social capital | Future Yada Yada Yada

This article in Ecological Economics makes a link between leisure time and sustainable behavior.

The considerable gap between the individuals level of concern about climate change and the degree to which they act on these concerns is a major impediment to achieving more sustainable consumption patterns. We empirically investigate how the amount of discretionary time that individuals have at their disposal influences both what type of sustainable consumption practices they adopt and the size of this value–action gap. We contend that discretionary time has a twofold effect. Given fixed preferences, time-poor individuals tend to satisfy their preferences by adopting sustainable consumption practices that require relatively less time. Moreover, a lack of discretionary time also inhibits agents from developing preferences that actually reflect their underlying environmental concerns. Our findings support both of these hypotheses and suggest that increasing discretionary time is associated with significant reductions in the value–action gap. This suggest that policies which increase discretionary time, such as measures to improve the work–life balance, may thus help in fostering the emergence of pro-environmental preferences among consumers in the long run.

This makes some sense to me. It also makes sense to me that sustainability is partly about social capital – people having time to interact with each other through formal and informal organizations, think things through, have discussions and make ethical judgments about what kinds of actions they want to take together. When we are working 40-60 hour weeks in the single-minded pursuit of corporate profits, many of us just don’t have time and energy to engage in this sort of social capital building even if we want to.

I’m a little disenchanted with TED Talks these days, because I think most of them could be reduced to a sentence, if not a phrase, that I could understand in 10 seconds rather than wasting 15 minutes of my life waiting for some Tediot to get to the point. But here is an interesting one about how to write a letter to an elected official. First, it says to use an actual pen. Second, it says that politicians are not rational, moral creatures, and you have to understand their interests and then cater to them. It recommends these steps:

Show appreciation for the politician, if not the person then at least the complexity and difficulty of their job.
Don’t pull punches in stating your position, but avoid personal attacks.
Explain that other people are giving them bad information about the issue. Then give them the good information you think they need.
Offer to provide them with lots of additional good information in the future.
Sign with lots of titles and credentials.
Send the original to the district office and cc the main office (something about the main office might ask the district office for the original and it might get more attention, don’t know if I buy this).