Story of a Viral Video

Anyone who has ever been associated with new media marketing and watched a YouTube success story wonders: how and why did this video resonate with the market, and how might I produce such a 2-minute wonder? I remember attending a panel at the Personal Democracy Forum (08) and listening to four people who had done just that. And I remember one panelist saying there was some unknown piece of magic; none of them could guarantee another success.

So imagine my pride when my own 22-year old daughter hit one out of the park on her very first effort – and with a climate change message. I’d loved her idea when I’d heard it the month before. I thought the script looked strong when I edited it a few days before the filming. I was blown away by the execution of the first draft cut of the shoot. My expectations were very very high. I could feel that this was goal to be a hit. But of course, you tell yourself to stay calm and prepare for the usual outcome of low viewership.

The 1.5 minute video hit YouTube around noon on a Monday. A half dozen of us sent the link to our friends, and tweeted and Facebooked it. Within an hour or so, it hit 355 views. And there it sat as the afternoon wore on, and evening came. We heard from friends that they had loved it. We kept hitting refresh, refresh, refresh.

I emailed a colleague with experience in YouTube video postings and he replied that the view count of videos that had a rapidly rising number of views would stick, and then correct late in the day. So as the evening wore on, we hit refresh, refresh, refresh. At around 10:30pm, success! The number changed!

To 1200. We were stunned. What? That’s it? Minor depression set in. Well, 1200 wasn’t exactly bad. I mean, home videos don’t get 1200 views in half a day, but we were really disappointed. As we went to bed that night, a little before midnight, we refreshed again.

22,000! OK! We slept well. On opening our eyes in the morning, the first task was to refresh again.

65,000! We got it into the Huffington Post on its second day, and O’Reilly also picked it up on Fox. The Twitter and retweeting stream was strong. On the fourth day, it rotated into the “Currently being viewed” slot on YouTube’s home page. And it hit their “Most Popular” selections. YouTube has some kind of inscrutable (and no doubt well researched) methodology for deciding where to place its videos on the page, and which page. On the fifth or sixth day, we were definitely among the top three most viewed videos for that week.

Here is the video:



So what were the success factors?

Beautiful young women are always a pull. Yes, we know that. But it also has a nice story line. It opens setting one expectation about what it is about (sexual heat) and flips it into another kind of heat (global warming). There is drama, how far will they go? It’s fun; the people shooting it are clearly having a good time. It has a surprise ending. The music chosen was spot on. The editing is remarkable. The pacing, impeccable.

A small detail: we thought we were going to call it “Supermodels stripping for the Planet.” But a quick YouTube search of “supermodels stripping” brought up a lot of stuff we didn’t want to be associated with and that we didn’t want people to stumble upon if they looked for us using the search function. We changed it to “Supermodels take it off for Climate Change.”

And a last note: a confirmation that perception is in the eye of the beholder. The perceived tone of the video is totally based on the lens the viewer brings to it. Some people thought it was pure as the driven snow, and surprisingly modest. Others thought it verged on pornographic. Sadly, YouTube censorship seems to have come to that conclusion as well. Despite the soaring popularity, they took it off the most popular page. No doubt based on the title and screen capture without having actually viewed it.

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My Worlds Collide

Using a transportation metaphor to illustrate the impacts of climate change. See the text that goes with this article, and then join 350.org.

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What’s “Open” Got to Do with It?

In early March, I happened to be in Washington meeting with Ed Markey. It turns out that the incredibly important words that required the $6.6 billion in smart grid demonstration projects to use "open standards and internet protocol" was his amendment! These words were modified in the final Economic Recovery Act by industry lobbyists to include "where available and appropriate."

I was in Markey’s office to explain to him why these same words should be applied to wireless demonstration projects in the transportation sector, in health care digitization efforts, and likely in education, although I don’t know. Markey was excited by my interest, and wondered if I could explain to the layperson why open standards mattered.

A week and a half later, I bumped into a state Secretary of Energy – one of the very people who would get to spend the smart grid demonstration project money. This person didn’t understand the implications of “open standards” and asked me to explain it. Over the course of the last month, I’ve met with high level officials in transportation, energy, and environment positions from several states, none of whom understood the value of openness.

