Igniting action with design
A lot of what has been written about climate change has focused on the dangers that we face as a global society. A large proportion of that has focused on the future—as if the changing climate hasn’t already uprooted millions of people from their homes and as if we haven’t already locked in enough heat that millions more will be threatened by what we have already emitted. We think about climate change as a far off event because it is cognitively painful to consider that we might already be along for the ride. And I couldn’t blame you for being tempted to think of it that way; the messages that we hear are scary. Depending on what you read they may even sound apocalyptic.
And we might already know why that is the case; “If it bleeds, it leads” is the mantra that drives the climate narrative, along with so many others. But it isn’t a narrative that promotes action. It may inspire outrage, or fear, or hedonism, and even hopelessness and sorrow and despair. And those emotions are disempowering. The knowledge that the sun will eventually supernova four billion years from now is sad, but we (or whatever species we may evolve into) can’t really do anything about it. The fact that the life sustaining light and heat that the sun gives off has been turned into a possible weapon for our destruction—and that humans are to blame—is sad on whole other levels of magnitude.
That’s why this entry is not going to be about doom and gloom or what-ifs and whataboutism. I saw that fellow Climate Designer (and author, podcaster, educator, and papermaker) Eric Benson posted an article on Medium recently where he discussed lessons learned from his excellent podcast, Climify. And he included this quote from Robin Wall Kimmerer:
“Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth… Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into a positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual.”
Despair is paralysis. I was stuck on that sentence for a bit; it’s such a simple truth, but one that is cast aside because sensationalism and empty sentimentality moves more product and inspires more clicks. We cannot act with the requisite speed to avoid the 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming that the Paris Agreement makes its goal if we are like a deer in headlights.
So, instead of focusing on despair or ruminating on the possible catastrophic effects of just going about business as usual, I want this entry to look at what the future of design might look like if we adopted current ideas and technologies on a widespread basis. Too much of our plans for a zero-carbon future involve assuming that we will improve upon technologies like carbon capture devices that will ultimately offset enough that we don’t really need to make any other widespread changes. This kind of wishful thinking kicks the can down the road and puts more of the burden of carbon mitigation on people that will already be dealing with the consquences of climate change. The technology exists right now to begin making the switch from fossil fuel-generated power; there is no need to wait for a more perfect solution.
Likewise, as designers we can adopt earth-friendly policies today that will change the way that people interact with technology, with goods and services, and with each other. It is possible to imagine what our industry would look like if it took the climate crisis seriously, and it is possible to imagine it without conjuring up as-yet-to-be-seen technology to do it. The key ingredient that the design industry seems to be missing is the will to make it happen. With that being said, what I want to do in this two-part entry is to look at some characteristics that are indicative of a greener design culture and then combine them into a future scenario that gives designers hope for better things and allows us to design things that bring hope and inspire action for our audiences around the world. We’ll cover the characteristics in this entry and look to the future in the next.
Messaging
On perhaps a meta level, the first thing that designers should be making sure that we focus on is hopeful messaging that leaves our audiences poised to act on climate issues, not numb with apathy or frozen in fear. For every visualization of a city underwater, we should see many more images of greener, safer, happier cities—because that’s the future we’re aiming for, right? Right? For every performative think piece or infographic about climate-induced starvation or migration, we need to see the mitigation efforts that we are working on, whether that be 3D printed homes, levees being built to control tides and save crops, or the farmers that are having success using traditional and indigenous methods, and we need to see learning materials created by those indigenous peoples so that more can learn as well.
A rule of thumb for our industry in general is that what we make supposedly improves the lives of the people who buy or use our products; so how does making a cellphone that structurally can last for five or six years helpful when the software that we put on it makes it a brick in two or three? What, as designers, are we saying about the people that we design for when we make products and ads that exist to fuel a desire to consume without thinking and to throw away and replace those products just as fast? And what does it say about what we think of the places that the materials used to create those items come from? When our messaging either willfully leads us away from the uncomfortable truths of producing the culture that we live in, or creates such fear that we feel that it is impossible to alter our trajectory, then we cannot expect to see the necessary actions that we need to do to create a better future. So, in short, we need that information that brings us up short and makes us think, but we need to temper that concern with actionable items that drive us toward the future we want to see—not the future that we may dread.
