Activism, Awareness and Celebrity

Submitted by Daniel Bell on August 20, 2007 - 10:03am

When there's a gorilla in the room, one, you know you can't ignore it, and two, you know its probably there because it has no more natural habitat.

I'd like to make some points about this more to start a discussion rather than to make a statement.

What does it mean to have this important environmental message delivered by a celebrity?

The first and most obvious critique will be the lifestyle arguement, which goes something like this: "These celebrities want to tell us that we have to change how we live, but look at the rampant energy use by those people." This classic line was levied at Al Gore and has and will be done so for Leo.

This sort of attack is a kill the messanger strategy, trying to diminish the speaker rather than the argument, which adroit observers will understand to be a logical fallacy.

There is an upshot to this type of argument. It argues against a particalur person within the framework of the climate crisis. In other words, you have to admit the consequences of energy use in order to deride someone for their energy usage.

Another arguement is that only celebrities, with their money and leisure time, can afford to reduce their emissions.

This argument only holds true as long as we assign no price to the cost of pollution. This movement, as Nadia has said, must become a grassroots social movement like the civil rights movement. The benefits of renewable energy must be seen for people in the lower and middle classes. Phasing out subsidies to non-renewable energy while providing green collar jobs and ownership of distributed energy production, will provide economic benefit to those who need it most.

Consider this, from Paul Hawken's Ecology of Commerce, renewable energy creates four times the jobs as does non-renewable energy.

 

A third argument, from the more divisive elements, will be that celebrities represent a "liberal elite", are intellectuals removed from the common people. These "Hollywood elites" want to tell average Americans how to live their lives.

This argument is the classic plenty-plaint, described in the book What's the Matter with Kansas? It is a classic political trick to obfuscate debate on issues.

Also, having seen this film, you understand that this is not just Leo coming to tell you what to do, but being an avenue for our best thinkers to give us some headucation.

 

What other topics do you think are looming or relevant on the issue of celebrities as messangers?

I watched Live Earth and thought it was a fantastic event that reached more people than I can comprehend. My opinion was that it was on balance a fantastic avenue for awareness. Some critical reviews by others stated that people were more interested in the celebrities and performances than the message.

 

Daniel Bell

Green Building Professional [odinshammer.com usgbc-ncc.org]

Sustainability Activist [WiserEarth.org]

wiserearth.org/user/danielbell

 

 

Celebrity / Labelism.

Submitted by Roger Larson on September 13, 2007 - 9:54pm.

Attacking the messenger.  Labelism.

http://www.11thhouraction.com/node/350 Politics and Media
http://www.11thhouraction.com/node/345 A Meditation on Linear Thinking

There is an interesting transition from Linear to Web to Soil thinking.  "Unintended consequences" is a factor critics like to use like the hypocrisy of celebrity in an equation.  Meaning as a weapon against the messenger rather than a problem with an equation.  Heck sometimes they shoot the equation.  The almost treat it as a factor in an equation.   As I am fond of saying:  Fuzzy math and fuzzy English give us an equation with a heckuva result.   

Politics is an important context, but is context the word?  Economics and Religion are other contexts.  Contexts seem to be structures or systems, where people and the environment are parts with their own system requirements. But the basic components of everything are energy and matter dynamics.  Note the power relation or potential equations. 

Segue: Economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismal_Science

Will to Power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gay_Science

Alternative Celebrity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

Connection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associationism

Which leads me to another pun:

What is the difference between the Left and the Right?  The Left is hit by "guilt by association" and the Right is hit by "guilt by no association" with much.  Or rather we may all be hit by them.  

The association? Complex systems, we all are. 

Some of these I have varying familiarity with, and even that does not mean an association with an ideology.  Where as others may find a link and make a leap and find a label to attach or messenger to kill.

Interconnectiveness and tangents.

Submitted by Roger Larson on September 13, 2007 - 8:08pm.

Thanks for the synopsis of Deep Economy.  I was earlier blogging/googling on energy / (Transforming “I don’t understand”) Intention of acceptance.  Having had some technical difficulties of my own around the time of the new servers here are a few notes: free association wise. 

a.) Triple Bottom Line:  people, planet, profits    => Purpose? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line

b.) Full Cost accounting/   =>  energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_cost_accounting
c.) InKNOWvate http://www.wholesysteminnovation.com/sixpoint.php
d.) Forest http://www.theforestfoundation.org/newprojects/2006/10/25/moving-beyond-the-triple-bottom-line/

e.) ILO http://www.ilo.org/global/About_the_ILO/Media_and_public_information/Press_releases/lang--en/WCMS_083976/index.htm
f.) Irish  http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/irish-workers-second-only-to-us-in-production-of-wealth-1070786.html 

g.)  /hour    Happiness?    Wealth productivity?

The post on Deep Economy got me to this discussion, and I have caught up with the earlier exchanges, but my earlier posts seem to carry a thread of discussion themselves.  I have posted a few replies, and hope someday they will be searchable as our blogs.  Interconnectiveness seems to be a key to The11thHour as well as discussion.   Tangents are a form of rhetorical connectiveness.  Not that I have read all the above links.  a.)what is our purpose? should maybe be in any equation  b.) energy / power  -- a cultural physics. c.) & d.)  to be looked into later, note that c.) seems to follow a geometry that seems familiar   e.) & f.) I did read and were of interest because of what struck me as their methodology and relation to Deep Economy, but had heard about the report on progressive radio and the fact that we are measuring productivity of WEALTH????  What about Health and other value relationships?  Not to mention WHICH people and part of the planet profit.  g.) just some departure points of reference.  Having lost some material, I blog in this manner...

