Our principles

Approach
Target
Storytelling
Money
Transparency
Pragmatism

Approach

The See Through Network’s ‘Transparent Trojan Horse’ methodology is based on sophisticated storytelling. Stories are our oldest, and most valuable, currency.

The Network tells the same story – take effective action for a sustainable future – in different registers and tones, tailored to different audiences. The Network’s ‘C-Bomb Rating’ measures how triggering topics like ‘carbon’ are addressed. This provides data-rich responses to fine-tune messaging.

Target

The Network targets unwilling inactivists, the large and growing majority who accept the science and reality of human-induced climate change but feel powerless to do anything about it. The goal is to nudge them into become effective activists.

The Network ignores ineffective activists, who among other things waste time arguing with willing inactivists who are equally unlikely to change their behaviour.

Storytelling

Once upon a time, some folk kept burning black stuff even when they knew it made them drown, burn and shrivel. They marched towards an abyss, bound together by rope. Children cried ‘Listen to the experts!’ but their ‘petro-chemical addiction’ made them believe they were heroes of their own story.

A rag-tag team of transparent tricksters started telling tales that made them heroes of different stories, that led away from the chasm.

Would you like to join them?

Money

Putting profit before planet drives rising emissions. Money creates false incentives, corrupting missions, polluting the environment. The See Through Network is yet to need money. Being zero-budget insulates its pro bono collaborators from money’s contamination and distraction, and makes its story unique.

Impact isn’t measured in dollars raised, videos clicked or petitions signed, but in the metric used by climate scientists – tonnes of CO2 equivalent reduced or sequestered. If you can’t buy integrity, why should you be able to sell it?

Transparency

Commerce demands information asymmetry. Whatever the climate question, transparency tends to be the answer. The See Through Network is radically transparent. Unlike commercial entities, from Big Oil to carbon traders and NGOs, the Network’s data is public by default.

The Network explains its technical methodologies, and behavioural manipulations in forensic detail on its website and in its free weekly newsletter.

Pragmatism

The See Through Network focuses on influencing government regulation rather than individual behavioural change per se. Science-based laws backed by meaningful enforcement are big, well-oiled, robust levers. Voluntary levers are small, sticky and fragile.

The challenge is no longer ‘raising awareness’, but converting awareness into measurable impact. The Network is directed by crossing the river by feeling for the stones towards a sustainable future, not by ideology. Actions, not words.

Transparent Trojan Horseplay

The See Through approach combines age-old, what-happens-next storytelling with behavioural psychology, nudge theory, and rigorous methodology. The Network’s four arms follow shared taxonomies that clear the path from climate inaction to effective climate action.

Engagement journey.
Target audience.
C-bomb rating.

The Engagement Journey

From an entire arm to an individual article, event, playlist, video or podcast, all Network content is tailored for one of four stages in the journey from climate inactivity to effective climate action:

  1. Tempted

    From a standing start, content breaks through the noise and attracts attention.

    C-bomb rating 1
  2. Intrigued

    Initial attention is converted into interest by inducing a climate-related question about What happens next?

    C-bomb rating 2
  3. Engaged

    Answering the interest in a way that provokes a desire to take action.

    C-bomb rating 3
  4. Active

    The participant has become an effective activist, taking an action that measurably reduces carbon.

    C-bomb rating 4

Target Audience

When considering its ‘target audience’, the Network’s key metrics are:

  • Their activism status: Inactive → Active
  • The efficacy of their activism: Ineffective → Effective
  • Their motivation: Unwilling → Willing
  1. Target audience: Unwilling inactivists 89%
  2. Effective activists 0.035%
  3. Ineffective activists ~1%
  4. Willing inactivists 10%
Pie chart representing the four proportions cited above. The first and largest is labelled with ‘Target audience: unwilling inactivists’.

Explore the rationale in Our Target Audience: How To Win Friends And Measurably Reduce Carbon.

C-Bomb Rating

From an entire arm to an individual content item, the Network assigns a rating of 1 to 4 depending on how often it drops the ‘C-bomb’. ‘C-bomb’ refers to ‘climate’ or ‘carbon’ and similar trigger words like ’sustainable’, ‘green’, ‘eco’ or ‘environmental’.

  1. Rating 1: never.
  2. Rating 2: barely.
  3. Rating 3: sometimes.
  4. Rating 4: always.

Read How To Drop The (Climate/Carbon) C-Bomb Effectively: 4 Distributions.

Arms Around the World

Four arms form the global See Through Network. Each arm embraces different stages in the journey from inaction to effective climate action. Each arm links with the others to nudge unwilling inactivists towards becoming effective activists:

See Through Together: Social media video and audio content

See Through Games: Real-world and online games

See Through News: Journalism, education and outreach

See Through Carbon: Free, open-source, transparent carbon reporting ecosystem

See Through Together

Engagement journey

  • Tempted
  • Intrigued

See Through Together is the attention-attracting arm of the See Through Network. See Through Together’s team of media professionals creates original video and audio content for distribution on social media platforms and Network websites.

