Johann Hari has written a fiery article in The Independent damning leaders of America and China for not cutting emission targets in Copenhagen. Hari uses this article as a call-to-action for groups of people to organise and make an impact since political leaders have failed to do so:

The time for changing your light-bulbs and hoping for the best is over. It is time to take collective action. For some people, that will mean joining Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth or the Campaign Against Climate Change and helping them pile on the pressure. But those who can go further – by taking non-violent direct action – should do so. Every coal train should be ringed with people refusing to let it pass. Every new runway should be blockaded. The cost of trashing the climate needs to be raised.

It works. Look at Britain. Three years ago, eight new coal power stations were being planned, and the third runway at Heathrow was all but inevitable. A few thousand heroic young people took direct action against them. Now all the new coal power stations have been cancelled, and the third runway is dead in the water. Here in the fifth largest economy in the world, they have stopped coal and airport expansion. Politicians felt the heat. That was done by a few thousand people. Imagine what tens or hundreds of thousands could do.

Civil Society is all about smaller groups getting together to take action and change the agenda. Likewise Civil Branding is about changing the agenda through company’s brands.

Ronald Regan famously said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. While small government is a republican/conservative idea, the idea that government cannot solve all problems is a more universal and timeless belief.

The Copenhagen Conference highlights the opportunity for brands to help citizens organise around climate issues where the government has not been able to meet the task.

Climate change is essentially a tragedy of the commons problem, where everybodys’ needs do not need to adversely affected, but due to opportunistic tendencies (read human nature), we end up causing the worst result for all concerned.

So the solution, at least in part, needs many actions and many different agreements. One could argue that the problem of climate change is simply too complex for government to take on. Many kinds of efforts are required, but they are the kind of efforts that will put one company at a disadvantage over another if all companies to not conform to a minimum level of practice.

Beyond changing your own company’s behaviour, we have the opportunity to help change the agenda and help organise groups of people to apply pressure in the right areas. Here are a few ideas:

• Putting effort into badging information on how sustainable a product is including a lot more detail on its manufacture and transport.
• Encouraging the formation of citizen groups and supporting their organisation through brands.
• Setting up self-regulatory bodies that develop practice guides in an industry that become an industry standard and then later enforced by national and international laws.
• Supporting lobby groups to change national and international policies in order to create a more level playing field and promoting these lobby groups with company brands.
• Aligning brands closely to important movements like Coke has done with the Copenhagen Conference.

Many of these kinds of activities already exist when coming up with basic regulations. So, there is often an infrastructure for just this kind of activity.