IntroductoryWorkshop

Discuss: https://forum.ecocounts.community/d/99-july-1st-public-event-community-engagement/

Timings

10:15 Put up EcoCounts banner, get food

10:45 Layout marketing materials

11:00 Intro

11:15 Keynote talk: Sam Baker, climate communicator - personal action counts

11:35 EcoCounts, our strategy, your input and creating new ideas

11:50 Q&A

12:15 Coffee break

12:25 Task Explanation

12:30 Split into tables

12:50 Sharing Answers, 10 mins per table

14:00 Food

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Talk

• Thanks Sam
• EcoCounts and what we are aiming to achieve
• The unique value that we as an organisation are focusing on is the idea of a personal carbon budget
• Against a backdrop of increasingly dire climate change, we realised it has to be something different to business-as-usual
• Climate science raising the spectre of significant existential risks - not likely risks, but significant risks
• While we're not panicking, we do feel the need to strap in and start doing something about it
• We have already tried plain old advertising what we're doing, but we haven't done so well this far
• So why don't people want to do something about it?
• Perception of risk - Humans can experience risk on a visceral level only if it is:
  • visible
  • having historical precedence
  • immediate
  • with direct personal impact
  • simple causality
  • caused by an enemy Climate change risk has none of these properties, compared to for example, a lion in savanna which:
  • is visible (there it is!)
  • has historical precendence (it ate your brother last week!)
  • immediate (there is the lion - act now or be killed!)
  • direct impact (the lion is going to eat you!)
  • simple causality (the lion is going to eat you and you are going to be dead!)
  • caused by an enemy (the lion!)
• disinformation, greenwashing and denial from fossil fuel industry and hangers on and our endless gullibility
• what can we do - five different approaches
• EcoCounts has an approach based on 4 of these
• personal transformation - expanding our circle of influence - Gandhi, Frankl, King
• community building - a group of EcoCounters looking inwards to the group for validation and inspiration rather than outwards at society
• alternative approach - a carbon budget, being responsible for the emissions related to everything we have, do or consume, leading on to carbon allowances and PCT (norfolk island, lahti)
• the inside game - EcoCore is researching a policy to extend the impacts of personal carbon budgets to business via a national carbon currency, which we propose would accelerate innovation for the energy transition
• mass protest - this is action at a personal level or a community level which we intend to put on the program for future EcoCounters
• Point out now this workshop is about climate action now, and not what about what you think of the EcoCounts and EcoCore idea
• Sam and I are happy to take questions from the audience

Brainstorming Seeds

• What is easy
• What is difficult
• What do you need help with
• How can you help each other
• Could your local community or your neighbours help
• Could EcoCounts help
• Could your council help
• How can central government help (practical as opposed to idealistic)

Workshop Rules

• Rule 1: Setting goals effectively - outputs -> outcomes
• Rule 2: Balancing time, effort, and costs
• Rule 3: Create metrics purposefully
• Rule 4: Understand bias - confirmation bias, social desirability bias, sampling bias
• Rule 5: Design your surveys well - on registration, during, after
• Rule 6: Ask about participants’ ‘confidence’
• Rule 7: Ask about specific skills
• Rule 8: Gather feedback before, during, and after (postcard to our future self)
• Rule 9: Harness gamification to test participants' skills
• Rule 10: Measuring those who did not attend