See Through Together videos and podcasts have a broad appeal with ‘something for everyone’. They offer fresh takes on familiar genres and topics: podcasts, property shows, documentaries, speeches, music concerts or how-to videos on woodland craft. See Through Together content is crafted to engage audiences looking for something familiar but distinctive.

See Through Together’s global team of filmmakers, musicians, artists, advertisers, podcasters and digital marketers work for free to create entertaining, original content with an unambiguously human touch. On zero budget.

Untainted by AI, See Through Together content nudges people to start a journey that ends in carbon drawdown.

See Through Games

Engagement journey

  • Tempted
  • Intrigued
  • Engaged
  • Active

See Through Games creates live and online games inducing players to have fun while they think, learn and act on the climate crisis. Three interlocking games guide players from casual entertainment to measurable emissions actions, by inducing them to Think, Learn and Act.

The Think Game asks players, under time pressure, to rate the green credentials of various celebrities, brands, companies and countries. There are no right or wrong answers, but it leaves players wanting to know what they ‘should’ have said.

The Learn Game does have right and wrong answers. Teammates collaborate to guess the most effective ways to reduce emissions. The more confident the player, the more shocked they are at their ignorance.

The Act Game empowers players to make a measurable difference by challenging our leaders to implement and enforce specific emissions-reducing regulations, and then hold them to account.

See Through News

Engagement journey

  • Intrigued
  • Engaged

See Through News is the See Through Network’s journalism, education and outreach arm. Its global team of volunteer storytellers, researchers and educators targets Unwilling Inactivists. These are those of us who accept the science and reality of human-induced climate change, but who feel powerless to do anything about it.

Unwilling Inactivists are the 80-89%, and rising, of 8.2 billion humans who want their governments to do more to combat the climate crisis.

See Through News deploys a wide range of content designed to engage and entertain, in order to inform, across a wide range of registers, cultures and languages.

From videos to community projects, free school resources to podcasts and newsletters, See Through News moves ordinary people from intrigued to engaged, ready to become active, and take action that will measurably reduce carbon.

See Through Carbon

Engagement journey

  • Engaged
  • Active

See Through Carbon is the See Through Network’s hard science arm. It barters free carbon footprint calculations and emissions reduction advice in return for making the data public.

Decades of ‘voluntary reporting’ have created a carbon reporting culture driven by PR and profit rather than science and transparency. Branded methodologies hidden in IP black boxes, and data hidden behind paywalls, have enabled a profitable but ineffective carbon trading industry. Its trillion-dollar growth has coincided with rising emissions.

Inaccurate, costly, opaque and proprietary ‘Carbon Reporting 1.0’ is no longer viable. Government regulation, driven by Brussels and Beijing, is finally introducing ‘compliance reporting’. Businesses no longer set their own rules. Non-compliance incurs financial penalties.

See Through Carbon facilitates ‘Carbon Reporting 2.0’ by providing an accurate, free, open-source carbon reporting ecosystem. Both methodology and data are transparent by default.

As big business regulation becomes more stringent, See Through Carbon’s transparency incentivises emissions reduction. See Through Carbon’s approach solves the ‘SME paradox’. It facilitates auditable reporting for big business, for whom accurate emissions reporting is a legal requirement. It allows big business’s Scope 3 to be calculated from accurate data, not AI estimates. The data is derived from the small businesses in their supply chain who are not yet required to report their emissions.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Emissions are still rising, but the vast majority of us want our leaders to do more to cut them. We resist change, but are all wired up differently. To move unwilling inactivists towards carbon-cutting action, the See Through Network tells the same stories many different ways:

See Through Network Newsletter.
See Through Prodcasts.
Concert in the Key of C.
Speaking of…
Fabulous Fables
Ben Law’s Woodland Year.
The Think, Learn, Act games.
GRIT: Global Reporter Intensive Training.

See Through Network Newsletter

Every Sunday since 2021, the See Through Network Newsletter has published an original article related to climate activism. Here are two examples from its more than 200 editions.

Subscribe

Dr Dryden and the missing plankton: science, media and climate activism

A densely packed arrangement of plankton on a black background with a circular blank area in the centre.

What a Twitter-spat about the dark art of plankton-counting tells us about science communication and effective climate action.

An investigative deep dive into a citizen science project that was first unreported, then misreported, and finally – with this article – fully explained.

Part 1: What’s Wrong With Crying Wolf

The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Chicken Little. The Timid Hare and the Flight of the Beasts.

These kinds of tales are so common across time and culture, folklorists assign them their own category. ‘Aarne–Thompson–Uther Type 20C’ stories are cautionary tales that make light of paranoia and mass hysteria

Read on See Through News

Is the music business cynically greenwashing or obtusely naive?

The 4 band members of Coldplay standing in a line looking at the camera with a garduated green background behind them. The image has a duotone green cast.

