As a society, we know pretty well how to sell things to people - not just stuff, but ideas, behaviours, you name it. And all of our learning in this area tells us one thing overall - making people feel guilty generally does not do the business when it comes to promoting behaviour change.
Take flying. Airplanes criss-cross the world filled with lots of people who are sitting there feeling guilty about the fact they are flying. Take all of that guilt and pile it up into a corner - and you don't save a single ounce of carbon.
Just to underline the point, the Times ran a piece over a year ago, detailing the known flight paths of the heads of a number of environmental campaigning NGOs. The CEO of WWF had been to Spitsbergen, Borneo, Washington, Geneva and Beijing on business, and taken a holiday in the Falklands, generating 11 tons of CO2, in contrast to the British household that creates about 6 tons per year. The CEO of anti-corporate green group Friends of the Earth flew to Malaysia, South Africa and Amsterdam on business, and took the family to holiday in Slovakia. Eight tons.
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