Earth Day Redux

By Jeff Wenker, Earth Class Mail

PR guy here. I joined the company not two months ago and they’ve put me in charge of this blog thing. Since you’ll see me post here a lot, let me tell you a bit about myself, or look here. I’ve been writing about technology and doing PR since 1992, which seems like a long time ago – it was before EDI became e-commerce, before email was pervasive, and certainly before blogs. I remember when we used to mail press releases – in envelopes! We actually made copies, folded them into thirds, enclosed them in another piece of paper, and put them into mailboxes (you know, those blue clunky things on street corners). Things change.

Here we are, more than a quarter of the way through 2008 and the marketing mavens now say we must communicate directly with our customers, that mass media as we knew it is gone, that everyone can publish at any time anywhere and if we want our business to thrive we have to reevaluate things like press releases. Mavens can be pretty smart sometimes.

Earth Day was this week, and there were a gazillion press releases about how another “green” business is busy saving the planet. They’re trying to make money, too, but really … still … saving the planet. As has been written before in this space, certain companies may not be living up to their “green” marketing. To be fair, we could put ourselves in that camp. There’s always something more you can do.

My point in writing is not to cast stones, but to provide some perspective. The environmental “movement” is immature. Depending on whether you start at the 1973 oil crisis or prior or later, environmentalism (unlike myself) is nowhere near middle age. Arguments could be made that John Muir started the movement, then we’d get into a semantic debate over conservation and environmentalism, and that’s not where I’m going with this.

Today, if we were to pin an age on it, I’d posit environmentalism is in a troubled adolescence. “Green” companies are like a big group of high school students – some earnest, some self-confident, some awkward – all trying to do well on their SATs. Al Gore plays the role of the cool science teacher everyone wants to hang out with. Some of these companies are going to graduate, go to good colleges, even earn advanced degrees. Call these the startups that make it. The remainder will go their own ways and show up 10 years later at the reunion, get drunk, and bad-mouth their spouse.

Ahem.

Now consider that these individual companies are comprised of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of real people. These people are learning, growing, and becoming personally invested in the environmental movement, however loosely you want to define that term. These people are the true seeds of change.

Now that April 22nd has past and another Earth Day is over, let’s take a moment to step back and reflect on what we’re doing now, then imagine a future where the young whippersnappers – those who have always known the importance of reducing carbon emissions, of using less paper, of living a little lighter on the planet – are in charge. People of my era had to learn these lessons, and the dinosaurs among us still won’t let go, but the proverbial paradigm, she’s a changin’. The future is theirs, not ours; or rather, they have more future than we do, statistically speaking, that is.

The “we” campaign, is encouraging; it makes me feel like something is being done. More than anything, though, I think it is setting the stage for something to be done. Honestly, I don’t believe I’m going to see much “solved” in my lifetime, but perhaps Professor Gore will give me partial credit for showing my work. Solutions come from unlikely places. Did the originators of ARPANET know email would become what it is today? Is it possible for a startup in Seattle to revolutionize postal mail delivery? Sometimes the unknown unknowns turn out to be wildly beneficial. As much as we may try to expect the unexpected, we will inevitably be surprised.

So, here’s hoping all your surprises are pleasant ones.

April 24, 2008 | Filed Under Earth Class Mail 

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