From biodiversity loss to peak oil to the need for recycling, many of the messages coming from the environmental community have one common underlying theme: scarcity.
Messages of scarcity take their power from the fear they produce. As marketing guru Seth Godin points out, fear is a powerful emotion that can make people act. Tell people that there isn’t enough of something to go around, and you can bet that many will act quickly to make that they get theirs…
That may be one of the supreme ironies of environmental messages involving fear: it may ultimately lead people to desire those things we claim are in short supply. Can you say “Drill, baby, drill??
Finally, there are no shortages of fearful messages out there, and since people seek security when they’re scared, they’ll probably embrace the message that produces immediate comfort… or, at least, validation. “Energy independence” works as a message in one instance because it ties directly to a fear many Americans find familiar: the fear of violence from outsiders. We have vivid images associated with this fear — it’s something we know. Tell people that we take money out of the hands of “state sponsors of terrorism” by leveraging domestic energy supplies, and they start listening closely.
