from the morgue

I sent a letter

to the government today, they'll open it and read it, it says they are suckers
They got Rodney for committee or whatever
Picture him given' a damn - not likely mate.

Dear Prime Minister

I am writing to ask that you take a stronger leadership stance in relation to climate change and the select committee agreement with ACT.

It is obvious and uncontroversial that climate change is real and urgent. More importantly, we have already signed up to Kyoto and we have to pay for all the carbon we emit, as prominently advised by the carbon obligation counter on the Treasury website. We can't sit on our hands any longer.

This means that you must exercise leadership to ensure the committee gives a worthwhile outcome, quickly. The committee as perceived by ACT clearly will not do this. It seems to be designed to stall on climate change for some time to come.

I feel you should set the terms of the reference of the committee to be very to the point, and add to the terms an acknowledgement of the time-critical nature of its business.

A large select committee is also appropriate, of 12 or 15 people. This is a matter of surpassing urgency and of concern to every New Zealander, so broad representation is essential.

I have confidence in your government's ability to find good legislation that will meet this urgent need, but the select committee process is a shackle that will hold back progress. Please show strong leadership so someone who is oblivious to the overwhelming scientific evidence cannot wreck New Zealand's reputation and its future.

Thanks for listening. Best of luck for your years as PM!

Don't be a Rodney!

That conversation last week went somewhere:

Don't be a Rodney, John Key!*

I'm a believer in the power of paper. This is a campaign to get people writing letters to John Key, telling him to put Rodney's barmy climate denialism in its place, and get NZ up to speed on its climate change obligations. Write a letter. Bureaucracies run on paper; governments are bureaucracies; therefore paper works.

Thanks to the circle of advisers and geniuses and busy bees who helped pull it together - you know who you are.

Anyway. That's what I did last night! So if you're a Kiwi, make with the clicky and see why you should write a letter.

* also available in Facebook

CauseWired review

Tom Watson's book CauseWired is about the rise of online social activism. I was informed by Johnnie that advance copies were being distro'd free to bloggers to generate some online buzz, and seeing as this sounded right up my alley, I signed on up. Not too long after a proof copy turned up in the post. Neat! Thanks, Wiley!

CauseWired is the name Watson gives to social causes that leverage online tools, particularly social networks. It's the name of his supporting blog as well. It's also the first mark against this book for me. It's a clear case of buzzword-creation, trying to add a new phrase to the lexicon like "tipping point" and "long tail" came along in recent years. That's no great sin in itself, but "CauseWired" is an ugly, ugly ohrase, complete with the oh-so-00s capitalisation in the middle of the compound word. It's a name that looks horribly dated already and the book isn't even out yet.

And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with the book as well. Tom Watson is clearly a very switched-on guy and he's explored social activism in great detail, but the book left me feeling underwhelmed and convinced that it will date rapidly.

CauseWired consists of ten chapters describing a number of online tools and projects, like Facebook Causes, Kiva, Razoo, DonorsChoose, Change.org and MyBo. It discusses key people behind the scenes and relevant anecdotes to represent the power of the new models. The message is very clear that these online tools lower the barriers of entry and enhance organizational capacity so that it is fairly easy to build and communicate with a network, and that makes some radically new infrastructures possible for philanthropy and political organization.

It is something of an exhilirating tour, and more than slightly humbling when I note that 90% of the people leading these projects are younger than me. However, its a tour without a thesis. Watson isn't arguing any case, or projecting any particular future as likely, or saying anything more than "this is a thing that's going on, and right now it looks like this". There seems to be an unwarranted confidence in the power of the new platform; the massive success of the Obama and Hillary primary campaigns was certainly enhanced by online tools and distributed yet tightly-managed structures, but it was probably more important that it was a clash of potent identity-politics to anoint a challenger to eight years of the most toxic rule in American history. This is a perfect storm of conditions and probably doesn't indicate how any future effort will work out.

In the final chapter Watson gives more than token acknowledgement to some of the real problems with online tools, such as saturation, which will inevitably become a huge issue as online cause platforms multiply and fight for sunlight. However, Watson doesn't do much more than acknowledge the problem, then move on to other issues. It is trivial to see that online social activism sites and tools cannot expand infinitely, but what the consequences of their growth might be is not given much consideration.

