make themselves feel like they (we) are in touch with the population, but this will not happen unless they feel like the population – like they feel they don’t need to care. Campaigners are, and always will be, in the minority – the public look after number 1, occasionally numbers 2, 3, 4 etc. in the form of family (although the numbers driving their kids around smog ridden streets, unsecured, chatting on their mobile phones, or slumped in front of the TV while the kids learn about the wonders of the XBox, make me doubt this) – they are not interested in saving the planet.

It’s two years on and, as much as we hear of a great raising of consciousness across the globe towards the dangers of climatic change and global environmental degradation, the picture as far as public action goes is identical. Environmental campaigners are trying to turn around an ocean going oil tanker by offering it small inducements and little taps on the sides of its vast metallic bulk – but the tanker keeps gliding onwards. I realise now, that when the article first came out I was spot on about one key thing: the public, as a body, simply don’t want to change. This applies to the vast majority of people in industrial civilization – through a combination of lifelong brainwashing and a general apathy about the condition they are in – but it doesn’t apply to everyone. As I learnt from a social analyst friend of mine, the biggest mistake campaigners and reformers have made in approaching the problem is change is that they have assumed we behave the same – as though the population really is an oil tanker. It is far better to assume that the population is like a shoal of fish, a swarm of bees or a flock of birds.

In 2006 I thought that we could take the “oil tanker” approach, by changing the systems that are causing the problems from the inside out, through government lobbying, mass consciousness raising, corporate improvement and so many other fruitless methods. It became clear that I was hopelessly wrong; and so were (and still are) the vast majority of campaigners.

The full essay can be found by following this link.