Guest article by George Hinchliffe, founder of music industry-defying legends The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, who’ve had standing ovations from sell-out crowds at Carnegie Hall, The Royal Albert Hall and Sydney Opera House ‘with only hand luggage’.

George explains how he came to realise his band’s carbon footprint was all about the audience emissions, not the band’s luggage allowance, and why the music industry needs to stop greenwashing and start leading. George is a multitasking See Through Network contributor, also being a Concert in the Key of C pioneer, See Through Together property show composer, and See Through Carbon Live Music Pilot lead…

Read on See Through News

See Through Prodcasts

The Truth Lies in Bedtime Stories: extraordinary tales that are entirely true, largely

These tales are adult bedtime stories, each episode ending on a cliffhanger that makes you fight sleep to find out what happens next. Narrative edges have been smoothed, but not where you think. The final episode challenges the listener to tell the truth from the lies, and more importantly, to question when and why we choose to care which is which.

Listen to the series 7 omnibus of Marcus and Jemima on YouTube

The text ‘Marcus and Jemima: how I deal with people at parties who assume I have children’ overlaid on a party scene where two out of cous men stand chatting in thebackground and a collection of cocktails with straws in glasses is in the foreground.

Dirty Secrets: extraordinary tales that are entirely true, full stop

100% factual reportage, Dirty Secrets are narrated in the same episodic, cliffhanger style as The Truth Lies, and also defy belief. They’re on topics the mainstream media may report on, but Dirty Secrets are all original investigations, exposing hidden stories that have been deliberately obscured in filthy fog.

Listen to the series 1 omnibus of AI’s Dirty Secret on YouTube

The text‘AI’s Dirty Secret, or, how to spend half a million dollars on supercomputing’ overlaid on a photo of a monkey sitting in a tree staring at the moon through clouds.

Concert in the Key of C

Concert in the Key of C is See Through Together’s music playlist.

  • In UK Rock God Meets Chinese Axe Goddess, British ukulele legend George Hinchliffe swaps instruments with Mme. Wu, liuqin maestra at the Shanghai Conservatoire. Sustainable futures will need to cross cultural and language divides.
Watch ‘UK Rock God Meets Chinese Axe Goddess’. (George Hinchliffe seated next to Mme. Wu in her studio. George holds a liuqin, Mme. Wu holds a ukulele. They are laughing as they play.)

Speaking of… Climate and Language

See Through Network’s ‘transparent Trojan Horse’ methodology works anywhere you have anyone’s attention.

  • Speaking of… Climate and Language demonstrates how critical climate information can be smuggled into a 15-minute Languages Day speech for a tough crowd – 1,000 British teenagers at 8.30am.
Watch ‘Speaking of… Climate and Language’. (Robert Stern stands, waving his arms at the students assembled in front of him. Alongside him on stage some of the teaching staff are laughing in enjoyment.)

Fabulous Fables

A good test of a powerful idea is whether you can explain it to a child. Fabulous Fables tell key climate action concepts in terms a child can grasp in text, video and audio, aimed at smart kids and dim adults.

The Best Story: a concise history of trade is one such fable. It alludes to how the See Through Network barters stories and eyeballs for climate action without needing money.

Watch ‘The Best Story: a concise history of trade’. Text in a blackletter font on a parchment background reads ‘From trade to money to carbon credits to civilisation to The Best Story’.

Ben Law’s Woodland Year

Exclusive, unique, fly-on-the-bark exclusive access to a year in the life of Britain's ‘greatest living woodsman’, Ben Law, as he passes his hard-won skills to two apprentices. See Through Together viewers are in the woods with Ben, whose all-time favourite episode of the architectural series Grand Designs made sustainability an aspiration, not a sacrifice.

Watch ‘Episode 1: This Off-Grid Dream Is Real!’ (Ben Law, seated, talking to camera in front of his self-built house. He wears a brown flat cap and green short-sleeve shirt.)

The Think, Learn Act Games

See Through Games are three interconnected games that entertain, inform and inspire players from climate inaction to action.

Watch Chris from Appleby play The Think Game. (Chris is smiling and wearing headphones while seated in front of a See Through News backdrop.)

Global Reporter Intensive Training (GRIT)

A free video storytelling resource developed by the See Through News team of journalist and filmmakers experts. Trialled on remotely trained 10-15-year-olds at HIV orphanage schools in the Nairobi slum area of Mathare. Two of their videos on their local solutions for Sustainable Development Goals won awards at an international competition.

Watch ‘Rainwater Harvesting’ at Angel’s School, Nairobi. (A young student in school uniform stands talking to a middle-aged resident in front of a wall.)

Metrics That Don’t Matter

These numbers reduce no carbon, but they do help us reach people who can. We currently have:

1 million+ Facebook group members
300k+ YouTube views
$500k+ in-kind donations
1,000s global participants
100s global activists

The number that does matter, that needs to go down is the one that we’re focused on: tonnes of CO2e emitted.

Help us help to make this happen… Join us