Ultimately, I think the problems I have with CauseWired are because I wanted Tom Watson to ask himself harder questions. Instead it feels to me like he's played safe and contents himself with giving a tour and quoting extensively from others. To give credit where its due, it is a very good tour of the online cause state of play in early 2008, but I can't see this book retaining much value beyond 2010 or so. In that sense, it isn't really for me. It's something to give to, say, a charity director who is wondering what is possible online, or someone who hasn't previously considered the ramifications of "web 2.0" - the stories and examples here will get them up to speed very quickly. But it doesn't seem to have much to say to those already involved in social activism, or whose experience of the net is already two-way.

So by that measure I guess I can't recommend this book to most of the readers of this blog. It may be I'm being rather too hard on it, and asking far more from it than I really should do. To that end perhaps I'll embrace the Web 2.0-ness of it all and invite questions and queries from readers. Are you intrigued by this book's premise? Ask me in comments about whatever interests you and I'll do my best to shed some light. There might be a whole constituency for the book that I'm just not seeing.

Waste Minimisation Bill enters law

About two years ago, I tried out that small group action thing I'd been talking about. Three friends and I got together and decided we were going to do something - we chose to make a submission on the Waste Minimisation Bill that was then in committee.

In February 2007, we fronted up before select committee to speak to our submission. I wrote about the experience here.

Now, a year and a half later, the bill has passed into law. It has changed a bit from its earlier form, and you'd have to be a bit of an optimistic reader to find any evidence of our specific submission contributing to the changes, but I feel a kind of ownership nonetheless. This bill coming into law is an important step towards getting this country to sort out its relationship with waste and recycling.

The passing of the Waste bill has mostly gone without comment - largely due to the passing of the Emissions Trading Scheme the same day. The Greens put out a press release but that's about it - you can read that here.

Anyway, its nice to be able to draw a line under that action. Key lessons:
(1) lawmaking takes a long time
(2) NZ's system of government is genuinely open to participation from everyone - we have enormous power to influence things, if we only spare the time and energy and interest to use it.

Nice one.

Small Groups In Action

Today my Monday Psyc tutorial completed two weeks of action, during which they had tried to adopt more environmentally sustainable behaviours. They've been working away in their small groups, facing challenges and negotiating around them, and generally coming face to face with the difficulties of behaviour change even with the best of intentions. (And, of course, of the difficulties being increased when your enthusiasm is only lukewarm.)

It's great. They're all engaged and full of ideas, and learning a lot as they go. This is the second year we've run this programme, but it is much changed and improved this year with more effective links to social science theory and a better, more fun, basis for group formation and action. Last year it was a mixed success in terms of education, fun, and sustainable outcomes; this year it looks like a definite success in terms of education and fun at least. Still waiting on the sustainable outcomes aspect - how successful will their efforts be? There's still one more two-week intensive behaviour change period to come, after the holidays, and then we'll see for sure. My instincts are positive, though. The trick will be whether my thesis is supported - that people who identify strongly with their action groups will be more successful at behaviour change.

Its neat to see this going on. This has come a long way since my thoughts about small group actions first turned up on this blog in October 2006.

It feels good to be doing something concrete to work towards change.

Making Change Happen

Today I had coffee and a chat with Jo Randerson, one of Wellington's many worthy writers-about-town. I had heard her speaking on Radio Active about Jared Diamond's book Collapse, and using the miracles of Google and Gmail, I made contact and we ended up in Fidels to talk things over. It was very cool, there was information to be traded about actions being taken re: climate change, which ties into the Small Group Action thing and the Masters study. It's good to know I'm part of something worthwhile and that I have valuable things to say. This study is going to be great fun.

It reminded me of another coffee and chat the previous week, with friend-Jasmine, who introduced me to Changemakers NZ. Changemakers is another outfit harnessing the good bits of group dynamics to support change. The premise is, you get together with 10 others to do 10 actions in the next year, using 5% of your time and 5% of your income. It's a fascinating take on some of the same ideas I've been exploring - definitely worth a look if you're interested in this sort of thing.

And that reminded me of the pledgebank pledge to write letters supporting repeal of the sedition laws. Today, Cabinet decided to go ahead with this. It's a great success for justice, for sanity, and for everyone's favourite anti-sedition blog No Right Turn.

And that, finally, reminds me of a great post over on the Alligator's blog. He reproduces in full an email from his Dad, who is in El Salvador doing some volunteer work that he seems to be making up as he goes along. Talks about the history of the community, their current living situation, and the concrete action he is taking to help the community out.

