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[Darian Rodriguez Heyman] [Founder, Code Green Agency]
[Co-Facilitator, TEDxPresidio] [April 2, 2011]
[On The Environmental Movement]
Why haven't we been more effective?
Why haven't we been more effective in the last 60 years?
since Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring" and really spawned
the modern-day environmental movement.
And I would argue that the reason is this,
it's a failure of framing.
We've been trapped in this code-red mentality and this notion,
this false notion that our job, our role as a movement
is to convince the rest of society that climate change presents
the greatest challenge and threat to face mankind.
And as a result, the ask is twofold,
sacrifice and consume less and be afraid, be very afraid.
And how's that going for us?
(Laughter)
Is that really unleashing the full potential
of the human spirit that we need working if we're going to address this problem
at the speed and the scale required?
Not so much.
So, the real question is, what's the alternative to code red?
And in my mind is about code green.
It's about reframing sustainability
not as something to be feared
and something that's going to drive sacrifice,
but rather as the single greatest business and wealth-generating opportunity
since the Industrial Revolution.
And how does that help to unleash the full potential of the human spirit,
the full potential of free markets and capitalism?
[On Social Media and Web 2.0]
All of a sudden, we've entered a world
where everyone is smarter than anyone.
What do I mean by that? Everyone is smarter than anyone.
What I mean by that is that you have the Encyclopaedia Britannica, right?
It's been around for ages, they put a lot of effort
into amassing knowledge, right?
Thousands of employees, millions of dollars spent on research --
Then you have Wikipedia, right?
Ten employees, and that's just now.
It's now six times as robust as the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
and that's just in English, they're in dozens of languages now.
It's also more accurate, it's been objectively proven.
YouTube has over 100 000 videos a day uploaded.
Each one of those is rated and reviewed.
No Hollywood studio on Earth could do that.
And so, I encourage you to think about
how does this "everyone is smarter than anyone" concept apply to you
and the businesses and non-profits that you're all working on?