“Let’s start with the fact that climate change is anthropogenic,” says psychologist Elke Weber in “Why Isn’t the Brain Green?” an article by Jon Gertner in the annual Earth Day issue of the NYT Magazine, which this year focuses on “The Green Mind.”
“That means it’s caused by human behavior,” Weber tells Gertner. “That’s not to say that engineering solutions aren’t important. But if it’s caused by human behavior, then the solution probably also lies in changing human behavior.”
Changing human behavior: There is a bold endeavor for you. And boldness is pretty much what the times demand.
Weber and her colleagues at Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) utilize decision sciences to explore how people respond to environmental risk, especially the uncertainties of a changing climate. It’s fascinating research, and it raises important questions.
What is the best way to go about changing (shaping, nudging, influencing) human behavior? What are the roles of institutions, incentives, and social norms? The decision sciences of Weber and her colleagues can help us to think about these topics – as can the political science of Elinor Ostrom, the social psychology of Jonathan Haidt and the community-based social marketing of Doug McKenzie-Mohr, among many others. If any conversation is worth having, this one is.
The Gist
Here is a summary, the key findings of Weber and her CRED colleagues, as reported by Gertner. (Quotes are Weber’s.):
- We have both analytical and sensing/physical systems for processing risk.
- We underestimate the danger of events that we have never experienced.
- We underestimate the danger of events that seem far away in time and place.
- We seem to have a “finite pool of worry.”
- We have a “single-action bias” for one-off solutions.
- We simultaneously hold both individual and social goals.
- “When we are reminded of the fact that we’re part of communities, then the community becomes sort of the decision-making unit.”
- Preferences aren’t fixed, but constructed on the spot in response to choices we face.
For comparison, psychologist Dan Gilbert’s Pop!Tech talk on why climate change fails to trigger alarms can be distilled like this:
- Climate change lacks a human face.
- Climate change does not violate moral sensibilities.
- Climate change is not perceived as an immediate threat.
- Climate change proceeds at a gradual rate.
The Dance of Agency and Leverage
One factor remains buried in the subtext of both Gertner’s article and Gilbert’s talk: agency. “Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world,” says the current Wikipedia entry. In other words: What actions can we take? Can we feel that they will make a difference? Actions that make a significant difference are ones that are designed to influence the actions of others. These interventions are often referred to as having leverage.
To recognize individual agency is to feel empowered, an emotion that marketers are good at activating. (“Just do it.”) For community-based social marketing, the goal is to engage your audience with a “call to action.” Calls to action can be personal (conferring agency) and/or influential (offering leverage). They can also be perceived as simple or difficult.
Simple calls to action run the danger of the “single-action bias” identified by Weber: If I just do this, I’m ok. Back in 1991, Earth Island Journal used a flip on the “50 simple things” cliché to address this bias with a list of “50 Difficult Things You Can Do To Save The Earth,” including: “Don’t have children” and “Travel by bus, never by air.”
Consider the often heard factoid that if everyone changed a light bulb, it would be the equivalent of taking a certain number of cars off the road. This is an example of a simple, personal action, one that can be amplified with leverage. The mistake is to perceive or communicate the call to action as: “Change a light bulb.” Really the call is: “Change a light bulb and undertake a dialog with your neighbors (or circle of influence) about changing theirs as well.” As Weber says, when personal actions are embedded in larger communities, “the community becomes sort of the decision-making unit.”
On Fit and Misfit
The topic of community reminds me of what ecologists sometimes call “the problem of fit,” that is, the relationship between the geographic scale of an ecological issue and the social or institutional scale of the community engaged with the issue. The intricacy of fit on the issue of climate change is that, while actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) fit a global scale – and necessitate action by a global community, actions to anticipate the effects of change (adaptation) are regional and local – and offer greater agency.
Here are a few notes on fit and misfit, when it comes to adaptation.
- In the New Republic blog (Jan. ‘09), Christina Larson related: “Until recently, discussing the notion of ‘adaptation’ to global warming was anathema to most mainstream environmentalists.”
- When discussing the topic of adaptation last fall, Thomas Joseph Doherty, editor of the new journal Ecopsychology, suggested to me that: “People have a hard time moving to an adaptation mindset because it’s perceived as a defeat.”
- At last week’s Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, geographer Suanne Moser, co-editor of 2007’s Creating a Climate for Change, wrote in her abstract that U.S. government discussion of climate adaptation in coastal regions borders on “taboo.”
- In a P&P perspective a couple of months ago, social scientists Lenore Newman and Ann Dale cited the exercise of agency at a community scale as a source of strength for the local food movement.
- In a report on the Sandpoint, Idaho, Transition initiative, which advocates community-scale relocalization in the face of peak oil and climate change, the reporter (in the same NYT Magazine issue on “The Green Mind”) compared Transition to Fourierism, a utopian movement of the 1800s.
- In a presentation last month, Jim Proctor, director of the environmental studies program at Lewis & Clark College, generalized the findings of his research on spiritual and environmental values as: “think dystopically globally, act utopically locally.”
From taboo to utopia, this list presents strongly contrasting ideas and emotions. What does that say about the green mind? Are there indications in the findings of Weber and her colleagues?
- We have both analytical and sensing/physical systems for processing risk.
- We simultaneously hold both individual and social goals.
- Preferences aren’t fixed, but constructed on the spot in response to choices we face.
Both/And
In the spirit of embracing contradictions and complexity, I suggest three conclusions.
- Climate change mitigation has a global fit, a need for institutions and incentives – such as a price on carbon and other greenhouse gases – to match a global ecological scale. Adaptations are regional and local. In many cases, agency is still most strongly expressed close to home, and adaptive measures offer multiple benefits. (See: “Climate Adaptation for Resilient Communities”)
- Behavioral influences come through countless means and interactions. Weber draws a distinction between engineering solutions and behavior change, yet, interpreted broadly, we might say that the engineering of urban planning and transportation infrastructure, for example, significantly shapes behavior as well.
- The Net offers opportunities to extend leverage beyond the geographic limitations of the past, changing the scale and pace at which agency can operate. The Transition relocalization initiative, for example, extends a global influence, on three continents. (More on leverage in: “Panarchy and Pace in the Big Back Loop“)
Back in the 1960s, psychologist Abraham Maslow framed basic questions about social psychology, published posthumously. He asked, “How good a society does human nature permit? How good a human nature does society permit? What is possible and feasible? What is not?” Social and human sciences are offering fresh insights on these questions. The answers are part of the human experiment.
