When I started studying and performing improv two years ago I was blown away by how closely the principles of improv aligned with the skills and approaches needed for sustainability leadership: working with uncertainty, building trust, deep listening and much more.

Of course, a big difference is that improv is playful and joyful, while sustainability is often weighed down by its importance and seriousness.

That’s why I’ve decided to explore bringing improv techniques into the Thrivable Scotland workshops that I’m developing – not as a gimmick, but because I believe it can provide genuinely better experiences and outcomes for participants.

I’ve been telling people that survival isn’t a motivator. Am I right? TL:DR Yes.

We face of climate-driven ecosystem collapse. It’s scary. Some climate and sustainability people believe this will motivate the public and politicians to take action. I don’t.

I believe those of us working for social and environmental change should avoid the temptation to shift strategy and comms to rally people around survival.

Instead, I believe we should focus on creating the conditions for people and nature to thrive.

I just don’t believe ‘survival’ is motivating beyond a short term crisis. But I’ve been challenged on this. And I realise that while I’ve been informed by a great deal of reading about behaviour change, climate psychology etc over many years, I couldn’t actually point to specific evidence to back up my belief.

Setting out to find this, my first stop was neuroscientist Kris De Meyer, director of the UCL Climate Action Unit. Conveniently he covered this, and related points, at the Climate Creative conference last year.

It’s worth watching all 70 minutes of his lecture Neuroscience Insights for Climate Storytelling, but here are the key points relevant to survival as a motivator. (To be accurate, De Meyer is talking about fear, not survival per se, but it seems to me that when people talk about using survival to engage people, they mean using fear of not surviving as a motivator.)

So, the highlights:

There’s decades of psychological research into whether instilling fear can generate action.

The answer is that it can. And the scarier the message, the more it motivates action – but only in certain conditions:

• People need to feel that the fear affects them personally.

• And as well fear, the message must include a solution that feels concrete, doable and meaningful.

To feel concrete, the actions they need to take must be clear and specific.

To feel doable, they must be actually able to take those actions. Barriers to action include not just skills, abilities, cost, etc but also confidence and social pressure.

Crucially, and especially relevant to climate action, to feel meaningful, the person must believe that once they take the action they will then have no reason to feel afraid.

And this is a real problem, because so many ‘personal actions’ to tackle climate change aren’t meaningful by this definition. We can’t say: “Don’t fly and you won’t get flooded”, “Become vegan and you’ll not suffer heat stroke.”

If one of these four elements (personal, concrete, doable and meaningful) is missing, fear doesn’t reliably drive action. In fact, in those circumstances, the effect of fear is unpredictable:

• Sometimes it works, e.g. “It spurred me to do X”.

• Hopelessness, “It’s too late, we’re doomed”.

• Numbness and switching off, “It’s all too much for me”.

• Angry rejection and denial, “They’re trying to fool us”.

And here’s another inconvenient fact: The more scary climate change becomes the more people will disagree about how to tackle it. Fear drives polarisation, and we certainly don’t need more of that.

So, if fear doesn’t work, what does motivate people to act? I’ll summarise that part of Kris De Meyer’s lecture in a future note.

If you can’t wait, watch the video. (Also, while it doesn’t focus on fear, De Meyer’s short blog The land of climate action: five things that would be different there, is very useful.)

“It sounds great, we really need a good podcast about nature”, said an environmental NGO leader when ran my early ideas about Thrivable Scotland past him.

But while ‘nature’ is fundamental to a Scotland where everyone can thrive, the podcast will cover a much broader range of topics. That’s because these other aspects of thriving are important, not only to ‘engage’ people in the change that’s needed, but also because everyone should be able to thrive.

I think we can actually go further. There’s a virtuous circle we can build: when people reflect deeply on what they need to thrive, they recognise that nature isn’t just necessary, they want to do what they can to help. And the more they are able to thrive in all areas of their life, the more they are able to act on their desire to make a difference.

