And I really especially like Morgan’s comment about “rich liberal towns” and “middle class conservative towns”. Oh really? What planet does Morgan live on? So only liberals are rich? And only conservatives are middle class? And what does that have to do with energy policy anyway?

So go ahead, people, go run and hide from the bullies, it only empowers them.

I say, bear the green label and bear it proudly. Bear the environmental label and bear it proudly. Everybody respects people who stand up for what they believe.

As far as the “backlash” against green marketing images, that’s what marketing always does, over-play and over-expose terms and ideas. So no matter what idea, term, you call it, the market will over-play it. I don’t see how changing the terminology is going to solve anything here.

The only way to solve it is to take back the “green label” and make it mean something more than a cheap fake slogan some slick marketeer can use to bamboozle his latest victims. That means, put some credentials behind what it means to be green.

I’m not saying I know how to go about doing this, but I am saying that to just keep changing the terms gets us nowhere.

Backlash Brewing Against Green Marketing Images
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/02/10/backlash-against-green-marketing-images-brewing/

I agree. If you are interested in seeing what I am doing on that front - come to (although it ain’t cheap) or listen to the broadcast of the panel I am hosting at the Online News Association Conference in DC - titled aptly enough: Beyond Green.

http://journalists.org/2008conference/archives/001204.php#beat

Anyways, I agree that “green” is limiting and reductive of the broad and deep engagement we need to be doing on building a sustainable vision for the economy, jobs, health, social justice, and society.

“Green Jobs” is great framing, imho, however.

When we presented our community energy campaign to the mayor, he took one look at the original name, “Save Green”, and snorted. “This might work over at Williams, but here in North Adams people are going to see that and shut off.” It didn’t matter that our logo clearly showed dollar bills flying into the title, with a tree on the other side - double entendre is not necessarily good marketing. The mayor added, “we’re all going to be ‘green’ in 10 years, whether we like it or not, but right now folks don’t connect.” There’s a huge amount of wisdom in that snap judgement by the mayor, and the distinction about what works at Williams as opposed to North Adams (or the divide between every rich liberal town and the nearby middle-class conservative town for that matter) is a critical divide that we are not crossing.

I think Green Jobs is as much a message that targets the environmental community and urges us to think more about justice as it is a public campaign. After all, hardly anyone can even tell you what a green job is. And to that extent its working. But we (people who are working to solve global warming and the energy crisis) should be thinking ‘outside of green’.

Power Vote does that really well: “Power Vote: One Million Young Voters for a Clean, Just Energy Future

On campuses and in communities nationwide, youth are leading the way in responding to the global climate crisis.

Now “Power Vote,” a national non-partisan effort spearheaded by the Energy Action Coalition, seeks to elevate the issue of climate change in the 2008 election by mobilizing one million young “climate voters.” To do this, the Energy Action Coalition and its more than forty partner organizations are organizing young people across the United States to pledge their vote “for clean and just energy.”