Insights: How to Change Peoples’ Minds - Part 2
Discussing activism and the art of changing minds with strategist and ocean advocate Linzi Hawkin, and climate campaigner Calum Macintyre.
“Making this podcast has taught me that changing our minds is something humans seem to find almost impossible - especially at this particular moment, with the algorithm seductively buttressing our own worldview with endless streams of subtly self-perpetuating content, making us all ever more resistant to logic, reason or challenge”.
And to think I wrote that paragraph before I’d even heard of Charlie Kirk.
But that extract from last week’s introduction (read the rest here) helps to explain why, for this new two-part Insights series I decided to speak to four people involved in what you might call ‘activism’ about the business of changing minds.
Among the questions I was interested in understanding, as you’ll know if you read last week’s instalment:
How DO you actually implement change on an issue you purport to care about?
Are we morally obliged to speak out on certain topics?
What drives them to dedicate their lives to their chosen causes?
And how do you go about getting people to engage in a way that involves more than just sharing something on Insta Stories?
Read Part 1 with Wave Wahines founder Yvette Curtis, and Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries (and POW UK founder) Sandy Trust, here.
Here’s Part 2 with climate campaigner Calum MacIntyre and strategist and ocean advocate Linzi Hawkin.
1. Calum Macintyre
How do you describe what you do?
I work with political mobilisation to challenge the entrenched power of the fossil fuel industry. I helped found the Norwegian civil disobedience campaign Folk Mot Fossilmakta. At the FIS World Ski Championships this winter, we convinced 50 athletes to sign a pact to call for an end to fossil fuel sponsorships in the sport.
I guess many would label me a ‘climate activist’ but I don't like being called that. Most of my work is the same as running a startup - brand building, raising money and organising work teams. Only a tiny portion of my time is spent doing protests, actions or going to court.
My day-to-day work involves mobilisation, and building the systems and infrastructure needed for that mobilisation; raising money, communication, coordinating volunteers; and running training with them on different skills needed for our campaigns.
How long have you been doing this?
I took a masters in Climate Change Management about 9 years ago. I’ve had a random mixture of jobs in the meantime, but I’ve been full time at political activism work for about 3 or 4 years now.
What inspired you to follow this path?
Growing up in Scotland and seeing the winters getting worse since I was 8 years old. In my late teens, I started to realise that the amazing things I experienced as a kid, like snowboarding from the door of my house, wouldn’t be possible anymore within my lifetime.
In the years since, I realised that climate change is about a lot more than snowboarding in Scotland. I think about the extreme injustice of the situation every single day: such as the fact that we in the global north, with our economic system that prioritises endless growth and ‘cheap’ fossil fuels, are condemning billions in the global south to enormous suffering due to the effects of extreme heat in the coming decades.
I also grew up in a politically engaged family who have been involved in land and environmental campaigning. As a child, I was able to see clearly that a small group of people can successfully go up against entrenched power. I think this has inspired me with some kind of political confidence.
Is it your full-time job?
Yes, but it’s a pretty fickle and uncertain ‘job’! I’m freelance, so I invoice the campaign to get paid, and supplement that income by working freelance as a writer, on film projects, public speaking, and also helping other campaigns with strategy.
We get most of our funding from public donations and philanthropic funds. But it’s hard to get money for the type of civil disobedience campaigns we carry out - especially in Norway.
So if there are less donations some months then I just can't send an invoice. Before this last year, I combined this work with a job building mountain bike trails to make it go around. I would work one week-long shift out in the forest, then on my week ‘off’ I would focus on campaigning.
I am lucky to have a family that is supportive of what I am doing. I think that the uncertain way that I live is only possible knowing that I’m not going to be out on the streets if the campaign doesn’t pull in enough donations for a few months.
I also have supportive friends. I’ve racked up a few thousand pounds in fines from protests in the last year and I managed to pay it off with a Crowdfunder in a few weeks.
“I believe that sacrifice is a part of the game. One of the sacrifices I have decided I will make is to forgo a steady and stable income in order to commit myself fully to this kind of work”.