The nights are a bit cooler and everyone hangs out on the por ch in their hamacas. The kids play stick ball or whatever else in the streets. There isn't much in the way of activities so people do a lot of talking. They chatter away about anything and everything. Everyone knows everything about all the folks in town. I don't understand all of it as my Spanish is still not up to stuff. But I think you get an idea of the scene. People are asleep by 9 or 10 at night.

It's lovely and inspiring stuff, and I recommend you pop over and check it out.

(Aside: I really need to get category archives set up on this site so I can link to all the categories I'm using. Tried to figure it out, spent 30 minutes faffing about in Movable Type, still have not achieved success. Any fixes from the computer-clever amongst my readership?)

Back To School

Like Rodney Dangerfield, I'm going back to school.

MA in Psychology. Interested in the gap between attitudes and behaviours, and how group dynamics can be harnessed to bring about behaviour change to match attitudes more closely. Longtime readers will recognise this from the Small Group Action series that started here.

More details sometime.

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Overseas readers who recall my posts about debate here in NZ on the subject of child discipline and smacking will not have heard that the political side of the issue has been resolved, with a cross-party accord in the house of parliament for a minor amendment to the bill:

To avoid doubt it is affirmed that police have the discretion not to prosecute complaints against parents of any child, or those standing in place of any child, in relation to an offence involving the use of force against a child where the offence is considered to be so inconsequential that there is no public interest in pursuing a prosecution.

To say this was an unexpected development is an understatement. There was definite political mileage for the opposition in keeping this debate going. But National leader John Key is clearly playing a longer game, mindful of future cross-party accords that must be found on matters like climate change. Either that or he's actually acting with integrity. Huh. Cool.

Before Select Committee

Today I sat in front of the NZ Parliament's Local Government and Environment Select Committee, alongside Billy, Scott and Katherine, and spoke to our submission on the Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill.

It was quite nerve-wracking. I didn't feel the sensation of nervousness, that anxious stomach-churning short-breath thing - no sensation like that at all. But I was reacting like it anyway, stumbling to hold what I was saying together and stay on top of what was going on. It's weird how stress works, it just seems to remove a bunch of working space in your head so you're desperately trying to make do with only a sliver of mental whiteboard. Tricky.

For all that, it went well. Our message was received, I think, and my less-than-smooth delivery would have only helped our credibility. Tricky questions from the exact two members I was expecting tricky questions from were handled acceptably. For my own personal satisfaction I wish I'd handled it with the ease I know I'm capable of, but heck, I don't have anything to moan about really.

Actually, I was surprised to discover this felt so different to other times when I've spoken to groups. Will introspect and try and figure out why.

So that was one of the things I did today. It was quite exciting really. If I ever find myself in a similar situation I think I'll be much more confident!

(This was a small group action, by the way. Remember those? More on this theme to come...)

EDIT: Billy has written about it too, see his post here.

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Happy birthday to the Alligator...

SGA 6: Give It A Try

I started off by recommending that everyone out there go and see An Inconvenient Truth. I know I emerged from that film filled with concern and feeling the importance of action, of actually doing something instead of just thinking about it. I'll wager a good portion of you reading this had exactly the same experience.

Have you actually done anything yet? No. I haven't either.

So, it's time to change that. Give my Small Group Action idea a try. It's easy.

Just pop over to your email right now, think of one other person who might be interested, and send them an invitation. Maybe something like: "I've been thinking about An Inconvenient Truth. Interested in doing something achievable in response?"

It is just that easy.

What next? Still easy. Just grab the very handy SGA guide for a one-page step-by-step. (Also includes all the potential actions from the previous post in this series!)
SGA Guide, .pdf, 92K

I know people are interested in these posts - I've had more verbal feedback on this series than on anything else I've ever put online. So I hope this has been interesting for you, and most of all I hope it sparks you to try out the SGA idea. It'd be great if a few more groups got underway to go with the ones already happening!

Right, enough from me on this, for now at least. If you have any questions, just drop me an email or leave a comment here. I'd love to help. Or just ramble at you, whichever. :-)

Now go send that email!

SGA 5: To Do What, Exactly?

Okay, so in the previous four entries I've talked about how the most functional setup for action is small, short-term groups pursuing concrete outcomes. This leaves one great big question to be answered: what the heck can small, short-term groups actually achieve?

Back in June I got some people together to brainstorm some answers. (A great wee session, mentioned in one of those little elusive allusive comments here.) Here's what we came up with.

