Behavior change, and beyond, for the environment

Putting the onus on individuals to stop climate change and environmental degradation is both ineffective and unfair. Behavior change is needed but for it to happen we need systemic changes.

Haneda International Airport (photo by Author)

We are told that to combat climate change and environmental degradation, we must make sacrifices. Activists urge us to stop driving and flying, stop eating meat and, first and foremost, cut down on energy use. We must change our behavior dramatically.

Behavior change is obviously very important and how we live our lives has a direct impact on the environment. Many positive changes have taken place over time. For example, littering has become socially unacceptable, especially in the advanced economies of Western Europe, Japan and North America. However, changing deep rooted behaviors can be difficult. In the words of psychologists in the health field, “habit strength will predict the likelihood of enactment of habitual behavior, and that strong habitual tendencies will tend to dominate over motivational tendencies.” This could be translated into environmental behavior also: While we may be motivated to stop climate warming, we have habits that are hard to break, especially those that make our lives comfortable. This pertains in particular to energy use. To quote the MacArthur Fellow Saul Griffith, “People want to see themselves in the solution, but not at the expense of sacrificing the things they love and the conveniences of modern life.” 

Then there are all the poor people in the world, both in the global South and the West, who cannot reasonably be expected to make sacrifices to their already meager lifestyles. One distinctive problem with relying on behavior change is that it doesn’t only apply to everyone in London and Los Angeles, Helsinki and Hamburg. It would be equally important for people everywhere, especially in the middle-income countries, from Chengdu and Chongqing to Brasilia and Bangalore.

During the pandemic, there was a feeling that maybe the calamity could teach us something. Something about our values, about what is important in life. For a short while, we realized that our priorities had been misplaced. Getting those new clothes or going on that vacation wasn’t the meaning of life. Sheltering in place, concerned about the health and wellbeing of our loved ones and ourselves, worried about our job security, we missed our friends and families and recognized some inner emptiness.

But that was a lifetime ago. The pandemic lasted too long and we got bored and tired of it all. The malls and restaurants opened again. Airplanes started to take off again. Some of us didn’t lose our jobs, after all, or figured out a way to survive without a regular paycheck. So it was party time—and shopping time—again! In the US, consumer spending increased by 12% in the second quarter of 2021. The greatest worry was no longer a virus, but bottlenecks in supply chains that prevented us from having everything we wanted as quickly and cheaply as we wanted it.

We know that agriculture and especially animal husbandry are major drivers of deforestation and climate change. Overall, meat consumption continues to increase and has declined because of lifestyle changes only in few countries in Western Europe, Canada and New Zealand. Other places where there’s been decline include those with severe social, economic or environmental constraints, like Lebanon and the Horn of Africa and Sahel, where meat is unaffordable. Mostly, when incomes rise, meat consumption also goes up. Is it even fair to ask people who have only recently afforded to add meat into their menus to now stop suddenly, when we in the rich countries have overindulged for ages?

Furthermore, even if everyone on the planet suddenly — and highly improbably — turned vegan, it wouldn’t stop climate from changing. Besides, some data suggest that the number of people identifying as vegan or vegetarian is stagnant or even somewhat declining. In the US, 4% of people say they are vegetarian while only 1% claims to be vegan (in the UK, 2% identify as vegan).

Energy is a critical factor. It is needed for all human endeavors: for construction, transportation, heating, cooling, manufacturing, food production. The Internet uses extraordinary amounts of energy, as do all appliances that we have at home and in our pockets. Cryptocurrencies are an extreme case, using as much energy as some countries. And AI is following in crypto’s environmental footsteps.