What are you trying to achieve?
I want more people to understand the power of coordinated nonviolent civil resistance as a tool for making major political change.
“I have got fed up with so much of the focus from the outdoor industry in the last 20 years being on petition signing, letter writing, attending sustainability conferences, obsessing over our personal carbon footprints, or sharing a few things on Instagram”.
I am inspired by how major social change has happened before, when people met in meetings, listened to speeches, joined protests, got arrested and just really challenged massive entrenched powers.
In 2025, I believe that we need to do more. Not just when it comes to the climate crisis but with the degeneration of democracy in general - where billionaires can buy the American election, or the UK government can proscribe a peaceful direct action group as terrorists, simply because they are effective at challenging Israeli weapons manufacturers.
What is the most effective way of changing somebody’s mind?
By listening to them! I think so many of the problems we face today are because people don’t feel listened to. People need to learn how to ask someone what they think, rather than just shouting at them.
I recently sat down with a vice president of oil giant Equinor. I didn't shout at him about all the things I thought he was doing wrong, as many people might expect from a ‘climate activist’. We just had a chat, and I told him about the Equinor-sponsored events I was looking forward to disrupting. I think he was surprised that he could have a conversation with someone that he’d probably automatically assumed would shout in his face.
In the journey of changing somebody's mind, I think it's also so important to accept that sometimes we might be wrong. People appreciate the vulnerability of accepting criticism, and I think they’re then more likely to listen to your message.
How do you respond to the classic ‘You fly, so you’re a hypocrite, so who are you to try and get me to change my mind?’ whataboutery argument?
I ask them who started to use the idea of a ‘carbon footprint’ in their own marketing in 2004? British Petroleum!
Carbon footprint-shaming is just a classic divide-and-conquer tactic: make them all fight amongst themselves about how low their carbon footprint is and they won't have any energy left to organise and put pressure on the real culprits - well-funded corporations like BP who are pushing to expand their fossil fuel businesses because it provides returns to their shareholders.
Don't get me wrong; when I first started I also thought I needed to stop flying, eating meat and buy everything second hand in order to have legitimacy. But I quickly learned that you can go live in a cave if you want ,but it is going to do absolutely nothing to put pressure on fossil fuel companies!
They feel pressure through political campaigning - by persuading our government that they sell a dangerous product that needs to be regulated.
Do you think people are morally obliged to speak out on certain topics?
I think this topic is made a lot harder by the fact that every single one of us now has a social media platform from which to spout whatever views we want.
I don't necessarily think we are morally obliged. I think this is a problem that plagues progressive movements these days: that unless someone thinks this, or speaks out on certain things, their opinion has no value. Making out that speaking out against injustice puts you on the right side of history is a persuasive argument. I’m just not as sure it’s as simple as that.
That said, I think if you have a big platform then you have more of a duty to understand the power of that platform. Like Greta Thunberg said in a recent instagram post: “You who have platforms have the immense privilege of setting the narrative, people look up to you and you therefore have a huge responsibility of pushing the limits of what is considered ‘mainstream’”.
I think there are certain people who have more responsibility to speak out than others. Scientists working for fossil fuel companies in the 1970s, for example. Their research showed the danger of their product. I find it morally outrageous that as a group none of them spoke up about how the fossil fuel companies were burying this information.
I also find it hard to accept when people say “Well, I'm not political”. This usually just enables the status quo to continue, and comes from a place of privilege.
Everything is political. It's just that some people feel the weight of certain political decisions more than others.
Ultimately, it's more important to find out how we can inspire political confidence in people that they do have power as an individual. I think many people often just don't believe there's any point in speaking out, so they keep silent.
What's the thing you worry about most when it comes to your work?
That not enough people understand the situation that the world is in. I feel like my climate activism is turning more these days into democracy activism. I am shocked at how few people seem to understand how serious the clampdown on protest is.
I have friends sitting in prison in England right now simply for thinking about carrying out a non-violent protest. If you’d said this would be the case 10 years ago, people would have laughed at you.
