A new report from the World Wildlife Fund, “From Workplace to Anyplace: Assessing the Global Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions With Virtual Meetings and Telecommuting,” is worth checking out. It includes background research on the drivers for and barriers to adopting telecommunications technologies among policy makers, business leaders and end users. Not surprisingly, saving the environment isn’t a key driver—in fact, it’s the lowest-ranked reason for videoconferencing. Efficiency, saving money and social improvements top the list, confirming that to encourage lasting behavioral change, communicators need give people a payoff beyond simply doing the right thing and feeling good about it.

As an aside, the headline, “Report: Teleworking Could Cut U.S. Climate Emissions in Half” on the Sustainable Life Media news item first alerted me to the study. It made me say “Wow!” But it tells a different story than the research report, which estimates that telecommuting and virtual meeting tools worldwide could cut CO2 emissions by about 3.5 million tons by 2050—the equivalent of half the United States’ current emissions. The headline implies that if U.S. businesses boosted telecommuting, virtual meetings and the like, we’d cut our emissions in half—I only wish that were so.

Update, 4.04: Sustainable Life Media has changed the opening sentence of its piece in response to my comments. I have to add (as I should have the first time around), SLM has terrific editorial standards, and if they were less than pros, a slip like this wouldn’t be worth a mention.

The more analyses I read about how this or that technology won’t deliver the kind of energy (or whatever) we need, or can’t deliver enough of it, the more I think the primary challenge we face in pursuing sustainability is not technology—it’s how we think about solutions. (I’m not alone; there’s a recent book on the topic, The Power of Sustainable Thinking, by Bob Doppelt. If you’ve read it, please chime in.)

The negative conclusions of these analyses are often based on the assumption that we can’t—or won’t—change the way we do things. Because we don’t want to, or powerful interests don’t want us to, or it’s just not convenient. But, as venture capitalist Vinod Khosla points out in a recent interview, radical social change is hardly unprecedented (he cites the mobile phone, e-mail, and personal computers), “It just feels improbable before it happens.”

The upshot for communicators is, we need to make change seem possible as well as desirable. We need to make change seem exciting, fulfilling, status-enhancing—whatever it takes. (And yes, those are all emotional concepts, because our “rational” rejection of change often comes from an emotional fear of it, played upon by those with an interest in maintaining the status quo.) Not so long ago, a lot of people were chanting “Yes we can!” We need to keep chanting that—about more than a presidential race.

People in the trenches of remaking the way we live along more sustainable lines know that everything—transportation, community planning, energy sources, buildings—is related. (Thanks to Thinkshift client Joe Stagner, director of Sustainability and Energy Management at Stanford, for drumming this into my head.)

People who make policy have lagged behind in recognizing (and more importantly, acting) on this truth. It appears that might be changing, though. At CALSTART’s Target 2030: Solutions to Secure California’s Transportation and Energy Future conference earlier this month, John Barna, executive director of the California Transportation Commission (not normally thought of as a visionary agency), had this to say:

“The traditional thinking is, our goal is to build more, to allow more vehicle miles traveled. If we shift our thinking to person miles traveled, we’ll get to different solutions.” All the relevant state agencies, he said, “need to migrate to metrics and outcomes defined by actions and behaviors. It’s really about changing behavior. … We need to start talking about people and moving people, so transportation planners can start understanding it’s … about people. It’s not all about building. A measure of success is that the CTC could be renamed the California Sustainability Commission.”

Unfortunately, policy on the federal level still seems stuck in past—despite all the talk of change. California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols, just back from a trip to Washington, reported, “I heard from D.C. staff that they’re ready to go on climate change legislation and a new transportation bill, but they don’t think the two can be linked because it’s just too hard. It still looks as though air quality and climate change will be off in some small ghetto in the transportation bill.

“It’s too depressing to contemplate,” she said.

Indeed. Those of us who understand the importance of looking at the whole picture need to start pressing our representatives to do it.