What is a blog? What is Social media? Eh, what? That might have been the answer you would have gotten ten years ago had you posed those two questions. But I don't think is a secret to many that in the last ten years we have witnessed a massive revolution in how we communicate and how we receive and communicate news.
This also accounts for the green movement and a good way to get an idea of what's hot on people's minds, what's trendy to discuss, is to see what's happening in the blogosphere and what people are talking about on Social media. On blogging database Technorati amongst it 1.3m blogs it hosts only a mere 10.000 blogs that comes under the Green category, while a popular subject like Entertainment currently is the favourite topic, but that can surely not come as any surprise.
I think blogging categorizes very well what's on people agenda. To grow the green movement we would on first hand need to grow the green blogging movement, that will then spiral of and get more people interested and raise the awareness that is needed.
We're in need of a surge in that movement now more than ever, the signs we're receiving about man made climate change gets stronger year for year. This year the US are suffering from record heatwaves, while in the UK a looming drought was replaced with record floods as a result of a jet stream out of balance.
This is where blogging and social media comes out in its strong force, everyone who is experiencing these things needs to tell the rest of the world what's happening via these mediums - this is our path to building a strong green movement.
Obviously social media have recently shown glimpse on leadership on building movements. During the Rio +20 conference in June, led by 350 they managed to get the hashtag #endfossilfuelsubsidies trending on and off during the day and more recently it's been a vital tool in Greenpeace's online campaigns seen in the campaign against Wolkswagen by mass commenting on their facebook pages and now seen in the current Arctic campaign where the target is Shell using the same model.
Looking at the posibilities alone for social media, you just have to use the examples of the Arab Spring to make note of what really is possible. In the enourmous environmental challenges we're facing we need to use both blogging and social media as a vital tool in overcoming them.
Follow Anders Lorenzen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Alorenzen
@eric14: Very much agreeing with what you're saying. The green movement is very diverse. People have different priorities, but I believe every green issue is related to climate change and that has to be the core of our movement. But we need to grow it rapidly if we are to overcome just some of all the cahellenges we are facing. As I set out in this blog is vital the green movement becomes world leaders in the online world, social media, blogging etc as this is where we will find the green revolution of the future. But generally we need to be diverse, be active in all areas to attract the most people. As you say the issues are many...
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Green went lame when carbon trading went shooting over the heads of 99.99% of humanity.
In the age of complexity solutions must be simple. Carbon trading is too complex.
The green movement has lost focus. It is too diverse.
In the age of info-glut, the message must be focused.
The green movement is the only single issue movement that has a million issues.
Consider this: Local jobs for local energy production.
That is simple and focused. And it does not stop all the other things happening!
So green folk, for goodness sake, consider simplicity and focus.