Examples of things small groups can do

Raise the Profile of an Issue
- put an issue on the agenda somewhere
- get government to deal with it
- make companies/businesses/etc. aware of it

Gather Information For Informed Choices
- spread the burden of research and the benefit of knowledge around the group
- find out the merits of, say, organic food, or different energy companies
- information will inevitably be spread further than the group as well
- this extends to things like local elections - who is standing, what are their platforms, etc
- when making a change in consumer behaviour, write to all the companies/businesses concerned explaining the reason for your change

Support Your Own Behaviour Change
- can be hard to make changes alone, and especially hard to maintain changes
- with group support, can make changes in, say, energy use or food buying habits
- same principle as a group of people going on a diet together

Contact A Stakeholder
- can contact MPs (local or MP with interest in the area), foreign governments, councils, businesses, NGOs, community organizations, officials in a ministry, media organizations
- can write letters or make a visit
- can raise an issue, ask a question, seek information, seek advice or clarification, express concern or support, propose an alternative route, ask how alternatives could be considered, ask how their plan can be supported...
- because there tend to be few such communications, they can be very powerful. For example, media organizations are very sensitive about advertising revenue and pay close attention to letters received.
- do not assume a stakeholder knows all of the context around an issue - you may be able to offer useful information
- conversely, the stakeholder may have thought the issue through in more detail than you initially realize - give them a chance to explain themselves and gather information on their approach

Spread Information
- to increase understanding/awareness of an issue, or correct misunderstanding
- organize a public meeting - find good speakers, organise venue, publicity, invite media and/or community
- develop and hand out flyers in a key location
- organization a small and focused demonstration, invite the media
- lobby a media entity to interview a key person
- fly posting, stencils and graffiti, websites, culture jamming...

Bring About Change In An Environment
- an environment structures the behaviour within that environment - changing it can support and drive behaviour change
- for example, a group who work in the same building could lobby for a new recycling policy within the building

Direct Action
- tree planting, beach cleaning
- other kinds of volunteer work that are not long-term commitments

Conduct Research
- a small group could conduct a simple survey and publicise the data
- the survey should be something concrete and not an opinion survey
- for example, an evaluation of the condition of bus shelters in different suburbs cross-referenced against the average income of the suburbs could indicate inequity in distribution of resources to maintain these shelters

Interact with Government
- find out what is going on, what decisions are pending
- develop and make submissions on coming legislation

SGA 4: Concrete and Consensual

A lot of people care about their world. Relatively few do much about it. Small Group Action applies the principles of usability to this, laying out a 'course of least resistance' for turning caring into action.

Step one is meeting with friends of yours who also care. This meeting may result in a Small Group.

We've already established two qualities of a Small Group:

1. small - three to seven members, ideally four or five


2. short-term - two or three months at most

1. concrete - the group's goal is to produce one concrete outcome


2. consensual - the group's goal is not predetermined

A concrete goal is an absolute necessity. Without one, the group won't achieve anything but talk. It doesn't need to be a major goal, only a real one.

Consensus is also necessary. Everyone in the group has to buy in, or members won't have a good experience or won't contribute.

The purpose of the first meeting is to discuss what concrete things can be done, and to choose a goal that everyone buys in to.

By this point, you have a small group, who have chosen an action with a concrete outcome, and who are driven both by their own caring about the issue and by social pressure from group membership to deliver that outcome.

And with all that in place, you're away. Go do it.

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That's it. There's lots more detail in my head and scribbled in various notes, but the core idea is there: small groups doing short-term concrete actions. I believe this model is one of the most friendly ways we can coax ourselves into action.

Someone who tried out aspects of this approach called it a "three month we care" project. The three month limitation makes SGA feel safe - it's easy to jump in to a project wholeheartedly, instead of with a sinking feeling that I'm starting something I won't be able to sustain. And the whole project assumes, rightly, that lots of people out there do give a damn - they just don't have a friendly way of acting on it.

But - and this is a big but - SGA falls apart unless five people for three months can actually produce something worthwhile. More on this in the next post...

SGA 3: Action Of Commitment

We are busy people, leading busy lives. It's hard for us to chunk out some time. We are, understandably, wary of making a commitment. But if we actually want to do anything, we have to make a commitment.

First principle we get from this: long-term commitments are scary. Short-term commitments are not (as much). Therefore, our small group must be a short-term commitment (with the option to renew).

There's more to be said about commitment, though. This gets a bit more jargony and theoretical than previous posts, so feel free to skip down through this stuff.

