profile

Clarifying Complex Ideas, LLC

What a Time to Be Alive, Eh? | Sustainable Content #6

Published over 1 year ago • 2 min read

Grappling with what's next

I start drafting this newsletter in my head several days before I start writing anything down. I spent last weekend in Pennsylvania and let's just say that what I was drafting wasn't exactly optimistic. And here we are.

There's a certain irony to the fact that I'm releasing a book about climate action two weeks after the election. Timing is everything.

​I'm going to quote Octavia Butler's A Few Rules For Predicting the Future: "There's no single answer that will solve all our future problems. There's no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers — at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be." That's what I'm doing with Sustainable Content. I'm trying to help us be one of the answers.

And now, possibly more than ever, we need to use our leverage wherever we can. Positive change isn't going to come from regulation or lack thereof. It's going to come from us, in the thousand little things we do every day.

"Our organizations are the places where we have the most leverage. If I, as an individual, become a digital content ascetic—no more streaming video, podcasts, or apps—I’m dramatically altering my leisure time with no measurable change for the planet. If I make a change at a client—reducing file sizes and energy needs forthousands or millions of people—I’m exerting an influence that can result in tons of emissions avoided."

 

Alisa Bonsignore, from the forthcoming book
​Sustainable Content: How to Measure and Mitigate the Carbon Footprint of Digital Data ​
(Available 19 November 2024)

What I've been reading

I have to admit, I have been reading very little this week. Hopefully I'll have more to share with you next week after my brain bounces back a little.

​How the election will impact climate. Spoiler: it's not an optimistic read.

​"The antidote to doom is doing." A lot of people don't realize that we're not facing scientific or technology limitations as we try to turn things around. The barriers to reducing climate impacts are entirely political and economic.

The Multisolving Institute offers 5 'no regrets' actions for tumultuous times. Nurture connections. Prioritize health. Invest in equity. Simplify. Continue learning, and share what you learned.

Shameless and unsolicited cross-promotion of good stuff!

This week I want to hype Mary Conquest, a fractional content strategy consultant from Canada.
Mary knows how to turn content into a business asset. She's also one of my favorite people. If you're a small team looking to approach your content more strategically, Mary is the one to call.

📖

Sustainable Content

Coming soon: buy the book

🎤

Speaking Engagements

​Book Alisa for your event​

🗒️

Consulting

​Reduce your Scope 3 emissions​

Alisa Bonsignore

Founder, Strategist, and Author

People are saying good things about Sustainable Content

"Bonsignore’s book explains the issues clearly and shows that computing the environmental costs of our work is not only feasible, but ethically necessary. Bonsignore shows that while climate change is the most wicked of problems, creating content sustainably is an ethical and financially beneficial response."

- Russell Willerton, PhD. Author of Plain Language and Ethical Action: A Dialogic Approach to Technical Content in the Twenty-First Century

Clarifying Complex Ideas, LLC

Talking about sustainable content: how to measure and mitigate the carbon footprint of digital data.

Read more from Clarifying Complex Ideas, LLC
The dark blue-green sunburst logo of Clarifying Complex Ideas, LLC

When planning doesn't work Would you believe that this newsletter used to have a carefully planned editorial calendar? Lately it seems like every time I start working on planned content more than 24 hours ahead of distribution, it's completely blown out of the water by some utterly batshit news revelation. What could possibly be worth saying here when [insert any one of 47,000 other things] is going on? This week, rather than having one overarching theme — which doesn't feel remotely...

16 days ago • 3 min read
The dark blue-green sunburst logo of Clarifying Complex Ideas, LLC

How do we create a greener web? A funny thing happened after the last issue when I spoke about hope: I lost nearly 1/3 of my readers. I'm befuddled by this. Did those people previously think that a newsletter about sustainability would be pro-colonialism? Pro-authoritarianism?* Did they think that I was in favor of net zero accounting instead of actual reductions? If so, I've been doing a terrible job communicating in this newsletter. With that said, I'm going to try to bridge the massive...

30 days ago • 2 min read
The dark blue-green sunburst logo of Clarifying Complex Ideas, LLC.

What a year, eh? I had a draft of a newsletter queued up for last Friday and then... y'all, the news just did me in. We've got oil invasions and extrajudicial killings and cuts to social services and and and and. And that's just domestically? Honestly, what the hell do I say in the midst of that? I can tell you what other sustainability newsletters are saying. They're talking about hope. But they're talking about it like it's this wispy, ephemeral thing. Oh, sure, we're invading countries for...

about 1 month ago • 2 min read