About episode
A couple weeks ago our episode focused on Speed & Scale, a comprehensive action plan to cut emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. It’s a book and an ambitious ongoing effort to track global progress on addressing climate change.
This week we focus again on a book and ambitious ongoing effort: The Carbon Almanac. Over 300 volunteers created the book, and now it’s a movement of over 1,900 people who are continuing to add resources to help the world get the facts straight about climate.
The founder and lead organizer of this ambitious project is someone you’ve likely heard of before: Seth Godin. Seth has written over 20 best selling books. He’s widely recognized as a thought leader on marketing, how ideas spread, leadership, creativity and change. I was thrilled to have the chance to talk to Seth and he was just as fun and thought provoking as I hoped.
And, a little warning – something happens in the background towards the end of episode. Normally we’d edit it out for you but it actually led to a really interesting discussion about a way everyday people can have a lot of impact. I’ll let it remain a surprise for you, but you’ll know it when you hear it. Enjoy!
In today’s episode, we cover:
- [3:19] What is The Carbon Almanac & how it came to be
- [4:57] What motivated Seth to look at climate change
- [7:17] What role do individuals have in systems change
- [9:09] Today’s culture in regards to climate change and how it’s changing
- [11:04] What it takes to get to the next level of action
- [14:17] What we need to change and what is Seth most excited to work on
- [19:20] How systems change
- [21:24] Comparing the climate era to the digital transformation era
- [23:08] What we need from leaders today
- [24:33] The influence of corporations
- [27:57] Narratives that (don’t) work for bold climate action
- [29:10] Action around leaf blowers
- [30:14] What Seth is working on next & his call to action
- [32:29] The role in design in making a new future tangible
What is The Carbon Almanac & how it came to be
Seth loves almanacs. It’s probably safe to say he’s made more almanacs than most human beings. He made the Business Almanac, the Women’s Almanac, the Celebrity Almanac, almanacs that go way, way back to covering Ben Franklin. He’s an expert on creating collections of browsable, true information, mantras if you will, that can be looked up.
While Seth wrote his first blog post about climate change 16 years ago, he says amazingly it did not solve the problem. He discovered over the ensuing years that it’s hard to talk about it because you feel like a hypocrite because you are. He points out that he is, too. Seth raises it’s also hard to talk about because it’s deliberately obfuscated and complicated by people who don’t want us to talk about it. If he was confused and hesitant to speak up, he placed his bet that other people were as well. And so he set out to use a method and build an example of how people could come together to do something about it. The Carbon Almanac was born as a result.
Seth is a volunteer of the project, and so are his 300 other co-authors. There’s now 1,900 volunteers in 91 countries around the world. None of them get a penny from this project, but they’ve made a 97,000 word book illustrated, checked, designed, laid out and submitted with footnotes to the publisher in less than 150 days.
What role do individuals have in systems change
First, Seth explains that we need to say out loud that Ogilvy and Mather, a brilliant ad agency, invented one of the most important marketing ideas of our lifetime: the carbon footprint. Plastics recycling was invented by the plastics industry around the same year. He says that both of these things don’t work and that they were designed to make people who care feel guilty, feel like hypocrites, and say “I am not doing enough.” He explains that a single human being cannot change any significant system in our world. Systems are changed, not by saying “I’m going to compost and recycle my plastic water bottle,” but by doing things like creating Meatless Monday at local schools, banning leaf blowers in our local towns, asking every politician every single time we meet them as the very first question, “What are you doing about the climate?” In our country (US), you can run for office right now, and this is going to be the 10th or 20th question you get asked. If it becomes the first question over and over and over again, they’re going to do something about it.
What Seth is working on next & his call to action
There’s a kid’s book, 40 podcasts, a daily email, a teacher’s guide, a page by page analysis, translations in multiple languages, and they are about to have a free edition for people in Bangladesh because they’re going to be some of the first people who are hardest hit. Seth says that it’s not him who made The Carbon Almanac and everything listed, it’s us. He’s now working hard to make this bigger because it’s not a problem that he can solve himself. If the 1,900 people involved currently get 10 people involved, then they’re at 20,000. And if they each get 10 people, then it’s 200,000.
Seth is inviting every listener to get three copies of the Almanac and share two of them, have a conversation, have another conversation, and then start your own thing, whatever that is. He says there are movements that have changed the politics of this country since he’s been born. All of them have in common, persistent and consistent leadership showing up and not slacktivism and being worried about this and that. The purpose of this Almanac is to help people see the system and just organize 10 other people. That’s enough. Because if we organize, we can make things better.
Resources Mentioned
Connect with Seth Godin
- Connect with Seth on LinkedIn
Connect With Jason Rissman
Subscribe to Invested In Climate
