Not that kind, but it will be increasingly important to sidestep the common stereotypes that have barnacled themselves to the various ‘isms’ promoting the environment, marginalizing its proponents as merely dirty hippies, hopeless and idealistic, man.
One of the cognitive leaps, and there will be a few, about embracing a new energy future is imagining what that future will be like and getting familiar with yourself and your surroundings within such a mental space. Then the climb down in consumption likely begins to seem more natural and preferred rather than punitive and lesser. Much as we self-identify with our cars now, you have to become one with several ideas, including but not limited to input problems related to carbon emissions and recognizing that the energy issues must cease to be framed by thinking that fossil fuel is energy rather than a material substance that has chemical energy.
How might we go about this? Maybe one of the places to make inroads on both counts is video games. This flies in the face of my own instincts, which is why I’m offering it up so deliberately, to both show and try to tell why this might work, in some small way. Because both issues referred to above are psychological, we seem to want to understand them less than we might be able, settling for merely what we know. It’s the crucial under-performance at which we excel. Present company emphasized.
So this game company, actually that game company, came up with this concept, and part of their description stuck out at me.
The game exploits the tension between urban bustle and natural serenity. Players accumulate flower petals as the onscreen world swings between the pastoral and the chaotic. Like in the real world, everything you pick up causes the environment to change (emphasis added). And hopefully by the end of the journey, you change a little as well.
So… I don’t know, and am willing to stand corrected. But I think that’s part of it.