We are about to spend billions and billions of taxpayer dollars on technology infrastructure and many of those advising precisely what to buy have every incentive to say that closed proprietary systems, networks, devices are the best way to go. How does this missed opportunity make you feel?

A friend blogged on this subject and I loved his headline:
Using Public Dollars to Build Proprietary Systems?

Proprietary systems have their own secret languages and secret rules. You can play only if you are invited in (by buying the ratified stuff) and you can only play the games agreed upon (your ideas for new games or new ways to play the old games are unwelcome, unheard, and impossible to incorporate). Examples of closed proprietary systems abound, but a nice irritating example would be how you have to throw away your current cell phone if you want to change carriers.

Open standards mean that different people/companies/devices could, if they wanted to, find common ground.

Here, excerpted from a piece David Reed wrote for The MIT Communications Futures Program Principal Investigator Blog is a nice description of how the internet -- which is an open standard -- works:

“The Internet is a set of agreements among members (who happen to control small, medium, and large networks). The agreement required members to carry each others’ packets, delivering them via best efforts to the hosts at the edge of the network—your laptop, Google’s server…each member of the Internet who contributed to the mutual enterprise gained connectivity disproportionate to the member’s contribution.”

As David puts it, "The Internet is not a technology, but a set of interoperable standards."

Open standards give the ability to evolve over time.

Sure, proprietary systems can evolve, the speed depending entirely on competitive pressures. Most government contracts come with nice long contracts: three, five, ten, and even 99 year terms! Why bother to innovate during the first seven years of a ten-year contract? Steve Crocker, one of the Internet’s founding fathers, wrote a really wonderful piece for the New York Times that describes how the Internet’s open standards were able to evolve over time. As he told me “We had no idea when we started [forty years ago] that this is where we’d end up.” Of course, who among us can predict the future?

Another friend offered a simple test: “If you think this is the final and best version, buy the closed proprietary system. If you think it will continue to evolve over time, go open.”

Open standards invite and encourage participation

From a Steve Crocker email “Open standards become particularly important when they enable new products and services to be built on top of existing ones. Openness is not just about enabling others to build the same products and services and compete directly. It’s also about enabling huge vistas of new inventions that brings the enormous expansion and payoff from new technologies.”

I'll close with Steve's penultimate paragraph from the NYT:
“As we rebuild our economy, I do hope we keep in mind the value of openness, especially in industries that have rarely had it. Whether it’s in health care reform or energy innovation -- [OR smart transportation adds Robin] -- the largest payoffs will come not from what the stimulus package pays for directly, but from the huge vistas we open up for others to explore.”


Some interesting links about open standards not referenced in the above:
In health care and in promoting multimodal transportation.

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Climate Code Red? Use the Recession

George Bush appeared to have won his re-election in 2004 on the back of American’s fear of terrorist attacks, reinforced by periodic security alerts from the Whitehouse: Code Orange! Code Red!

Pre-November 2008 elections, I often wished that Democrats (or even Republicans) could manufacture similar pseudo events to evoke that same primal fear but in service of climate change. What would make Americans take the threat seriously? Make them act with the urgency and commitment the situation requires? Wouldn’t it be great if a big chunk of the Antarctic ice shelf snapped off unexpectedly? Giving everyone a good scare but not threatening any lives?

Basically, I drew a blank. I couldn’t think up anything that matched a “Code Red” – evoking fear and delivering action but without any long-term consequences.

But the current r(d)ec(pr)ession just might do the trick.
Yes, there will be (there already is) some real collateral suffering. But it just might be that this real short-term suffering gives us a chance to avert long-term irreversible planetary changes that results in long-term human suffering.

This recession has a three-fold potential:

• Reduced economic activity means reduced energy consumption and reduced emissions. It just might be that worldwide CO2 emissions don’t increase this year. [If deforestation pressures in developing countries aren’t accelerated by the lack of alternative sources of income.]

• Government (and business) economic restructuring and reinvestment presents us with the opportunity to create more sustainable systems with each new investment and new rule set.

• People’s values and behaviors are likely to profoundly change on the back of these very difficult economic times.

After the Great Depression (does that get capitalized?), American’s attitudes changed in fundamental ways that lasted for at least a generation. People who felt the painful reality of those years, or maybe just watched others feel the pain, had a deeply seeded attitude change about life. They tended to use things up, store things that might have a useful life some time in the future, expect rainy days and save for them, keep jobs they didn’t like just in case, and value community and friendship over consumption status symbols.