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I started thinking about the idea of commitment, particularly on the moment when you get committed to something - the moment when you go from "I might actually produce something sometime" to "I'm gonna produce something dammit." I call that moment - or more precisely, the action that constitutes it - the Action of Commitment.

I think stuff like "I should send a letter to the Minister of Health about this" all the time. Doesn't count for much - I'm not committed. In fact, I start feeling committed only when I sit down with a bit of paper and write "Dear Minister of Health" at the top.

If the Action of Commitment for writing a letter is starting the letter, then that's not going to produce too many letters. Way too easy to get distracted and do other stuff. A lot of Actions of Commitment are like that, way down the chain of thought, in the realm of 'hard stuff' that we tend to put off until tomorrow.

Right, so let's think this through in the terms of this SGA thing. How can we change the action of commitment so it's easier to get people there?

Side trip: Pledgebank

My thinking about applying usability principles to the problem of inaction was influenced by Pledgebank, which I'd discovered over at No Right Turn. On Pledgebank, you make a pledge: "I'll do such-and-such if X many people say they'll do it too." Then people who are keen sign a pledge to that effect. Once your name is on the pledge and enough people are signed up, you get an email saying "go for it!". That's all it is - but it works. Once you've put your name down, other people are counting on you. Social pressure is brought to bear on you even through the anonymous internet. You don't want to let these people down, you don't want to feel like a hypocrite, and so you carry out your pledge.

Pledgebank changes the point of buy-in. Your Action Of Commitment isn't writing "Dear Minister of Health," it's being online, seeing something you agree with, and putting your name on a list. That's a much easier action, but it is almost as likely to result in the task getting done.

Pledgebank works off many of the same principles I seized on separately. Check out this quote from director Tom Steinberg:

We all know what it is like to feel powerless, that our own actions can't really change the things that we want to change. PledgeBank is about beating that feeling by connecting you with other people who also want to make a change, but who don't want the personal risk of being the only person to turn up to a meeting or the only person to donate ten pounds to a cause that actually needed a thousand.

Which brings us back to Small Group Action.

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We need to create a better and easier point of buy-in. Our good intentions come to nothing a lot of the time because it's hard to get to a point where we feel committed to following through.

The SGA approach says, when you feel like doing something, the first action you should take is this.

meet with a couple of your friends to talk about forming a small group

That's all. Meeting up with friends is something we do all the time. This technique says, just do that, but agree to actually have a focus.

Easy. And because it's easy, it's also powerful, especially combined with all the rest of the SGA approach.

There's more. Tomorrow.

SGA 2: The Power Of Groups

Applying usability principles to the problem of inaction had me thinking in some broad circles before I started getting somewhere with it.

The main issue is where to apply these principles. You can't just change the entire world to make it more usable. That's ludicrous. (Well, you can, but such a change would require such a huge amount of effort and rethinking that the project would make itself redundant.)

After turning it over a while, I hit upon what felt like a bolt-from-the-sky revelation. I had been approaching the problem from the wrong end. Instead of starting with the problem and looking for solutions, I would start at the solution and work back to the problem.

Er. That doesn't really make sense. Bear with me here.

Consider groups. When you get a group of people together, instantly you have a social dynamic. This social dynamic is very powerful. If you're in a group of strangers, that fact exerts massive influence over your behaviour. If you're in a group of old friends, or family, then your behaviour is similarly hit. Psychology (particularly, but not exclusively, social psychology) has been delving into this stuff for a very long time. Groups can be very powerful ways to affect behaviour.

So, we have a group as a powerful way to influence behaviour. All right then. The first part of our answer is this: "form a group".

Note that this is "form a group" not "join a group". Why? Well, either way you end up with membership in a group. One way, you probably have a high level of investment in the success of the group; the other, you probably have a low level of investment in the success of the group. We're reverse engineering something to be powerful, so we pick the high investment option, and that means forming a group.

How big is this group, ideally? Well, again, the larger the group, the less investment in its success. In big groups, it's easy to escape any feeling of responsibility for the group's wellbeing. Additionally, in big groups you have the burden of management. With more people, it gets harder and harder to manage them - you need to develop systems and methods and everything starts getting very impersonal. Compromise becomes more and more essential, to the extent that everyone in the group is compromising all the time.

(These aren't linear relationships - they're complex curves, rising and falling as different effects kick in at different group sizes - but for the sake of this potted summary assume more people = less investment, and more people = more management.)

