See Through’s elegant four-category taxonomy tool to convert Unwilling Inactivists into Effective Activists, while avoiding Willing Inactivists and Ineffective Activists
Here’s the slide that causes most listeners to lean forward at See Through Network presentations. Whether the audience is environmental activists or business people, the See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy provides a new lens through which to view ourselves, and measure the gap between intention and outcome.
The See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy
Advertisers, marketers, sociologists, statisticians, activists and political analysts have developed many ways to pigeonhole us, optimised to identify their own ‘target audiences’.
Climate activists have their own specialist taxonomies, like Climate Outreach’s Seven Segments, used by the UK’s Green Party. This identifies 7 ‘Types’, from ‘Progressive Activists’ to ‘Backbone Conservatives’, via ‘Civic Pragmatists’, ‘Disengaged Battlers’, ‘Established Liberals’, ‘Loyal Nationals’, and ‘Disengaged Traditionalists’.
Now…without re-reading the previous paragraph, how many of those categories can you remember, in what order, and can you intuitively explain what they represent?
If you got them all right, well done. If you struggled, keep reading.
The problem with complex taxonomies is they’re often impractical for non-experts. Unless you think about target audiences all day every day, it’s hard to keep seven different categories of anything in your head for long, if at all.
By contrast, the See Through Taxonomy has only four categories, all easy to understand and retain.
Category 1: Effective Activists
- Understand the reality and science of human-induced climate change.
- Focus on changing government regulation, not individual behaviour.
- Measure success in metrics directly related to their goal (i.e. tonnes of greenhouse gas reduced or sequestered, not dollars raised, membership numbers, online engagement, or ‘awareness raised’).
Category 2: Ineffective Activists
- Understand the reality and science of human-induced climate change.
- Devote time, effort and resources towards ‘climate activism’ that’s not directly related to their goal.
- Choose activities that focus on changing individual behaviours or ‘raising awareness’ as an end rather than a means.
Category 3: Unwilling Inactivists
- Understand the reality and science of human-induced climate change.
- Want to do something to reduce emissions, but feel powerless.
- Focus on individual behaviour rather than government regulation.
Category 4: Willing Inactivists
- Deny our climate crisis/claim climate change is unrelated to human activity.
- Assert that even if global heating exists, there’s nothing we can do about it.
- Deniers, who just think this, are motivated by Denialists, who actively seek to make others think it.
That’s it. Four easy-to-remember categories.
So how does the See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy help anyone seeking to influence human behaviour, with the aim of plotting the shortest viable path to a sustainable future?
‘Target audiences’, briefly
Successful pop brands, dictators, preachers and tree-huggers all know their own ‘target audience’.
Without a clear image of which of the 8.2 Bn humans on Earth you’re trying to reach, you spin your wheels and waste energy.
You can’t convince anyone to join your journey without first knowing where you’re heading. For that you need a map – or taxonomy – to spot dead ends, avoid diversions, and conserve energy.
Whether you’re selling fizzy drinks, seeking political power, winning new converts or ‘saving the planet’, the clearer your destination, the easier to pinpoint your target audience and plot your optimum journey.
See Through’s destination
The See Through Network’s Goal is crystal clear:
Speeding Up Carbon Drawdown by Helping the Inactive Become Active
Most people haven’t heard of ‘carbon drawdown’, which is why the phrase forms 20% of the See Through Goal (it’s a storytelling trick to generate engagement by inducing your audience to ask you exactly what you wanted to tell them in the first place).
For anyone interested in knowing more about carbon drawdown, or such storytelling trickery, the See Through News website is full of articles, videos and links explaining the See Through approach to climate activism.
The climate Inaction problem
The point is, however, that most people won’t read any of those articles, watch any of those videos, or listen to any of those podcasts.
The vast majority of people are not inclined to think that hard about climate activism. If they were, emissions wouldn’t be rising, and there would be no need for the See Through Network, let alone its taxonomy.
Most of us are too impatient or busy, rather than indifferent. We may be aware of the climate emergency, but the problem seems too overwhelmingly intractable to invest any energy in. We care what happens to us, our children and grandchildren, but other more pressing considerations in our daily lives crowd out thinking too hard about taking action to mitigate, retard or reverse global heating.
