Folks can do the exact same things for very different reasons.

In my four-town area, I’ve been among the organizers of a year-long “Challenge” to induce our neighbors to earn points for taking energy-saving actions, and to celebrate progress with prizes and a party every three months.

Our third party is tomorrow, and I have to say it’s has been hard to get people to stay in the Challenge and maintain their energy-saving habits. Imagine my excitement to learn how really well six towns in Kansas are doing with a similar program.

Kansas! That’s one of the most climate-skeptical parts of the country. Yet the wining community cut their town’s electricity use by an impressive 5.5%, and all of them made measurable gains.

So if the contest organizers couldn’t talk about Greenhouse Gas reduction, what did they use to motivate citizens to replace light bulbs, install set-back thermostats, make energy investments, and change some of their habits?

Thrift was high on the list, of course. Saving that much energy helped town and family budgets. And it was natural to emphasize that weatherization employs builders, manufacturing wind turbines can bring good jobs to town, and operating wind turbines can produce income for farmers while pushing up the price of their land.

Another reason was patriotism – boosting national security by reducing the amount of oil we import from not-always-so-friendly countries.

And communities where religious beliefs discouraging drastic actions to reduce energy use nevertheless feel the need to be good stewards of the world that God provided.

The Climate and Energy Project in central Kansas was designed locally to emphasize these incentives and stay out of the arena of climate politics. Sounds like a blueprint for designing other contests across the country – maybe even redesigning the one I’m working on.