Centered within the frame was a dead bear floating in the middle of the reservoir. The suggestion was that the bear had somehow navigated the fence around the reservoir, gotten into the water, and drowned. The committee unanimously approved funding the request.
It was suggested that the bear had drowned but in that part of the world everybody knew that bears are reasonably good swimmers. Most committee members assume that the mayor or someone else shot the bear and put it in the water for the photograph. Most, I think, approved the request on political style points alone. But there is a lesson to be learned from this. And it is one that is as relevant today as I work with the SASB as it was back then in the City of Darrington.
Everybody engaged in addressing complexity before uninformed or hostile audiences needs their metaphorical equivalent of a dead bear. That one image that engages a community on an emotional level in addressing real, tangible problems that they can see directly affect them.
The notion “clean water” is in many ways an abstract to those of us who live in the States. We turn on the tap and clean water comes out. But how confident can we be that we all understand the connection between what we put down the drain and what comes out the faucet? The people of Texas found themselves thinking about his very carefully last January when this headline appeared in the Daily Post: “A River (of Pig Blood) Runs Through It.” The headline was accompanied by an aerial photo taken by an unmanned drone of a blood red Trinity River snaking away from the adjacent meat packing factory. And the good citizens of Houston learned that they were ingesting a little more iron than usual in their daily diet.
A city of political activists was born overnight.
And while I do not wish you all to rush out and shoot bears or slaughter hogs to make your case. I do urge all of us to consider the power of imagery in appealing to the emotional nature of our constituents. If we can engage them in an understanding that decisions about sustainability are about their lives, rather than somebody else’s, we can make great progress towards a better world.
Gary Lawrence is chief sustainability officer and vice president of AECOM Technology Corp. You can follow Gary on Twitter @CSO_AECOM.
