Everyone who has tried to spread the green message has come up against the wall of indifference. What’s wrong with people? Don’t they understand the world is in peril? Why won’t they do anything?
What happens if you shout louder? People seem to take even less notice. So you start railing against the world – why can no-one grasp the issues instead of you?
The problem of course is people have plenty of priorities and will resist having another one. Yes, they care about the polar bear, but what’s that got to do with their paper-pushing or lever-pulling job at Megacorp plc?
It’s this gap between global issues like climate change and/or high level concepts like sustainability and the day to day pressures of completing that paperwork or finishing that widget that you need to bridge. And you bridge it not by trying to beat your values into their brain, but by putting that issue into the context of the world they inhabit.
Here are some tactics for doing this:

• The human interest story: we respond to ‘people like us’ telling us their story – which is why TV reporters always interview the Western aid worker in famine stories rather than the poor victims (I hate this, but they do it for a reason);

• Getting people involved in generating solutions: if people work out what this means to their job function, they make the bridge themselves and get a much deeper understanding than you telling them;

• Tailor training and awareness material for particular job functions. So marketers get trained in green marketing, accountants in the business case for sustainability, product developers in eco-design etc;

• Tap into any organisational cultural traits. If another issue is a key plank of the culture – eg innovation, health & safety, hygiene, third world development, charitable donations etc – then try to piggy back on that issue rather than trying to create a new plank.

But overall, we have to remember it is about them, not you. This can be tricky – I must admit I occasionally get dragged into a debate with a climate change “sceptic” online and I often forget that others are watching and may give the other guy the benefit of the doubt – particularly if I start batting down the same old tired arguments with a bit too much zeal.
Putting the old ego in the back pocket for a while and getting yourself into their world is the way to win people in the long term.