My mother was one of those people (and not my father, so this idea isn’t universal). And the house I live in now -- that sheltered one family between 1902 and 1987 when we bought it – definitely held people with those sensibilities. Bags of old men’s shirts, useful one day as rags, but with the buttons removed and stored elsewhere, filled one corner of the basement. “Perfectly good” wallpaper rolls, from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, were stashed under a work bench. Tin cans with nails, screws, bits of rope, old copper mesh (we’ve made good use of that!) were shelved between the studs.

So, this crisis provides us with an unexpected opportunity to move to a more sustainable and low GHG world economy. Will we make good use of it?

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Gore is Right and Did it Beautifully

Lest you assume that everything Gore says, I agree with, you would be wrong. In his speech delivered in Washington DC yesterday, he said all the right things. But I was incredibly disappointed and frustrated that he didn’t say these things when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in October, and he didn’t say these things when he addressed leaders from 190 nations at the climate talks in Bali in December. I just couldn’t understand his reticence, and I was mad at him. He knows better. And his speech yesterday proves that. He said all the important things, and he delivered the message much better than I ever have.

His complete speech can be found here.

What are these mysterious “right” points?

He enumerates a wide range of national and global problems and says “But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we’re holding the answer to all of them right in our hand. The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.”

Yes.

“Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.”

Yes. Critical is the 10 year time frame for significant reductions. What I found politically clever is that he has set a goal that has better meaning and resonance than the ones I’ve talked about: getting world-wide CO2 emissions down within this time frame. His goal is what is required to achieve my goal, and his is so much less scientific and opaque.

“I have long supported a sharp reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what we earn. This is the single most important policy change we can make.”

Yes, yes, yes. Way to go Al! He is the only American politician/ leader/ environmentalist (what is he?) that has had the courage to say this. NRDC, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Congressmen and Senators have all wimped out on this point. As I’ve said many times before, Cap and Trade solutions will not cut it. Pushing for “politically viable” solutions that don’t solve the problem is just pointless. I respect his courage for doing and saying what all those others wouldn’t. Previously, only a few scientists have had the nerve to speak out on this point (see Jim Hansen post).

Gore does embed this little tax line about 20 minutes into his 27 minute speech, and he doesn’t repeat it. And that is no doubt politically astute, but he is quite clear “this is the single most important policy change we can make.”

And so he concludes:

“Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years.”

I challenge the next President, Congress, Governors, and Mayors to have the same courage and commitment.

Before the Bali talks, Gore’s climate action organization sent out emails asking for signatures to support his plan. I got the email, and searched everywhere for the plan. I never found one, and I never forwarded that email or signed on. But this is a plan I support whole heartedly, and I encourage you all to sign on so that our leaders can get to work with your important support.

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The Most Important Thing to Read on Global Warming

James Hansen, the US’s leading climate scientist, to whom I turn for climate science, spoke to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence & Global Warming, and the National Press Club on June 23 2008. His entire talk is only 4 pages. Read it. If you don’t think you'll get to it -- or maybe to inspire you to do the reading -- I’ve excerpted some of the high points.

These are Jim Hansen’s words:

I argue that a path yielding energy independence and a healthier environment is, barely, still possible. It requires a transformative change of direction in Washington in the next year…Elements of a “perfect storm”, a global cataclysm, are assembled.

In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.

Animal and plant species are already stressed by climate change. Polar and alpine species will be pushed off the planet, if warming continues. Other species attempt to migrate, but as some are extinguished their interdependencies can cause ecosystem collapse. Mass extinctions, of more than half the species on the planet, have occurred several times when the Earth warmed as much as expected if greenhouse gases continue to increase. Biodiversity recovered, but it required hundreds of thousands of years….

Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation…

Solution of the climate problem requires that we move to carbon-free energy promptly… If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead. We must demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. We must block fossil fuel interests who aim to squeeze every last drop of oil from public lands, off-shore, and wilderness areas. Those last drops are no solution. They yield continued exorbitant profits for a short-sighted self-serving industry, but no alleviation of our addiction or long-term energy source….

Cheap, subsidized fossil fuels engendered bad habits.


