ebmgh.com

A brilliant bit of activism from the US environmental group Friends of the Earth.

The “BP Ten” are wanted for taking more campaign contributions from BP than any of their peers in the last two campaign cycles.

FOE is circulating a petition encouraging each of them to donate all the dirty oil dollars they received in the past two election cycles to the Gulf Coast Fund. I think it’s more symbolic than anything else. The largest sum is about $37,000 to John McCain. Is that all it costs to buy a vote these days?

I think the more important goal is stated by their director Eric Pica in an article on Huffington Post, ending unlimited campaign contributions by corporations

Restore a democracy of, by and for people. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens’ United vs. Federal Election Commission gives corporate behemoths like BP, ExxonMobil, Monsanto and Goldman Sachs the right to pour unlimited cash into influencing elections. All under the guise that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as people. Congress can and should pass legislation to reverse this disaster for democracy, even if it requires a constitutional amendment.

Related: The Dirty Dozen: Who to Blame for the Oil Spill, at Time Magazine. Unsurprisingly, Bush and Cheney are partly to blame for the disaster in the Gulf, with their years of giveaways to oil companies and lax regulation.

I’m intrigued by the use of “social marketing” to promote water conservation. Much of our water use in the western United States is staggeringly wasteful (lawns in Arizona?) or just inefficient (6 gallon toilets when low-flow models have been available for over a decade). How do you convince people to mend their wasteful ways?

An article in today’s NY Times, Finding the ‘Weapons’ of Persuasion to Save Energy, discusses electrical energy, but it directly applies to water as well. The article profiles the work of Robert Cialdini: “formerly of Arizona State University’s psychology department, he wrote one of the best-selling books on persuasion of all time. ‘Influence’ came out in 1984, and it’s reached five editions since.”

According to some researchers, the things people do every day — driving, showering, mowing the lawn — cause 33 to 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Experts say these actions are packed with cheap ways to cut waste, but mysteriously, people just aren’t doing them.

Cialdini thinks this is because the campaign has focused on money and moral appeals — things that motivate less than the weapons of influence.