The stakes here are incredibly high, and this will continue until we realise that our right to protest has been curtailed by state repression, by which point it will be too late. I believe we’re seeing this in the USA already, where there is widespread silence about the fact that armed ICE gangs are plucking migrants off the streets and imprisoning them.
Uncomfortably, Martin Niemöller’s ‘First They Came For’ poem suddenly looks incredibly prescient once again. Quite soon, people may realise that because they have not spoken up about repression against another targeted group - there will be no one left to defend them when they are the ones being persecuted.
What’s your proudest achievement?
When people who have not been involved in political campaigning get involved and are keen to learn more and commit themselves to working alongside others to create change. I think it's important that we are not always chasing the next campaign win. It is delusional that people think at some point we are just going to somehow ‘win’ and stop the climate crisis. For me this is a lifelong project of resistance against massively entrenched powers, and we should feel totally comfortable sowing the seeds of trees that we will never stand under ourselves.
What’s your most disappointing experience?
When people disregard criticism or critique. In my experience, criticism is most often coming from a very good place. I think it's an incredibly important part of the work we are all doing.
In the outdoors world especially, it feels like it is often just not allowed to critique what other people are doing. We just need to pat each other on the back at the next panel debate.
I think it's crucial that, if we are to build movements capable of having genuine political power, we are capable ourselves of listening to and trying our best to understand criticism and where it comes from.
What's your advice for anybody hoping to do what you do?
Don’t be scared to say something that goes against the grain. You will quickly realise that a lot of other people probably think the same anyway.
Go outside! I am grateful that I have the freedom to go outside in order to keep myself grounded and stop myself from burning out. I think taking a step back is a really important part of this work.
Listen to criticism. I think learning how to do this is such an important skill and something that will enable you to learn and grow.
What have you learned?
“That being a member of the ‘outdoor community’ does not automatically make someone care about nature or the climate. I am constantly baffled by how few of my friends - who have spent their lives being out in nature - are actually willing to do anything to protect it”.
That creating change requires some level of sacrifice if you want to be effective. It's part of the game and we will be a lot more effective when more people begin to understand this.
You have to enjoy this work! I think if we are going to be effective we need to create campaigns which people genuinely want to be a part of.
2. Linzi Hawkin
How do you describe what you do?
I’m the co-founder of an ocean-focused agency called Protect Blue. We do two things - we work with NGOs, brands, governments and local communities to support their work in ocean conservation with strategy, storytelling, education and expeditions.
And we work directly with ocean activists and advocates to support them in their work, and make sure they don’t burn out. We do this a few different ways: through in-person and digital programmes; co-working houses, and lots of workshops and activations.
How long have you been doing this?
Eight years
What inspired you to follow this path?
I’ve always worked at the intersection of nature, creativity and sustainability. Over the years, the question that has kept driving me has been ‘How can I be most useful in this space?’
Honestly, so much of what we do on the grassroots side is stuff that I was looking for when I first started out - good tools, practical advice, and community.
Is it your full-time job?
Ha. More than full time, yes.
What are you trying to you achieve?
Right now, in the ocean space, we’re seeing momentum and investment grow, but often focused on tech solutions, ocean start-ups etc.
We’re so fixated on the projects that we often forget about the people. There’s a lack of support and care for the epic humans working behind the scenes.
We’re trying to show up in this gap by supporting the amazing grassroots folk who are on the front line of ocean conservation. These small orgs don’t have the money to hire an agency or have access to the same tools as the bigger organisations.
Running our business with two core pathways - an agency that serves the bigger orgs, and a blue campus that serves the grassroots community - means we have a foot in both worlds.
We’re staying in practitioner mode, and we’re able to share that knowledge in a way that's accessible and meaningful for those who are often overlooked or under-resourced.
What is the most effective way of changing somebody’s mind?
Start by listening, and asking really good questions. Be curious about how they see and experience the world, so that what you’re saying makes sense to them.
Find some common ground - sometimes that means going back to absolute basics, like, ‘We both agree we want to breathe clean air, right?’
