Since Canada’s political balance of power may weigh in on the environment in the near future, how does this monumental issue affect the day-to-day choices of Canadians?

Politics is all about customer-centric marketing. What the voter won’t buy, the politician won’t sell. The marketing of environmental issues and products has to factor a number of different perspectives that reside within voters and customers and bring conflicting values when making personal choices:

The pendulum swings back and forth:

– “It is the nature of humanity to turn land into garbage and garbage into land.” (Jon Sherrington, 2006). Not a pretty idea, but the drive for consumption does just that. Do we feel remorse? Yes and no. Consider a growing forest that chokes the land of sunlight and lives off its own decay. It creates an environment ideal for its living conditions and all other organisms adapt or die. Is the forest a problem or a solution? It is no different with humans. Humans expand and change the environment to suit themselves and in the process all other organisms adapt or die. Environmentalists want to limit this impact of change, and the general population focuses on the consumption it needs to sustain itself, regardless.

– Within the three constants: the sun, gravity and geothermal energy, our atmosphere is a contained bio-system in which whatever exists will return to its original state at some point in the future. Carboniferous trees can reproduce, crystallize, liquify or gasify. As implausible as it appears on the surface, the earth’s bio-system will not fail under any circumstances outside of sun, gravity and geothermal energy. This constancy insulates the human conscience from reacting to changes in the environment influenced by specific human intervention. Whatever we are doing is a pin-prick in the earth’s history. But that doesn’t mean it won’t change.

In a recent consumer poll conducted by a non-profit organization sponsored by IPSOS-Reid in 2006, the greatest number of Canadians cited the Environment as the biggest issue that will face Canadians 20 years from now. Why are we not seeing this survey response impact politically and in terms of consumer behavior today? Because the environmentalist lobby is not very good at customer-centric marketing. It has become associated with left-spectrum politics. This is strange. How can climate change and ecosystems be valued within a political spectrum when it affects us all?

The answer is because they don’t know how to sell it. In the macro-political view, the majority of consumer-voters really care more about growth than its consequences. This includes even those polled in the survey. Yet the influence we exert on our environment shapes the immediate aspect of our lives, not just the future.

If the politics could sell the environment better we wouldn’t see it pushed behind considerations of growth. But don’t expect politicians to be influenced by anything other than what people are buying – and people are still turning more land into garbage and more garbage into land. If marketers could sell the environment better, consumers would make environmental choices because these reflect their own values.

So it is a marketing challenge that speaks to the heart of customer-centric marketing – how to align products and services to those values that enable customers to achieve the growth they desire without consequence to the environment. As long as the majority of marketers are concerned with growth more than its consequences, customers will side with the majority and politicians likewise.