We fear change, and are accomplished at justifying inaction in a way that reflects well on us, and poorly on others. There are plenty of Category 4: Willing Inactivists people furnishing excellent-sounding reasons for doing nothing.
For the impatient or busy, the See Through Network can condense its challenging 10-word mission statement down to three words:
measurably reducing carbon
Less scientifically precise, but punchy and clear to all but the most obtuse or ignorant, in a world where emissions are still rising and our children’s legacy is turning increasingly dystopian.
So much for the destination. What about the map?
Bridging the Inaction Gap
The See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy focuses on the gaps between:
- our intentions
- our actions/inactions
- the climate outcomes of 2
We like to think of ourselves as rational, but advertisers, behavioural psychologists and economists all know that most human decisions are driven by emotion most of the time, which we then justify with post-hoc rationalisations.
All humans, however, also have powerful emotional urges to protect our home, environment, civilisation, tribe and livelihoods, and provide for our children. The psychological battleground of the climate emergency is a tussle to harness particular responses to these urges, fought between the forces of:
- Climate action (like See Through Network)
- Climate inaction (Big Oil and its fellow-beneficiaries of our fossil fuel addiction)
The See Through Network, briefly
The See Through Network uses its ‘Transparent Trojan Horse’ storytelling methodology ‘ to bridge this cognitive gap between climate intent and action.
Its four programmes combine sophisticated storytelling with hard science/behavioural psychology in different ways:
- See Through News: journalism and outreach
- See Through Carbon: accurate, free, open-source, transparent carbon reporting ecosystem
- See Through Games: online gamification
- See Through Together: social media content
These four programmes all share three fundamental features:
- PURPOSE: adopt the same goal and methodology
- ZERO-BUDGET: are driven by a global network of pro bono experts in various fields like carbon accounting, AI, advertising, filmmaking, graphic design, music and other forms of storytelling
- METRICS: measure outputs not in dollars, hits, clicks or ‘awareness’, but in CO2e
These characteristics shape the See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy thus:
- PURPOSE: By not needing to fundraise, See Through doesn’t need to use ‘dollars raised’ as a proxy metric, and can maintain a laser-like focus on measurably reducing carbon.
- ZERO-BUDGET: social media giants provide infrastructure for generating substantial, scalable reach at no financial cost, but at a significant and growing emissions costs from the earth-bound, carbon-belching data centres that support such ‘virtual’ services. ‘Hits, clicks, likes’ etc. are engagement metrics created by social media giants to lure us into increasing their profits; See Through sees them as a ‘necessary cost’ to be offset by measurable carbon-reducing action.
- METRICS: See Through projects therefore use the metric used by climate scientists, i.e. metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent reduced or sequestered (‘CO2e’).
The See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy is the Network’s key tool to:
- maintain focus on those most likely to be nudged towards climate action
- avoid wasting energy on the least amenable
Which is why the See Through Network’s ‘target audience’ is …Category 3: Unwilling Inactivists.
Look at the numbers
The approximate relative sizes of the four category slices in the See Through Climate Activist Taxonomy pie chart are represented in the second, more detailed, block rendering of the taxonomy.
Expressed as a percentage of 8.2 billion humans, they are roughly:
- Effective Activists: 0.01%
- Ineffective Activists: 1%
- Unwilling Inactivists: 75%
- Willing Inactivists: 24%
These numbers are illustrative (and constantly shifting), but based on multiple global opinion surveys, like the ones that inspired the 89% Project.
It’s both better and worse than you think
The 89% Movement is named after the findings of polls revealing the surprising fact that that
‘between 80 and 89% of the world’s people want their governments to be doing more to address climate change’.
It was created as a bastion against despair, a warning about the distortion of media coverage, and a rallying call to focus on the massive levers of climate change action in the hands of governments, rather the puny toothpicks in the hands of individuals.
The See Through Network shares all these views. Its Taxonomy highlights the impact this distorted coverage has on ordinary people around the world.