Longer Lasting
Perhaps one of the most important things that design needs to address in response to climate change is, as mentioned above, the lifespan of the products that we make. And not just phones, though as about 5 billion people have mobile phones, longevity in that arena would make a big difference. About 75 percent of the CO2 emissions associated with smartphones comes from the Extraction & Manufacture stage of a phone’s lifecycle. That means that almost all of the carbon dioxide impact that the device will have on the planet has already happened by time it sits on a shelf at the store. So, imagine what having phones that lasted twice as long would do. Imagine designing those devices to be able to be recycled more efficiently. Imagine ad campaigns (and maybe tax rebates) that encouraged recycling of smart devices. Can you imagine holding onto a phone for as long as you might a car (another device that is constructed to be very difficult to recycle back to raw materials)?
There is a term, called “planned obsolescence” that explains a lot of our culture’s relationship with what and how we buy. The short version is that corporate and economic growth is dependent on constant consumption and expansion of markets. If you immediately thought of how fossil fuel companies operate, well, yeah, the principle is the same. And so is the result; a need to continue to ensure that profits go up, regardless of any other consequence. How does planned obsolescence work? Manufacturers create a product cheaply, shoddily, or often to ensure that users will have to come back soon to buy the next “improved” version. For example, General Motors ran into the issue of market saturation of personal vehicles in the 1920s and had to look to new ways to drive (pun always intended) profits—they released new paint colors or slight design changes year after year and hammered the public’s collective neurosis about always needing the newest object with which to compare to the neighbors. It worked. There are other versions of the tactic as well.
One of those tactics is cheapness. This can refer to materials or labor. A good example of this is so-called fast fashion, where clothing is produced with labor that is often underpaid at best and sweatshop level at worst. The garments are made cheaply and sold so that they can be easily profitable and are destroyed quickly as well, just as soon as the next season’s “fashion” is in. We absolutely cannot step up to the moment as the climate crisis demands if we view the products we make—and the people who make them—as cheap and disposable, only as good as the money that we can take from them in profits. Exploitation is an extractive industry, just as much as fossil fuels are, and it is just as bad for the planet.
A design culture that is responding appropriately to the climate crisis is one that takes longevity and durability into consideration and makes long-term thinking and product lifecycle planning part of the design process. Already, we are seeing many companies experiment with circular packaging—packaging that is designed to be purchased, used, and sent back to the company that sold it to be used again. One-time use packaging, and especially plastic one-time use packaging has to be a thing of the past. To go back to electronics, phones and computers could be designed to be modular or at least easier to switch components in and out of, thus extending the life of the product; especially when tech improvements are often incremental, year-over-year. We aren’t buying a product at that point as much as bragging rights, and that is some pretty expensive bragging.
Inclusivity
The last characteristic that we’ll cover in this entry is that of inclusivity; design needs to learn from and absorb the lessons that only diversity can teach us. The climate crisis is global, but so much of design culture is led by the Global North—at the expense of the Global South, which is currently experiencing the first real effects of climate change. Design needs representatives from our global communities, and not just as subjects to work for, but as real designers looking to use their life experiences and know-how to craft solutions in ways that meet the needs of their local cultures and communities.
Marginalized groups don’t just have alternative viewpoints; they understand oppression, they understand that the world that they know isn’t designed with them in mind. If design really wants to be ready to take on the climate crisis, then we need to have people from oppressed groups, not as tokens, but as leaders. Who better to lead design for poor communities than designers who grew up poor? How about finding solutions for queer communities? Certainly not a cisgendered person who doesn’t have much more of a grasp of the concept then just any person on the street. And make no mistake, designing for marginalized communities, is doing the work of climate justice as well. The halls of our design industries should be eagerly opening their doors to develop alternative methods of educating a new generation of designers that are ready to take on the times that they find themselves in.
Making markets work for positive change
Many of these characteristics are exactly what the Climate Designers community told the Guide that they want their industries working toward this year. Doing these things and adopting these concepts on a widespread basis will result in designs and products that will not just make people aware of the climate crisis, but will put consumers and users in the driver’s seat as far as climate action goes, even if they aren’t aware of it. We’ll look more at what this looks like in action in the next part of this entry when we combine these with current eco-friendly technologies and ideas.
So, call-to-action time
What other characteristics would make our design industries more climate resilient or ready to inspire action? What do you think are the most realistic obstacles to making changes like these—essentially, overhauling our relationship with the economy—and are there any common arguments you use to make your case for greener design?
Head over to the Climate Designers community space on Mighty Networks and let us know what you think.
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This entry was written by
Matt McGillvray
Matt is a designer and illustrator living near Portland, Maine, and has been working for more than a decade doing branding, illustration, web design, print design, social media posts, and even a little SEO.
When not designing he’s usually reading, writing, or running. His current big writing project is a book about design and climate change. He is a chronic teller of puns and will not apologize for that.