Consensus: Greens and non-greens agree that "Going green has been a bust"

South by Southwest (SXSW) Eco Wrap Up and Lessons | EcoSalon

We all, at this point, acknowledge and understand that the green conversation has failed to become the green conversion. Going green has been a bust. But why? And where do we go from here? One popular sentiment floated into the Twitterverse from a panel on how green vocabulary has failed us was “We need a Rosetta Stone of green.”
...it’s going to take thinking creatively about how we talk about things like “green” and how we get people rallied around the issues. And it’s going to take words that don’t start with “g,” “s,” or “e.” (Green, sustainable, environmental.)
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On the same panel, Jeff Nesbit, Executive Director of Climate Nexus, added “We have to learn other ways to communicate about these things so people actually care.”

Is Green a Meaningless Term? - Poll - EcoSalon

Yes 60.38%

What We Learned About the Green Movement at SXSW Eco | EcoSalon

The green movement is losing the messaging war.

As Anna wrote earlier, the green movement is facing the sad truth that people aren’t moved to combat climate change when confronted with grim statistics, alarming graphs scolding and guilt. It isn’t working. We need a new way to connect with people and get them to care.
...Dulany said, “Make the change small, make the result big and make the impact local.”
...Melanie Nutter, Director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, projects that sea level will rise nearly 55 inches by the end of this century. For San Francisco, surrounded by water on three sides, this is a serious issue. The airport will be underwater, as will 99 miles of roadways.
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“We need a Rosetta Stone” for green messaging was Gary Lawrence’s quote retweeted round the conference room in “Let’s Stop Talking about Sustainability: How Our Green Vocabulary Is Failing Us.”
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What are these words that will work? We know what they aren’t. Green, eco, sustainability, environmentalism, climate change, global warming, conservation, cutting back, recycling, reusing, reducing and worst of all: sacrifice. Green doesn’t just have a sex appeal problem (on the level of Christian rap; besides, who wants to be a color?), it has a happiness problem.

We environmentalists can argue about consumption, mitigation versus paradigm shift, and technology until the grass fed cows come home. The fundamental problem is that green, The Movement, asks for sacrifice and gets snippy when it doesn’t happen. If sacrifice were going to work, it would have already.