The overwhelming majoirity of people who want more climate action is surprising because it’s not reflected in the amount of air time/column inches amplifying the voices of ‘climate sceptics’, and the avalanche of social media disinformation spreading their views. In fact, the proportion of out-and-out climate deniers turns out to be small, and falling fast.
The See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy’s estimate of the number of Category 4 Willing Inactivists is based on large-scale international polls, like the pre-pandemic climate change survey conducted by YouGov on 30,000 respondents in 190 countries.
This was the first to reveal a rapid contraction of outright climate deniers, and to reveal the remarkable correlation between Category 4 Willing Inactivists and fossil-fuel dependent economies. Successive polls have confirmed the same direction of travel.
Why worry about Willing Inactivists?
Given this, the See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy’s assignation of 24% appears generous, but this is because it’s measuring the gap between people’s intentions and actions, not between their words and media coverage. Moreover, complacency is as dangerous as despair, and Denier influence remains disproportionately powerful.
Unless atmospheric physics reverses its laws, however, there’s no reason to suppose the trend of more people demanding more climate action from their governments will reverse either.
This expressed desire, while a necessary motivation for climate action, clearly doen’t guarantee it. Hence the See Through Climate Action Taxonomy’s focuses not just on intention, but on the barriers to converting intention into effective action.
The taxonomy is designed with the purpose of pushing as many people as possible into Category 1, Effective Activists. The more there are, the shorter our path to a sustainable future, and the less damage wreaked in getting there.
Both graphics make the best ‘target audience’ perfectly clear. To effect big changes, go for the biggest slice.
Whether you’re selling fizzy drinks or eternal salvation, targeting the biggest audience makes sense.
Low-hanging fruit
The key characteristic of Category 3: Unwilling Inactivists’ is:
- They want to do something to reduce emissions, but feel powerless.
Chris from Appleby, an early participant filmed for See Through Games The Think Game pilot, designed to elicit this sentiment in the form of a fun game, expressed this perfectly. Watch the process by which he ends up stating ‘I know where I want to be but I’m not there yet‘.
See Through projects seek to bridge this gap from intent to action, empowering Category 3: Unwilling Inactivists to become Category 1: Effective Activists.
The See Through taxonomy a powerful, useful, counter-intuitive insight, summarised thus:
It’s easier to turn Category 3: Unwilling Inactivists into Category 1: Effective Activists than to move Category 2: Ineffective Activists to become Category 1: Effective Activists
Forget Category 4, target Category 3, be gentle but don’t waste energy on Category 2
A target audience of 75% hardly needs further explaining, being pretty close to ‘everyone’.
Three quarters of 8.3 billion people is way beyond the proportion of any given population required to trigger mass social change predicted by the ‘3.5% Rule’.
The See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy, however, reveals two important considerations about the other two non-target categories.
It’s instructive to explore why See Through focuses its energy elsewhere, and how the taxonomy helps avoid wasting energy.
Category 4: Willing Inactivists. Leave them to it.
Category 4: Willing Inactivists are so emotionally invested in their narrative, the effort required to move them to Category 1: Effective Activists is tiny-to-negligible.
This makes sense. If Category 4: Willing Inactivists don’t see the problem, why should they adopt a solution? In any case, old-school Denier numbers are withering with every new flood, fire, drought and storm.
The See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy highlights a peculiar contradiction. If attempting to change Category 4: Willing Inactivists’ minds is so clearly a waste of valuable time and resources, why do Category 2: Ineffective Activists expend so much energy engaging with climate deniers and denialists?
Constant chest-jabbing, finger-pointing, and online trolling might have mental health benefits for both sides, in the form of reinforcing tribal identities, and feeling the thrill of victory.
But however appealing, exhilarating, or vindicating these outcomes may be to the protagonists, they don’t include emissions reduction.
Category 2: Ineffective Activists. Leave them to it too.
Logically, the journey from Category 2: Ineffective Activists to Category 1: Effective Activists should be straightforward. If they both ‘get it’, does this not mean they’re on the same side?
Yes, if you use standard polling like that underpinning the 89% Project. No if you apply the See Through Climate Activist Taxonomy.
