In My Opinion
by John Fiske
Editor-in-Chief

Green Again, No Kidding

The Alliance for Climate Protection is about to launch a $300 million, three-year advertising campaign to increase Americans’ awareness of the urgency of climate change and the available solutions. In reporting this, USA Today (3/24/08) used a picture of a “green” house – energy efficient, solar heated, you know the deal. A couple called Brian and Lisa Flynn had just built it in Aspen, Colorado, and the picture showed them living happily in its large, open-plan, glass-walled interior. But what caught my eye, predictably, were the brand new “Queen Anne” chairs around the dining table.

It had cost the Flynns about $60,000 extra, about 8 percent, to make their house green. In the article, USA Today gives ten tips on how to reduce energy use. What astounds me is that neither the Flynns nor the newspaper, well intentioned as they are, seem to be remotely aware that not-buying-new is an excellent way of reducing energy use, every bit as good as installing low-flow toilets and showers. Actually, that’s not quite true, the Flynns used recycled timber in building the house itself, but all the furniture in it, as far as the photograph shows at least, has been recently manufactured and, quite possibly, shipped half-way round the world. Why don’t they get it?

Seen to be Green
Yes, I’m riding the green hobbyhorse again. And why not? If there’s a $100 million dollar a year advertising campaign on the way, it can only be to our benefit to hitch the antiques business to it. Catch the wave while we can. We know that changing peoples’ attitudes is not easy, and it appears that the antiques business has to change attitudes not only in the general public, but also in the leaders of the green movement – have you ever seen a list of tips on energy saving that includes “Buy old stuff”?

Let’s go back to the Flynns for a moment. Brian is quoted, “We have a very large mortgage, and we don’t have a lot of extra money, but I don’t want to be a drain on this society. It makes me feel good to live this way.” Feeling good matters more than money. The same holds true for hybrid cars. Like green homes, they cost more to buy but less to run, but it’s not the money that matters most. “Buyers (of hybrids – and presumably green homes) are much more motivated by making a statement about their values and beliefs. They feel it shows they’re ethical people.” says consultant Rusty Heffner.

There are, it appears, a significant number of Americans who are willing to pay more for a green home or a green car, even if it will take them about 10 years to recover the additional costs (the ten-year recovery period crops up time and again). I’ve argued before in this column that it takes up to 10 years for an antique to prove as good an investment as stocks and shares. We can’t talk about recovering the additional costs of an antique, because an antique may cost more, about the same, or less, than a new product. But anyway, the cost factor appears to matter less than the feel-good factor. When we emphasize the investment value of an antique, as we often do, particularly in a recession, we may be barking up the wrong tree. Now seems to be the time to focus on the feel-good, value-stating factor, feeling good by being seen to be green. Can we help people to see that antiques enable them to make a statement about the value they put on the planet?

Who’s for dinner
Are you are one of the increasing number of people who eat local or organic as much as seems reasonable? Even if it costs you a little bit more? If so, I’m sure it comes up in conversation with the friends or family you’ve invited for a meal. Why not extend that conversation to point out that everything your guests are using to eat your delicious cuisine is as good for the planet as the food is. The table and chairs, the dishes, glasses and silverware, the table linens, not one of them was bought new, every one of them is antique. I’m sure that the conversation will have a self-congratulatory tone to it, quite naturally you and your guests will feel good about yourselves by being so gratifyingly green.

I used the phrase “increasing number of people” deliberately. Studies show that people are more likely to change their behavior to make it greener if they believe that others like themselves are doing so: people prefer hopping on a bandwagon to striding down a path on their own. It also helps if there are concrete steps they can take, and if they feel positively reinforced or rewarded for taking them. We can achieve all of that easily and enjoyably at a dinner party, and hope to set a ripple effect in motion.

No kidding
These three green motivators (bandwagon, concrete steps, and reward) are proven to work well, but there’s one other that’s more effective than all three of them put together. It’s kids. We Americans dote on our kids, we worry ourselves sick about them, we obsess over their wellbeing. At a rational level, most people believe that a cleaner planet is a good thing. But rational knowledge changes behavior in only a small minority of people. I’m sorry to have to say this, it undermines my faith in my own species, but it’s the truth. To most people, rational or scientific knowledge seems cold and distant. But kids are a different matter. Our obsession with them is emotional, highly charged, up close and personal. So it works superbly as a motivator for change. When people realize that polluting the planet harms their children, they become motivated to change their behavior. The studies are unanimous in this. We might also note here that kids asking their parents to become greener is another kiddy-powered and therefore very effective motivator. Kids can press their parents’ buttons – and don’t they know it!
Sadly, the antiques business is more kid-averse than kid-friendly. Most antiques dealers are kid-free, and thankfully so, except when they need help to load the van. Maybe we should talk to the kids who wander into our booths and shops instead of hovering anxiously over them fearful that they’re going to break something. They actually never do, but our concern that they will is a sign of our kid-aversion. We could explain to them why using antiques is better than using new things, and some of them will probably get it.

In other ways, too, the kid factor might be important for the antiques business. A company called SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (the more you think about that name, the less sense it makes, but that’s neither here nor there) has come up with the finding that 20 percent of people are motivated by scientific evidence to make their behavior greener, and this group is already convinced of the need to. It’s the next 25 percent that are the interesting ones. These are “highly influential, achievement-oriented” people, most of them 30 to 50 years old. They sound like the group we’d like as our new customers, don’t they? They’re our target, they’re the target of the $300 million ad campaign. If we can link “antiques” with “green,” and the campaign can convince them that green is good, we might get somewhere. Fortunately for us, this group is not swayed by scientific evidence: they ignore it because they are motivated primarily by appeals to personal success and financial security. I say fortunately for us, because there is no scientific study telling us how much energy we save by buying a Queen Anne chair instead of a “Queen Anne” chair. But it’s a heckuva lot, take my word for it!

This group is also, you’ve guessed it, very kid-centered. Bill Guns, the CEO of that funnily named consulting firm, is quoted in USA Today, “Kids are particularly effective at getting changes into these ‘achiever’ households,” for example by demanding a greener household. The pitch that their children will suffer from global warming will resonate strongly with this group, says Guns, and their choices often spread to the rest of the nation.

Now I’m not really suggesting that we “green” the kids so they become subversive infiltrators in their families – or am I? What the heck, if it works, go for it! But we might well suggest that furnishing and decorating with antiques will give the kids a greener planet to play in. Can’t you see the ad? An achiever couple surrounded by antiques and through the windows a glimpse of their kids in a garden that’s greener than green! Paradise! Don’t hold your breath, we’re not going to see ads like that, not in our lifetime. I won’t bemoan the fact yet again that we are incapable of producing a national organization that will promote the antiques business as a whole. We won’t do it, and if we did, we wouldn’t fund it, so that’s just pie in the sky.

We can, however, do a little bit at the local level. Word of mouth, a recommendation from a neighbor – these are the most effective ways of getting a message across. Conversations around the dinner table, in the show booth, with adults, with kids, it doesn’t matter where or with whom, word of mouth works, and the more of our mouths the words come out of, the more effective we’ll be. And that $300 million campaign running in the background will help, we won’t need to refer to it directly, the fact that it’s there will give our ideas legitimacy and make it more likely that people will agree with them. There are enough of us to make a difference, and most of us love talking….
Oh yes, and do write to your local paper when it gives its readers hints on energy saving. They won’t include buying old, I know they won’t. Just set it straight, will you? Thanks.

John Fiske