We import food from halfway
around the world, for example, even with healthier products available from nearby fields. Local produce would be competitive if not for fossil fuel subsidies and the fact that climate change damages and costs, due to fossil fuels, are also borne by the public. A price on emissions that cause harm is essential. Yes, a carbon tax. Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend3 is needed to wean us off fossil fuel addiction. Tax and dividend allows the marketplace, not politicians, to make investment decisions.

Carbon tax on coal, oil and gas is simple, applied at the first point of sale or port of entry.
The entire tax must be returned to the public, an equal amount to each adult, a half-share for children. This dividend can be deposited monthly in an individual’s bank account. Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is non-regressive. On the contrary, you can bet that low and middle income people will find ways to limit their carbon tax and come out ahead. Profligate energy users will have to pay for their excesses.

Demand for low-carbon high-efficiency products will spur innovation, making our
products more competitive on international markets. Carbon emissions will plummet as energy efficiency and renewable energies grow rapidly…

We must establish fair agreements with other countries. However, our own tax and
dividend should start immediately. We have much to gain from it as a nation, and other countries will copy our success…


Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great expectations.”

Robin’s words: We can’t get sidetracked by cap and trade agreements. They may be "politically acceptable" but won’t produce the results in the time frame required or redirect the economy as needed. We need carbon taxes “incentives” as fast as is politically possible. We should all do everything we can to make sure our next president understands this clearly. See www.350.org for ways to make your voice heard and see what others are doing.

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Rant about the Urgency of Action

I wrote this for International Design Magazine, where it appeared in the June 2008 issue.

You’re in a deflating raft. You have 4 minutes and 30 seconds until the black storm on the horizon reaches you. Only some of you can swim. Do you: a) organize time-intensive swimming lessons? Or b) ask everyone to fix the leaks nearest them with the repair kits they have in their pockets?

Curiously, when it comes to climate change, where the states are worse than bleak, the answer seems to be swimming lessons: Invest more in alternative energies. Establish higher standards for fuel efficiency in cars. Invent carbon-capture technology. Force big businesses to come up with plans that will change the way they do business. None of these measures is capable of effecting change in the here and now.


Many of us know that we’re currently facing 50 percent species loss this century; five meter sea rise this century; and 10 to 20 percent reductions in corn, wheat, and rice yields – despite a more than doubling of population – this century. But way too few of us have paid attention to the timetable required to avoid this possibility, as laid out by the U.S.’s two leading climate scientists. James Hansen director of NASA’s Space Goddard Institute, released a new paper in March that says we have close to zero percent change of avoiding “catastrophic effects of climate change” if we continue with “business as usual.”
And in his report to the UN last September, John Holdren, director of the Wood’s Hole Institute, projected that we could improve those odds to 50 percent if we begin curbing emissions by 2015. If you ask me, 50-50 odds of facing major worldwide catastrophe are unacceptable.

Regardless, with heads firmly embedded in the sand, we continue to focus on what the scientists tell us needs to be accomplished by 2020 and 2050. And because there is no action at the federal level, cities and states, and companies and universities and institutions, are one by one setting 2020 and 2050 goals for CO2 reduction. Even presidential candidates give us these benchmarks, and talk about capping and trading emissions so that power plants will figure out a plan and make new investments that will start reducing their emissions.

But in fact we have only two to three years to get worldwide CO2 emissions to stop growing and begin their downward crawl if we want to improve our odds of averting disaster. Which means we only have to change our ways enough to avoid the 3 percent annual emissions rise driven by “business as usual,” and then next year we need to reduce our rate by 3 percent again. It isn’t that hard. Just focus on the ways you consume energy.

The difference between long-term strategies and immediate behavioral change can be easily visualized using the example of cars. If everyone in American bought a fuel-efficient car when it was time to replace their current model, 10 years from now (well beyond our critical period for action), demand for fossil fuel would be reduced by 5 percent. But if we shared 1 out of every 20 trips, we would reduce demand by 5 percent this week.

So turn your heat down 2 degrees, turn your air conditioner up 2 degrees. Feeling just a teeny bit uncomfortable? Pick half the species in the world –humans, animals, vegetables, insects – and imagine them gone. Don’t drive for single errands, don’t drive if the place you are going is less than a mile away, ride with a friend once a week. Mildly put out? Imagine the worldwide suffering of even fewer basic food staples than exists today. Use the dishwasher and dryer only for full loads. Hang your laundry on a line! Walk or bike more. Don’t like having to think about energy all the time? Imagine the political and economic unrest that will result from the immigration precipitated by a 5 meter sea rise.