We’re not going to stop flying either. We should, of course, fly less than we are used to. In 2019, before the pandemic, there were 3 billion airline passengers in the world (naturally, many of them frequent fliers, yours truly included). That is an obscene number. The only way we can reduce it is by raising prices, to reflect the real costs, of unsubsidized fuel and internalized environmental costs. But then flying would again become the privilege of the wealthy, like it used to be. But it seems that it has become a human right for anyone that can scrape together a few dollars or euro for a discount ticket to crowd to an airport and fight over an ever-shrinking seat in a pressurized tube hurtling through the skies for a weekend of fun. A human right, just like the 4-dollar t-shirt and 12-dollar jeans produced by a brown woman near-blind by the age of 25 from bad lighting and toxic fumes.

Which brings me to environmental justice. Climate impacts — just like the impacts of the pandemic — hit first and hardest the least privileged among us. Those living in the developing countries with fewest resources and opportunities. The same people who crowd at the US southern border with Mexico or who try to find a passage to Europe from Africa and the Middle East. In the rich countries, too, the ones at the bottom of the social and economic pyramid are the hardest hit. There is no doubt that climate change and environmental degradation have a social justice dimension.

But addressing environmental justice is not going to stop the climate from changing, like some activists would have us believe. Even if we taxed the rich heavily, as we should (in a globalized world, this would require global coordination and concerted action by every country—good luck with that), there are still more than 2 billion people living in abject poverty in the world. Their number may have increased by as many as 150 million because of the pandemic. Lifting their incomes so that they can consume adequately for a dignified life must be a priority.

The British economist Kate Raworth has put forth the attractive model of doughnut economics, which places all humanity within an acceptable range in terms of standard of living. No-one is left in the doughnut hole, while no-one should be allowed to consume beyond the outer layer of the ring. But with 8 billion people, and counting, on the planet, this still puts huge strains on the environment, especially at current technological levels.

We all should think twice about our own consumption, minimize waste and act responsibly as citizens. But we can’t leave stopping climate change to individuals. That’s neither possible nor fair, when the system is stacked against us. Furthermore, we can’t expect poor people around the world to stop aspiring to a better life (even if some may consider such aspirations misguided) just because we in the North have overshot our own share of the common good.

Movements like Extinction Rebellion and Stop Oil Now! seem misguided, despite their good intentions. Their solutions would turn the clock back and doom humanity to a life of scarcity, close to nature, but without any of the comforts that we’re used to—or to which those without them aspire. This might have worked in the past but hardly with the current population levels on the planet. And in the words of the British data scientist, Hannah Ritchie, the “doomsayers are not interested in solutions … They often try to stand in the way of them.”

Some of their objections are of an ethical nature, as if taking technological solutions to climate change somehow absolved humanity from its sins. As if having a good life and consuming energy in themselves were a moral hazard, even if they didn’t result in environmental damage. Are we better people if we wash our hair with cold water? This type of logic appeals to the converted but risks alienating many others.

None of this means that behavior change is not important or could only take place in rich countries. The environmental NGO, Rare, has made significant efforts in studying behavior change for solving environmental problems and defining criteria for interventions based on evidence. A recent independent evaluation found that behavior change was critical to the majority of projects funded by the Global Environment Facility. The evaluation found that awareness raising and training were the most common strategies applied but that successful projects had to address the needs and motivations of multiple stakeholder groups and the barriers to changing behavior. People must see a need to change their behavior and the benefits that accrue from such change.

Morals aside, the bottom line is that behavior change, even if it were to happen globally and immediately (which is not likely), will not save the planet. Nor will the Nationally Determined Voluntary Contributions towards the Paris Agreement goals, even if all countries lived up to their promises (which they are unlikely to do). We do need a large-scale sustainability transition of which behavior change is an important part—but not only of individual citizens. Governments will have to play a major role, as they are the ones that currently subsidize environmentally destructive practices, from fossil fuels to forest-destroying agriculture. They can also nudge the behavior of both individual people and corporations through financial incentives and disincentives and policies that favor climate-friendly lifestyles. Still, it won’t be enough, and we will need more radical solutions based on science and technology lest we will soon fry with ever-increasing heatwaves or soak in rising floodwaters.