This is beautifully illustrated in a book I read recently: The Work We Need by Hillary Cottam. I’ll let Hillary speak for herself. Here’s the preface:

When I started thinking about what it would mean to create the conditions for people and the rest of nature to thrive, I came up with three areas that seems to me to cover, in broad terms, the work we need to do:

• build resilience

• regenerate nature

• heal society

There’s plenty to unpack in ‘build resilience’ and ‘regenerate nature’, but I think they work. ‘Heal society’ however I was less comfortable with. And perhaps that phrase actually misses the point.

It’s December. It feels like I’ve been wading through quicksand most of the year. Some causes are easy to recognise, like my mother’s passing in spring and minor, though annoying, health issues.

But there’s been something deeper, something it took me a while to recognise. That’s a deep sadness about the state of society and what we’ve done, and are doing, to nature and the entire planet. My sadness isn’t recent; it’s been a constant companion for years.

What’s changed for me this year is the rise of right-wing populism and the sense of powerlessness as we repeat some of the darkest days of history with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, civil wars, conflict and repression across the world. And the world’s superpower abandoning any sense of normal political and diplomatic behaviour.

All this left me questioning my focus on sustainability, which has been central to most of my working life. Pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals seems pointless as international norms collapse, billionaires manipulate governments and the public to their own ends or plan their escapes to Mars – while the rest of us head to hell in a handcart.

There is so much said in the climate communications sector about the supposed power of stories and storytelling. We are regularly told that we just need to 'sell' a hopeful vision of a 'greener' more socially just society and that that society is within our grasp (if only we’d all just ‘do our bit’ for 'net zero').

You're reading a guest post by Morgan Hope Phillips

The trouble with these stories is that they (a) promise only 'jam tomorrow' for the working and lower-middle classes - who see very little immediate upside to the climate policies being implemented; and (b) ask for only minor tech-enabled lifestyle tweaks from the upper and upper-middle classes - who get some jam today, but must also still be sold the promise jam tomorrow⁽¹⁾.

The promise of jam tomorrow has rarely ever worked at scale, and minor lifestyle tweaks being enough is clearly bullsh*t. That ship sailed a long time ago.

Seeking out positive news stories is often promoted as an antidote to doom scrolling. I’ve tried it, and I continue to do it, but I often find that instead of being inspired, uplifted and given hope, I feel unsettled and disempowered.

This is important, not just for our individual mental health, but also for how we communicate and engage with others in our work for sustainability, climate, nature etc.

I think I’ve got a handle on what the problem is, and I have some ideas about how to tell positive stories better. I’m going to be putting this into practice with our new podcast Thrivable Scotland, thrivable planet - read about this below.

The positive news stories that don’t do it for me, seem saccharine – artificially sweet. They present the positive stuff while stripping out the reality - the past, present and future realities.

I recently read a couple of books about people living in desperate situations. One was an autobiography of growing up in communist Albania, the other the story of a Syrian town under siege by Assad’s regime for three years.

Both books were horrific and moving. But even in these extremely difficult situations, people’s lives weren’t relentlessly grim. There were times of great joy and deep connection, of pleasure in small things despite the big picture.

That got me thinking about the concept of thriving – of what we really need in order to have a good life.

Sothe other day I asked people what thriving meant to them. Here are some typical replies:

In my last post I wrote that our future is so uncertain that we should let go of the mindset of “achieving sustainability” or “saving the world”, with its implication of either success or failure. (Link below.)

I suggested that we should instead focus on creating the conditions where people and the rest of nature have the best chance of thriving – now and into the future, whatever happens.

I’m still trying to clarify my thoughts and feelings about all this, so thank you to everyone who responded with encouragement, perceptive comments and useful questions.

Today I want to pick up this question from Saskia¹:

“I’m not sure my work is making a difference”

“What can I do that is actually worthwhile?”

“I don’t see the point any longer.”

“It’s all too little, too late.”

I’ve been hearing things like this recently from so many people working in sustainability.

I often feel the same way myself. Asking around, I've discovered that others are hearing this in their networks too.