Is it ever a good idea to forge a link between campaigns that would stand quite well on their own?

It often seems easier to hold to simple messages. No point you might think in confusing the sponsors and supporters. The committed activists for one cause may have some ideological difficulty with another and, no matter how well intentioned, the founders and energetic souls who banded together for one good reason may not relish the idea of diluting their design.

However you cannot but feel that some great causes would benefit from association with each other.

Typecasting

Playwright Michael Frayn hit a nail on the head when he wrote, “Most probably she’ll have filed it”, - the surest way to lose something is to file it away. Deep down we are all librarians except that we don’t share a common scheme for classification - and nobody tidies the shelves. Put a label on it. File it. Forget it. Let someone else puzzle out why you chose those labels. It’s much the same with big issues – they get filed in some government Department – it belongs to Energy, Education or Environment, or some other outfit, and that’s where it can stay – safe behind the borders, labeled, mostly forgotten, most likely lost.

It’s not a new problem. A few years back there was an attempt to break down the borders. A Department could lead but others were expected to take an interest – especially if their performance-related bonuses depended on it. But still we hanker after simple messages, we like clear responsibilities (someone to blame in the event of failure) and all the directness of a tabloid front-page headline. The big idea is to find a big idea – a banner for all causes – a label that can be filed in a million places and then lost or found as events demand.

Irony has no respect for conventional boundaries. It is convenient for some to forget that the all-time hero of the right wing (with, it happened, a scientific background) supported the concerns for action on climate change from the moment that she realized the extent of her influence. Deep green and deep blue, alas, didn’t match and the colour clash is still evident.

This week the climate change campaigners are gathering in Durban. Two years on from the crash of Copenhagen the prospects for a new global treaty look no more promising. The big issues have been labeled – alternative energy, CO2 reduction, loft insulation – and allocated for practical policy purposes and light green credentials. It seems very negative – a competition for caps and constraints rather than a competition for innovation.

Pay now or buy later

Scratch the climate-change surface, however, and lurking below you’ll find fresh fundamental ideas that demand air-time now but promise even greater disruption later - ideas that have a long-term inevitability about them but lack redtop headline immediacy or perceived practicality.

One of those challenging-to-communicate causes has a good label – ‘the Circular Economy’. It has a high profile leader. It has friends in fairly high places. It has corporate sponsors. It has intellectual credibility. Its organization is well designed. For its potential impact on us all it deserves to be centre stage. The question is whether it will be filed – filed away somewhere and lost – or whether it can be inextricably connected to a million other strands of everyday essential life.

Small voices

Those who, regardless of motivation, like to think they are setting the agenda often find it difficult to hear small voices. There may be many more of them but the small voices are lost in the noise of battle. Corporates clamouring to capture regulators. The media and mass communicators claiming credits. Politicians seeking self-preservation. Given enough time it all unravels – but on issues like climate change do we need to discover in twenty years time what we should have been doing yesterday?

And that is why good causes so often need each other.

Better quality broadband

It is only in recent times that those thinking about broadband have understood how the quality of design in utility access networks is fundamental to economic growth in every aspect of work and life, in any economic sector, in any size of organization, private or public. The notion of its disruptive capabilities in societal development may have given pause for thought amongst those who don’t comprehend community but the millions of small voices that would bash the bankers are equally aware of digital empowerment.

The Internet was once described as ‘innovation without permission’. That same spirit of freedom allows fresh ideas to blossom and it also provides a practical way of achieving the previously impossible. Advanced wishful thinking can be converted into everyday action simply because, sooner or later, ‘there’ll be an app for that’.

The huge upheaval in Australian broadband provision has been roundly criticized by those who see only massive over-provision (at a cost to the pubic purse) and would prefer the status quo. ‘Who needs these speeds?’ they ask. Patiently and politely (well, as patient and polite as you can get in Australian politics) the answer comes back – pointing out the future economic inevitability of digital dependence. ‘We are not doing this because we know exactly what people need. We are doing this because we do not know what will be needed.’

Infrastructure investment

Some things – like investment in roads, rail and high quality digital infrastructure – have always been too fundamental and too important to be left to the mercy of market forces. It has always been too easy to take the money and run. It has always been too easy for big businesses to forget why they were born. It has always been too tempting to muddle through. But now there’s a new resolve. After the scandals, the exposures, the dire economic analysis and the plain awful truth that propping things up is not really a solution, the popular mood is that fudge is for fools – that ignorance was never bliss – that issues must be faced and sorted – or as tabloid headliners might say ‘Enough is Enough’.

It may be some time before most folks will understand that big issues and critical causes are connected in inconveniently complex ways. Even if the Corporate and Departmental border patrols maintain their vigilance the ideas will leak across. Sooner or later someone will ask that very basic question; ‘If we knew all this years ago why didn’t we do it?’ The answer, most likely, is either that the small voices did not shout loud enough or that leaders were not listening.

One can admire single-minded devotion to a simple clear plan. But the greater challenge is to work out how to make it easier for grand ideas to fit together and become practical reality. Perhaps it would best to campaign great causes in those places that are well connected and open to fresh thinking.  Perhaps in Durban they should gve up on caps and those undertakings to cut back and instead they should focus on incentivising innovation.   

______________________________

notes:

The quotation is from Michael Frayn's play 'Alphabetical Order'.

This editorial was written to coincide with the start of the climate change talks in Durban, South Africa.

See also 'The Spirit Level' - why more equal societies almost always do better.