Big groups have huge positives, too, of course. You can do things with big groups that are beyond the wildest dreams of small groups. Amnesty International, my favourite charity, does amazing things that small groups just can't possibly equal. But this exercise isn't interested in that. We're most interested in influencing member behaviour, and that means small groups.

How small? I think 3-7 is a good number, 4-5 is probably ideal. I've kinda plcked these numbers out of the air, but not entirely. One of many observations that plugged into this thinking was how functional groups of that size can be. In that general range you get small sports teams, fitness buddies, dieting support groups, role-playing game groups, road trip groups, book clubs, knitting circles, bands... The evidence is that this size group works. My instinct is that this size is the location of one of the tipping points in the relationship between management input and achievement output - smaller than four means less management but much less achievement, while bigger than seven means more achievement at the cost of significantly more management.

So that's our first step, then. Form a small group. That's part of our solution. We need to refine this a bit more, add to it, and then work backwards to find out exactly what the problem is that it answers.

I hope I'm not jargonizing you to death. Trying to explain clearly, but most of this is first draft stuff... anyway, more tomorrow...

SGA 1: Sekret Project Revealed

Over the last 18 months or so, I've been drawing a few disparate threads together and coming to some interesting points of insight.

One of these threads is how our social conscience interacts with our motivation.

Yesterday's blog post was basically a big encouragement to go see Inconvenient Truth. Countless people have been to see it and been inspired and motivated. And yet I can say with great confidence that only a small percentage will have acted on that inspiration and actually done something concrete in their lives.

The heart is there, the mind is there, but somehow the action never quite materialises. It's just our nature, part of our fallible existence as human beings. But it's kind of sad, to think that we just sit back complacent as our world actually, literally, starts to collapse.

(I'm no different, by the way. This isn't preaching. Much of what follows came from observing the self as much as observing the world.)

Somewhere along the line, I started approaching this behaviour from a usability perspective. I'm hardly a usability expert, but I have a serious interest in it, and I've taught myself a thing or two over the years. And the principles are powerful. Essentially, they state that we (human beings) are incredibly responsive to our environment and to situational cues. If you design a better interface, you get better interactions, and everyone leaves happier.

For example, consider a website. If you have to scroll to see something important, that's not very usable. If there are so many links on the page that it takes forever to find the one you want, that's not very usable.

Also consider paper forms (man, some of the bank forms I've encountered are almost incomprehensible), textbooks (laying out your information for easy indexing and learning), remote controls (what the heck do these buttons do again?)...

So, applying the usability principles, a question emerges. We observe social conscience; we observe lack of action. What is interfering with the expression of the first through the second? And, can elements of the situation be altered to make action more likely?

I think so.

The sekret project is a technique for turning the worthy sentiments of busy people into concrete and worthwhile results. I call it "Small Group Action".

Inconvenience and Truth

It's time I finally blogged about the sekret project. I've alluded to it a few times here but have been coy largely because I wanted to push things a bit further before bringing it to the online environment. But, time has come.

Before I begin, though, a question:

Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth yet?

Because you really should go see it.

Pearce writes:
"I saw An Inconvenient truth the other day, and not only do I recommend it, I class it as a must-see... if you don't see the movie, you can neither recommend nor condemn it. If you already know the facts about global warming, by seeing this movie you can judge for yourself whether it is a resource you can recommend. Similarly if you doubt the facts about global warming, you cannot criticize the movie unless you explicitly know what it says."

Jenni writes in comment to this post,
"Not many movies have actually changed the things I do, but this one did."
And on her own blog:
"I was very moved and motivated by [An Inconvenient Truth]."

Pearce references Roger Ebert, uber-film reviewer of Chicago, writing about the film:
"In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."

Over in Wellington's free alterna-paper The Capital Times, Graeme Tuckett references the Ebert review and also writes:
"This is my fifth year of reviewing movies for the Cap TImes, and this is my last ever column, so I reckon I'm allowed a small indulgence... JUST GO AND SEE AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, OK? The film is brilliant. It will, quite probably, change the way you live your life... How much do I reckon you should see it? I'll tell you what. The first five people to email me at the address below - I'll shout you your ticket, OK?"

Seriously, go see this film. This is something special. Even if you think you know this stuff backwards and forwards, see the film. The cultural conversation just moved forward and if you haven't seen this film you're missing out.

Plus, the film is massively entertaining, and you don't walk out of the cinema depressed - you walk out of it energised. As Jenni said, motivated.

Which brings me to the sekret project.

Which, naturally, I'm not going to talk about until tomorrow.