By exposing the gap between intent and outcomes, the See Through Climate Activism Taxonomy highlights the fact that humans are not driven by reason or logic. This is an endemic problem for orthodox opinion polls, when people say they’ll do one thing, but act differently in practice.
This aspect of human erects the most daunting, and much neglected, barrier to effective climate action.
Numbering the categories from 1-4 implies a linear journey from climate denial (4) to effective climate action (1), but humans are not that rational.
When humans change our minds and behaviour, we follow non-linear paths. Step-shifts in emotional attachment, not steady remorseless logic, flip us from one category to another.
Religions are familiar with the passion of the apostate, the zeal of the converted, or the redemption of the sinner. So are advertisers and demagogues. Damascene moments change lives more often than reading research papers.
The litter-free route to sustainability
The same psychological patterns apply to climate activism. Logically, the path from Category 2 Ineffective Activists to Category 1: Effective Activists may seem short, but it’s clogged with emotional baggage.
The journey requires people not only to recognise their current activity is ineffective, but also to not give up when this reality hits them.
Most of those spending their weekends litter-picking, for example, believe their actions are in some way ‘helping save the planet’. In reality, the (considerable) mental health benefits they’re gaining from being in nature with like-minded friends should be offset by the uncomfortable truth that transferring plastic bottles from roadside to incinerator increases greenhouse gas emissions, and even in the unlikely event they end up being ‘recycled’, serve only to perpetuate the petrochemical industry that produces plastics.
Similarly, Category 2 Ineffective Activists who see ‘raising awareness’ and ‘education’ as ends in themself, and who measure success in online petitions/video views/social media engagements, are reluctant to acknowledge that those outcomes, per se, result in increased carbon emissions from the data centres that power all this online activity.
Without a measurable next step, it’s impossible to know whether such efforts, however well-intentioned or widely shared, have been effective in addressing climate change.
By encouraging the notion that clicking on an online petition constitutes any meaningful action, they even risk complicity in perpetuating a performative complacency that guarantees nothing substantial will change.
The path from Ineffective Activism to Despair is a short one, deliberately cleared by Big Oil, and others who profit from the status quo.
Despair = Inaction= Business as Usual.
For people with a strong emotional attachment to the narrative that they’re ‘doing their bit to save the planet’, transferring their budget of weekly activism to Category 1: Effective Activist actions aimed at the big levers of government regulation is hard.
They may suppose that Category 1: Effective Activist actions are less attractive than litter-picking, which may or may not be the case.
More importantly – switching to Category 1: Effective Activist requires an emotional climb-down. Implicitly, it devalues the ‘green’ credentials that motivated them to pick litter and recycle. Loss of face is a hard sell.
The inconvenient truth is that ‘doing something’ is not always more effective than ‘doing nothing’. At worst, it’s self-indulgent self-delusion. At best, wasted energy.
This is not to say litter-picking is a worthless activity, only to observe how easily confused it is with effective climate action that reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon Don’t Care
The carbon atoms, and the molecules they form, are as indifferent to the motivations of the human beings who released them into the atmosphere, as they are to who released them, where or when.
Humans are easily manipulated. The See Through Climate Activist Taxonomy seeks to highlight this, illuminating the shortest path to a sustainable future, avoiding the detours and wasted energy created by the ‘doing something’ delusion.
This may mean that Category 2 Ineffective Activists may have to drop down a division, to Category 3, before they can transition to Category 1: Effective Activists. Give up, in order to move up.
But why should Category 1: Effective Activists invest so much energy in something with such a low chance of success?
Much easier to move Category 3: Unwilling Inactivists, unencumbered by self-constructed obstacles, to leapfrog directly to join the ranks of Category 1: Effective Activists.
Then there’s the numbers.
Reflected through the prism of the See Through Climate Activist Taxonomy, the challenges of converting Category 2 Ineffective Activists may provide useful insights.
But just look at that huge slice of pie. The taxonomy is also a constant reminder of the to one’s eyes on the prize, by targeting the most receptive audience, Category 3: Unwilling Inactivists.
75% of everyone.