Let me start by asking you a question.
Imagine you decided to buy a new T-shirt
so you drive to your favorite shop,
you look at the choice they offer,
and you narrow it down to two T-shirts
that you find more or less equally cool.
You hold them in your hands,
and you know that one of them comes from a company
that is known for very decent working conditions in the production.
No child labor, fair wages.
You know it doesn't include toxic chemicals for the coloring,
and it's made with organic cotton.
The T-shirt in the other hand,
as you remember from the media, a week before,
comes from a brand quite notorious
for so-called "sweat shop" working conditions.
So, maybe child labor,
certainly, no fair wages,
full of toxic chemicals, and not organic.
As I told you, you like them more or less the same.
Who of you would, in that situation,
pick the more responsible T-shirt?
Please raise your hand.
OK.
That's a majority.
Now think about the last time you bought a T-shirt.
Did you take into consideration
the social and environmental aspects of your decision?
Did you think about
the social and environmental performance of the brands behind the T-shirt?
Or the last time you bought a computer, or a smartphone?
Did you check for the human rights conditions
in the production of these products?
Probably not.
What you have here is the so-called "intention-behavior gap."
We have all the best intentions,
but when it comes to the real decision making,
we forget about it,
or we have many reasons why in that moment we cannot do it.
What drives that gap?
So why does it exist?
Why do we so often fail to do what we intend to do
when it comes to sustainability?
You might think it has to do with information.
So if we just would know about all these things,
then we would make better decisions,
more informed, more responsible decisions as consumers.
Think about April 2013,
when this garment factory collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
You have seen these pictures on the news.
You might even recall some of the brand names.
Brands being produced there.
You might even have bought these brands before or afterwards.
One year earlier,
you certainly heard of the story about the workers at Foxconn,
the factory producing smartphones and computers,
jumping from the roofs of the factory
because of the desperation for their working conditions.
You all know that you might be the last generation eating tuna fish.
You have heard all these stories about child labor and slave labor
in chocolate, in sugar, in gold, in coltan, you name it.
If you've never heard about all these things,
you've probably spent the last 20 years on an island,
like Robinson Crusoe.
So information is not the problem. Information is not the problem.
We are very good in shifting the blame somewhere else
and rationalising our own unsustainable decisions.
We shift the blame on the corporations. We say it's about production problems.
So we frame it as a problem of production.
We ask corporations to change their behavior.
There's some truth in that as well,
but that's only part of the story
because basically, the sustainability problems
that we face today are problems of our way of life.
We want more stuff,
at an ever higher speed and an ever lower price.
So we are part of the problem.
It's not just about improving the current production conditions,
it's also about changing the culture of consumption.
So it's not about information.
What is it that explains this gap between intentions and behavior?
Most of the time, when we make decisions as consumers,
we do so in an automatic way, we cruise on auto-pilot.
We act without thinking. It's just routine decisions.
It's deeply embedded, taken-for-granted habits
that drive our behavior.
Just think about the last time
you tried not to check emails on your smartphone.
You probably failed.
Habits can be stronger than reason.
So if you want to make consumption more sustainable,
we have to reprogram habits.
You must imagine a habit like an iceberg.
What you can see on the surface is the behavior.
What you cannot see under the water are the values and beliefs
that drive that behavior.
So if you want to change someone's habit,
which is not easy,
you can either directly target the behavior,
let's assume we would try to get rid of the habit of smoking,
so we can we make it illegal to smoke in public places.
You directly target the behavior.
Or you can target the values and beliefs under the water
that drive the behavior in the first place,
which is much more difficult,
but which creates much profounder changes.
How do we normally speak to these values and beliefs?
We speak to these values and beliefs in our society through stories.
Stories shape, and reinforce, and break habits.
Just think about how children love fairy-tales,
how we transport values and beliefs through fairy-tales.
Think about how the old ancient Greek and Roman societies
were guided by strong mythologies,
highly complex stories that guided the behavior of people in everyday life.
If you want to stop smoking, for instance, to go back to that story,
you can either make it illegal in public places,
or you can reprogram the beliefs and values
that drive that behavior.
The tobacco industry is very good in creating these stories.
For teenagers, they create
a story of coolness, and risk, and adulthood.
That's exactly what teenagers want.
So they will smoke as long as they believe it's cool,
and it's promoting their growing up.
For women, they used the story of emancipation and sexiness.
For poor people in Africa,
they used the story of the European prosperity,
"You can reach it a little bit if you start smoking."
So if you want to change a habit,
you have to find stories that are stronger and more powerful
than the stories that drive the behavior in the first place.
The problem of the sustainability movement
is that it has no stories to tell,
no stories that are powerful enough to break the power of the story
that drives our consumption in the first place.
What is that story about?
This is basically the story of the 20th century consumer society.
It is a story that grew over decades and became stronger and stronger.
It starts with the positive outlook on the future.
We believe in a bright future.
We believe that technology leads us there.
We put a man on the Moon.
Technology will make our production system ever more efficient,
so we can produce more stuff at higher speed and lower costs.