We all have life-raft repair kits in our pockets. Put them to work.

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Infrastructure changes are important but we need to change behavior now

When I first read Jim Hansen and John Holdren reference the time frame for action – now! In 10 years is too late – I got out my pencil, sketched out this time frame, and drew in all the transportation solutions I could think of: more transit and trains; fuel efficient and alternative fuel cars; smart growth; walkable communities. Above is the powerpoint version of my sketch.


What I realized is that technology and infrastructure solutions –invent things, build things, and get these things distributed and used by people all across the country – can not produce the outcomes we need in the time frame we need. It is physically impossible. They are great and needed products, and we need to start today because they take so long to implement. But they are not enough.

What we need today, right now, are changed behaviors. It is the only thing we can change fast enough. How? Money talks: congestion pricing, car sharing, carbon taxes.

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Keeping our Eyes on the First Milestone

In his most presentation to the UN in September 2007, John Holdren's slides had a stunning number:

If worldwide CO2 emissions peak in 2015 – that’s seven years from now – we have a 50 percent chance of avoiding catastrophic effects of climate change.

50 percent chance
of avoiding catastrophic effects

Those aren’t odds I like to play with given the stakes. What is catastrophic?

50-75% species loss this century
5 meter sea rise this century
10-20% reductions in corn, wheat, and rice yields this century

I imagine there are many many other things that could be added to this list.

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The Climate Change Window of Requirement, and the Myth of the fuel-efficient or alternative-fuel car as Savior

I’m not a climatologist and don’t pretend to be one, ever. So I defer to the top two US experts. Here is what they tell me:

John Holdren, Director of the Woods Hole Institute, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, writes “Without swift and urgent action, the problems could spiral toward disastrous, permanent changes for all of life on Earth.” In September, 2006, he told me, “Within five years, we need to not only level but start reducing CO2 emissions if we are to prevent catastrophic human interference in climate change.”

Dr. James Hansen, NASA's Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and considered the doyen of American climatology said in an interview: “If we do follow the “business as usual” path, even for another ten years, it guarantees that we will have dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet… It's likely that a large fraction of the species could go extinct.” He said this also in September of 2006.

I am a genius at basic math. I now understand that we have between four and less than nine years to get worldwide CO2 emissions onto a downward slope, or else.

So I took this frame of reference and I plopped it into the transportation sector. Why transportation? Well, a) because I know something about it and b) transportation accounts for 33% of all US CO2 emissions. In fact, our own personal cars contribute 20%.

In fact, driving our cars is the most significant way we as individuals produce CO2 emissions. [Eating beef and therefore demanding a huge worldwide population of cows is the number one contributor to man-made climate change, primarily through methane gas.] After cars, the next largest way we as individuals produce CO2 emissions is through our residential electric bill – and think about how many appliances contribute to that number. Changing your light bulbs to compact fluorescents is a good thing, and we all should do it, but reducing the CO2 output from your tailpipe is much much more significant.

And we know the best ways to do that: buy a hybrid! Support the development of alternative fuels! NOT. Not if you have your eye on the window of requirement. According to a study produced for the Department of Energy, if we all started today replacing our old cars with fuel efficient cars when it was time to buy a new one, in year ten – yes, after the window of requirement has closed, American’s demand for fossil fuel will be reduced by 5% by these efforts. How and why could that be? The average age of the American fleet has been growing. Today, the average car lasts 9 years, so it takes a long long time to swap out our fleet of 200 million vehicles.

Don’t want to believe that it is only 5%? My other source is from the mouth of President G,W. Bush in his 2007 State of the Union address.

Hydrogen Fuel vehicles, solar-powered vehicles, and every other alternative fuel vehicle will not be market ready or widely adopted within the four to less than nine year time frame to help matters. And yes, we should absolutely positively keep pursuing these things because we are going to want them in the long run.

Next up: What can we accomplish in a 4 to less than 9 year timeframe?
Related: Why we should never confuse the words hybrid, dual fuel, and fuel efficiency.

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