Generic discussion of institutional shame and water usage without specific leads

Forthcoming (August 2011) Future Science edited by Max Brockman, Vintage Press, New York. marginalizing politically incorrect words). Many of today’s social movements, like the industries they seek to revolutionize, must make big changes quickly—which is best accomplished by directing efforts upward toward institutions. I call this vertical agitation. The Santa Fe Reporter listed the top ten commercial water users, in addition to the top ten households. The first of these offenders, the city of Santa Fe, used 195 times more water than the number-one household offender. Imagine the relative difference in getting the city to commit to water-saving techniques as compared to reforming a single household. Guilt cannot work at the institutional level, since it is evoked by individual scruples, which vary widely. But shame is not evoked by scruples alone; since it’s a public sentiment, it also affects reputation, which is important to an institution. At the 2004 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, leading CEOs issued a press release about how corporate brand reputation outranked financial performance as the most important measure of success. For an example of how shame and reputation interact, consider restaurant hygiene cards, introduced in 1998 by Los Angeles County as a shaming technique in the interests of public health. Restaurants were required to display grade cards that corresponded to their most recent government hygiene inspection. The large grade in the window—A, B, or C—honors restaurants that value cleanliness most and shames those that value it least. The grade cards have apparently led to increased customer sensitivity to restaurant hygiene, a 20-percent decrease in county-wide hospitalizations for food-borne illnesses, and better hygiene scores for county restaurants.'! Recall that in our early evolution we could gauge cooperation only first-hand. As group size got bigger, and ancient humans grappled with issues of necessary cooperation, the human brain became better able to keep track of all the rules and all the people. The need to "! Zhe, G. and P. Leslie. 2005. The case in support of restaurant hygiene grade cards. Choices 20(2): 97-102. http://www.stanford.edu/~pleslie/Jin%20and%20Leshie%20Choices%202005 pdf HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023726