We buy that stuff because by buying stuff we become someone,
we belong somewhere, we increase our happiness.
So the story that drives our behavior
is the story that makes a link between technological progress,
economic efficiency, growth, consumption, and happiness.
And you feel the happiness in the immediate gratification,
when you bought the T-shirt, for instance.
In recent years,
this story has received a bit of competition.
There's another story going around,
and this is basically the story about the side effects of the first story.
We learn that when we consume more,
we can increase our happiness only to a certain degree,
then it falls down.
It's a U-shape; a negative U-shape, a curve.
negative U shape, a curve.
We smoke, we get cancer. We eat, we get diabetes.
We buy stuff all the time, we feel empty and get depressed.
On the level of society we learn
all these consumption decisions aggregate
in large scale environmental problems.
The forest disappears, the ice is melting,
and in a few decades, probably Manhattan will be under water.
There will be more migration, more poverty, more wars, less water.
This is actually the post-vision of the future.
It's an apocalyptic future. It's a future that is dystopian.
It's a story about the collapse of the planet.
So you have these two stories,
the utopian story about your happiness,
and the dystopian story about the end of the world.
Next time you go in a shop and buy a T-shirt,
you will hear two voices in your ear.
One voice will tell you, "why don't you buy both?"
(Laughter)
"You double your happiness."
(Laughter)
But you might start to doubt about the evidence of that.
So there's the other story,
"Do you really need a T-shirt?"
OK, if you need it, buy the organic one. the fair one.
...and did you come by bus?
(Laughter)
Did you switch off the light when you left your house?
If you did all these things, you might save the planet.
Saving the planet by switching off the light?
Two days ago, I was walking through London,
and there was a printing shop,
which obviously used some advanced green technology
because in their window,
they invited me to save the planet with them.
I didn't know that this planet will be saved by a printing shop in London.
And what I assume is that these kind of stories
are just an insult to our minds, to our intelligence.
We don't believe them.
We don't believe this strange causal link
between our little decisions and the apocalyptic future.
So these stories are not credible.
They don't speak to our minds.
II they come in the negative form, we are doomed, the planet is lost.
They don't speak to our emotions,
because they appeal to fear, they give us no hope.
But fear only drives behavior when the threat is immediate.
Manhattan will be under water when I will be dead,
and you as well.
So this doesn't drive my behavior.
This story is not strong enough
to break the power of the immediate happiness
that I can get when I buy both T-shirts.
We need different stories.
We need stories that include ourselves.
There are stories about our happiness connected to the well-being of the planet,
stories of our future,
in which we are the actors who make the decisions
and feel the change.
This might be a bit abstract
so let me tell you a story about such a story.
I don't know how you would feel
if you hear that in your neighbourhood a new fast food restaurant is opening up.
You might not even care,
but this is a story about someone who got really really angry
when he heard that MacDonald's was opening a new restaurant
at the Spanish Steps in Rome;
the Spanish Steps in Rome, at the heart of the cultural heritage of Italy -
fast food, the opposition of what Italians are so proud of,
their food.
This guy was Carlo Pertini,
and he channeled his anger
by creating the slow food movement.
The slow food movement basically, is a movement
that fights against this broad nexus
of industrialized, mechanical food production
and mindless, unhealthy food consumption,
from the Monsantos to the MacDonald's.
This movement was created by Carlo Petrini
because he believes that we have to change the way we eat.
We have to eat local food, healthy food.
We have to produce locally.
We have to protect our biodiversity, our cultural heritage.
We have to recreate the link that is lost
between the producer and the consumer.
We have to educate consumers and producers to change their habits.
This story that started as a little Italian episode
has become a huge global movement,
with more than 100,000 actors in more than 150 countries.
Why is this story so powerful?
This story is so powerful because we all can connect to it.
You have concerns about the health of your children,
you can connect to it.
You hate the growing influence of multinationals on the way we eat,
you can connect to it.
You are a promoter of local traditions,
you can connect to it.
You want to preserve biodiversity,
you can connect to it.
You want to help poor farmers somewhere in Latin America
at the end of the supply chains of our production system,
you can connect to that story.
We all can somehow connect to that story
through our own beliefs and values in that very moment.
What started as a very small Italian episode
has turned into a trans-cultural movement,
because it is a story that speaks to everyone, potentially.
So, the next time you speak with your children
about sustainability, ask yourself, "What kind of story will I tell them?"
And keep in mind
it has to be a story about yourself, and your children, and your future.
When you are a manager, ask yourself,
"How do I talk about sustainability with my clients?"
You probably in the past talked about
the greatness of your engagement,
your wonderful products.
These are small stories that will not change the world
You need a great story to which many people can connect,
in many industries and in many circumstances.
When you are a teacher, ask yourself, "How can I inspire my students?"
As a journalist, your readers. As a politician, your citizens.
Yes, we need more technology and better technology
to improve the state of the world,
but what we have underestimated so far
is this amazing soft power of storytelling.
We're telling the wrong stories, and we have to change that.
Thank you.
(Applause)