How do you respond to the classic ‘You fly, so you’re a hypocrite, so who are you to try and get me to change my mind?’ whataboutery argument?
Ha. Well, thankfully I think we’re moving past that. But I do like the not-so-well-known concept of your environmental ‘handprint’. It’s a measure of all the positive stuff you’re doing for the planet, and it a useful way to look at it.
Do you think people are morally obliged to speak out on certain topics?
Broadly speaking, I think if you’re a white, privileged human being, then yes.
“I’m constantly amazed by how disengaged most folk are. There’s a term attributed to a Roman poet, living in the late first and early second century, ‘bread and circuses’. It basically means you can keep the masses quiet if you give them enough sustenance and entertainment to distract them from what’s actually happening”.
I think we’re living in an age where that has become the norm - and so many people are so caught up in a superficial world that they genuinely don’t know what’s happening to our planet.
Also, I really don’t count re-posting something on social media as activism or using your voice 🙈
What's the thing you worry about most when it comes to your work?
TI think it’s what we’re striving hardest to resolve - the fact that so many small grassroots orgs are doing incredible work, but don’t end up having the impact they want because they’re lacking the tools and because they’re burning out.
So we approach it with two pillars - Strategy & Stoke.
From a strategy side, we often meet incredible people running rad projects who are pouring everything they have into them, but are missing some key skills that could change everything.
Some examples - orgs who aren’t measuring their impact properly; groups who put 100% of their revenue back into the project and keep expecting everyone to work for free (hello burnout!); grassroots organisations who haven’t built an impact strategy and are struggling to get funding; projects that haven’t given their branding and comms a second thought.
And from a stoke side, we do our best to help people stay connected to nature, to take good care of themselves (and their teams,) and to follow the advice of Edward Abbey:
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; you will outlive the bastards.”
What’s your proudest achievement?
Damn! That’s a hard one. We took part in the UN Ocean Conference this summer, and I’m pretty proud of the fact that we basically kidnapped 150 people over the course of the week and got them in the ocean.
But it’s probably the decision I made two years ago to create the Wavemaker program (which I created with two dear friends Easkey Britton and Carolina Pereira) truly ocean-focused, and make every spot a scholarship.
For me, it was the moment when I felt like we'd truly landed on what we needed to be doing in the space, when we were finally having the most impact for the group of humans we most want to serve.
It was a somewhat crazy idea from a business sense - what if we just pay for it all ourselves? I still feel like we’re the underdogs supporting the underdogs, but I trust that it was and still is the right thing to do.
What’s your most disappointing experience?
I’m still disappointed by how much we over-index visibility and shiny stories. I sat in a meeting recently with our local tourism department, surrounded by photos of our beautiful, clean beaches, and listened as they made excuses for not committing to any meaningful sustainability initiatives or supporting the local people doing the actual work.
“I’m so done with corporations thinking that showing up at a beach clean and printing t-shirts with their logos on them for everyone to wear at said beach clean actually has a positive impact. It’s bullshit”.
What's your advice for anybody hoping to do what you do?
Ask yourself where you can be most useful. Find your lane and learn what impact really means. Be humble and be kind.
What have you learned?
Building self-efficacy, the belief that you can take action and make a difference, is one of the most valuable things you can cultivate. It doesn’t just change how you show up; it transforms what you believe is possible. And if you match that with good tools and a solid community, you’re on your way to making a dent in something you care deeply about.
What did you think of this piece? And when was the last time you changed your mind?!
This another goody. Love Linzi's last bit of advice. "Ask yourself where you can be most useful. Find your lane and learn what impact really means. Be humble and be kind."
A great piece. Knowing where i fit best into activism seems like a constant anxiety developing process.
On a slightly different note. This emergence magazine podcast really helped me think about the Patagonia and whether they should determine courses of action. It talks about right story and wrong story.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6M4XrN4ycz7u94CqQ6D2Ne?si=7wTx_R1UTKu2Bqqe4ZSdUg
I really enjoyed it.