Politics

Submitted by Daniel Bell on August 21, 2007 - 9:35am.

Right on Lori, thanks for the post

 

I agree, politics is the true context and next step if we are going to change our society.
You'll see a blog entry I made touching on this subject: 11th Hour in Context - Politics and Media.

 

I had a great discussion about this with my friend Adam after we saw the 11th Hour.

The type of thinking which dictates that we would have a new and different society if consumers had different consumption patterns is steeped in the type of thinking that brought us to this point. "We're not buying too much, just the wrong stuff! Let's go to the mall and change the world!"

When I fill up my car with gas, its sure as hell not a vote for oil by me. It's because its necessary in this society, and because I can't afford to have mobility without gasoline. If I had the money you can bet I'd be driving an electric car. The same can be said for food, I try to buy as much local and organic food as I can. But I can't afford to eat only organic, and so those dollars I spend on petrol-pesticide-monoculture-erosion food sure as hell aren't votes by me, they're a necessity.

So this idea that consumers just need to "vote" differently is absurd. And by the way, if we want to equate spending with voting and therefore democracy, then the super-rich get all the votes. That sounds like the democracy I want to have, one where 90% of people's votes don't count.

We must have change from the government. As the film states, the government is very responsive, to money. And as long as wealth is concentrated, our government will respond to the votes of the very few.

There's no question in my mind, this movement is not an environmental movement. It is a human rights movement. And the cutting realization is that they are the same. (Check out Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest)

So in the context of the next presidential election, we must make sure that film has the greatest impact that it can have, given the state of politics today. Looking at the state of things from the democratic debates in Iowa last weekend, we've got a lot of framing to do for this debate.

 

Daniel Bell

Green Building Professional [odinshammer.com]

Sustainability Activist [WiserEarth.org]

wiserearth.org/user/danielbell

 

P.S. I'm currently reading Deep Economy by Bill McKIbben, it has some great thoughts on consumerism and economic growth

Oops. I guess I've been

Submitted by lori jablonski on August 21, 2007 - 7:27am.

Oops. I guess I've been spelling DiCaprio wrong. Sorry.

Lori Jablonski

I must admit to being

Submitted by lori jablonski on August 20, 2007 - 8:37pm.

I must admit to being conflicted about this. I am thrilled Leo’s celebrity has provided the means by which this message is getting out.In this celebrity obsessed culture I’m not sure there is any other way to reach out to so many so efficiently.I’m still not sure of the overall effectiveness, however, which is why I plead guilty to feeding the gorilla in the room.

I actually think the hypocrisy accusation (which surely was fully anticipated by Leo and the Conners sisters) is less an issue here than the weird and fleeting emotional satisfaction of both building up tearing down that comes with our culture of celebrity worship.

I’ve had more than a few people roll their eyes when I’ve told them about this movie and Leonardo’s role in it. “Please, he thinks he’s Al Gore now?” is the question one of my closest friends dismissively asked. Sure, we can call this a red herring, but this particular friend is quite involved in social issues and needs no convincing that global warming must be addressed now.

I think it comes down to this: when I watch Access Hollywood, I do so for the fashion and the gossip and even for the wickedly delicious schedenfreude of tsk- tsking all that bad celebrity behavior. I expect marshmallowy, fluf from my celebrity news, generally not social guidance. And I think the same goes for quite a few people out there. So, when I first heard some time ago that Leonardo diCaprio was working on an environmental film my initial reaction was pretty breezy and just as dismissive as my friend's: oh that’s nice, I wonder if he’s still dating Giselle.

To be sure, some celebrities have managed to gain a broad measure of respect for their political activism.How?The hard way: by making a long-lasting commitment to social causes and the advancement of intelligent discourse. They had to earn their credibility when it comes to serious issue. But why should it be otherwise? Social change is hard and takes persistence and a willingness to deal with a whole lot of crap hurled by those who pretty much like things the way they are. Warren Beatty, Tim Robbins, Susan Saranden, Robert Redford, even Sean Penn immediately come to mind; obviously there are many others (and of course so many brave souls who came before them). These are big, big players, but along the way they’ve been required to deal with charges of hypocrisy, questioning of their intentions and fending off career threats. A newer crop might include George Clooney (Syriana and Goodnight and Goodluck in the same year!), Angelina Jolie (hard to easily dismiss her insistence in turning the spotlight on global poverty) and, yes, Leo diCaprio.

Because the milieu in which he’s gained his fame, fortune and status is so superficial it is easy to understand the superficiality of some of the reactions to the news that Leo’s made a documentary. The key, of course, is what comes next? What message awaits those who, thanks to Leo’s celebrity, go out and see the film and are moved to action or are at least moved to come by and visit this site for some ideas about where to go next? Those of us old enough to remember, know we've been told for thirty years-- often by celebrities-- that individual actions are important (and they are). But I don't think that is the big take-away of this film. Perhaps what we could begin now, right here, is a consideration and discussion on the political implications of all of this. (It seems that is the real gorilla in the room: the reluctance to go political…learning to be a smarter, greener consumer is one thing, being willing to confront the political and social ramifications of the film’s central thesis is quite another.)

Thanks for trying to generate such a discussion. It is what this site needs. I hope this is just a beginning.

Lori Jablonski

positive/negative

Submitted by Daniel Bell on August 20, 2007 - 3:46pm.

As I read this article, I realize that I focused on all the negative points and the refutation of those points.

What about the positive things? Or things I've failed to see. Let's start a discussion on this site, please comment!

 

Daniel Bell

Green Building Professional

Sustainability Activist

wiserearth.org/user/danielbell