Having just come through an election in Canada in which I was a Green Party candidate, and in which the anti-science, anti-environment Conservative government was re-elected, gave me cause to wonder what happened to my pro-environment Canadians. "The environment" was the #1 concern of Canadians not so long ago - before "the economy" trumped it.

So why didn't Canadians vote Green - not a single Green Member of Parliament was elected, again - or at least green: the major opposition to the Conservatives, the Liberals, proposed a "Green Shift (stolen from the Green Party and watered down), in which income tax would be replaced by a carbon tax. The Liberals and their Green Shift went down in flames, the victim of weak leadership and Conservative phony propaganda.

The answer, I believe, is that "the environment" is simply not real to most people. It is an abstract concept, and people cannot get motivated by abstract concepts unless they are somehow made to feel real.

The economy is also an abstract concept, but one's job and bills and financial security are most certainly real, so it's much easier to care about "the economy" - which ultimately trumped "the environment" and motivated many Canadians to vote Conservative.

The thing is, it doesn't get much more real than the environment. We are literally part of the environment and it is part of us. From ashes to ashes, dust to dust. No environment means no economy, no civilisation, even no humans if it changes enough. A few people do get this; the abstractness of the environment has become real to them. But to the majority, "the environment" is an optional ‘nice-to-have' that we take for granted, that we assume will always be there for us, that we will pay more attention to when there is more time, more money, more imminent danger.

As goes the environment, so goes humanity, so how do those of us who do ‘get it' make the environment real to people in the same way that the economy is, or family, or love? Because unless and until that happens, people will continue to focus on things more real to them, "the environment" will continue to deteriorate, and very soon it will be too late.

There are many answers to this, ranging from school vegetable gardens to presentations like The Inconvenient Truth. But the real bottleneck right now is political. Obama is a huge step in the right direction, because the President-Elect of the United States is talking about the seriousness of climate change and the desirability of green jobs. When powerful people talk, the majority listens, and Obama has more power than most. Even better, there is a cumulative effect, as Obama is now reinforcing what Al Gore has been saying. Suddenly, two very influential people are talking about the environment, and this legitimizes many lesser lights...and so the shift begins.

The key, I believe, will be in how we talk about climate change. If we continue to focus on doom-and-gloom scenarios, if we continue to try and scare people into going green, we will fail - just as environmentalists have largely failed for 30 years at attempts to shame people into going green.

Without vision, the people shall perish. Shame or fear-based appeals may scare us away from something...but toward what? We need a vision that draws us forward to a better future. We greens need to show people the way. Yes, we are facing a climate crisis, but it's a slow-motion disaster, and humans respond much better to immediate threats - or to powerful visions of a better, more secure, more prosperous, more responsible future.

That's what's lacking, though the void is starting to be filled by progressives like Al Gore and Barack Obama. From Gore:

...if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we're holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.

In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of "solutions summits" with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices.

From Obama:

Climate change and our dependence on foreign oil, if left unaddressed, will continue to weaken our economy and threaten our national security.

My presidency will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process.

This investment will not only help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil, making the United States more secure. And it will not only help us bring about a clean energy future, saving our planet. It will also help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis by generating five million new green jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced.

Both messages communicate the problems and dangers - and offer plausible and even inspiring solutions. They offer a vision of a better future. That is what is missing. People need something concrete to make both the scope of the crisis - and the way out of it - real.

Without vision, the people shall perish.