https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/why-we-cant-shake-our-carbon-emitting-habits-even-as-the-world-burns/
Why we can’t shake our carbon-emitting habits, even as the world burns
If we know the situation is dire, why is it so hard to change our
habits? Oh, 37 different reasons.
by Anthony A. Davis
Jul 22, 2019
Given the growing awareness of the climate catastrophe speeding toward
us, one might think humanity might be doing more to curb our
carbon-emitting behaviours. But even for the most worried, a host of
latent psychological factors can paralyze us, turning people into
climate couch potatoes.
There are, in fact, 37 specific mental barriers that limit our ability
to react to climate change, according to University of Victoria
psychology professor Robert Gifford. These barriers—Gifford calls them
“dragons”—fall into seven broad categories: limited cognition,
ideologies, comparison with others, sunk costs, discredence, perceived
risks and limited behaviour. When he published a 2011 article in
American Psychologist that identified the first 29 of these dragons, the
article went viral and became the publication’s most-read piece in its
history.
Among the many specific barriers identified by Gifford are outright
denial (for example, take Donald Trump, who tweeted climate change is a
Chinese hoax); tokenism (i.e., I recycle, so I’m doing my bit) and
technosalvation, or the belief we will build machines to save us so we
can all just keep doing what we’re doing.
Then there’s the limit of our own “ancient brains.” Our minds, explains
Gifford, have evolved little since humans developed agriculture about
12,000 years ago. We are thus hard-wired to respond to immediate,
visible dangers rather than future, less obvious ones. That inherent
trait makes it difficult for us to grasp and deal with the more distant,
complex and somewhat abstract nature of global warming.
Gifford now uses his research to help governments and environmental
organizations shape more effective programs to fight climate change.
This past June, for example, Gifford met with a number of deputy and
assistant deputy ministers with Environment and Climate Change Canada in
Ottawa.
“There have been some well-intentioned policies and interventions in the
past that simply didn’t work very well,” opines Gifford, explaining that
such campaigns often don’t factor in the mental barriers to action in
the first place, and therefore don’t create effective messaging to
overcome them.
He recalls the $45-million flop that was the One-Tonne Challenge
program, launched by the Canadian federal government under the Liberals
in 2004. Using comedian Rick Mercer in print and television advertising,
the campaign encouraged Canadians to reduce their emissions by one tonne
each year by such actions as taking public transit more, idling vehicles
less and sealing homes with weather stripping.
While the government’s own evaluation of the program found it raised
some awareness, says Gifford, the program generated little actual
response. “Many people did not change their behaviour because they said
they lacked information about how to reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions,” he says, a clear example of the “Lack of Knowledge” dragon
genus. They also perceived the challenge as too inconvenient or
time-consuming (a species of Gifford’s “Conflicting Goals and
Aspirations” dragon); they believed that their own participation would
not make a difference to climate change (another dragon); and, adds
Gifford, “they believe that they are already doing enough—a species of
my ‘Tokenism’ dragon genus.”
If Canadians are to help fight the climate crisis by changing their own
lifestyles, knowing how to spot their own dragons is the first step to
slaying them. At the University of British Columbia, there’s a class for
that. In early June, Kim Biel and his long-time partner Denise Panchysyn
sat in a UBC lecture room in Vancouver to take in a one-week extended
learning course titled “Climate Change: Understanding and Overcoming
Barriers to Action.” Taught by Seth Wynes, a Ph.D. candidate in the
department of geography at the University of British Columbia, the
course—part of UBC’s Ageless Pursuits continuing education program, and
based on his own research—probed those mental barriers preventing many
of us from tackling the issue.
Biel, 63, and Panchysyn, 66, have both contended with one of Gifford’s
dragons—environmental numbness. The retired couple, well-read on global
warming, are deeply concerned about its impact on the Earth. “Kim even
went to see Anthropocene,” says Panchysyn, referring to the visually
stunning, though disturbing, Canadian-made documentary depicting
mankind’s re-engineering of Earth. “I wouldn’t go, though,” she adds.
She veers away from television shows about climate change: “It’s just
too depressing.”
According to Gifford’s findings, constant bombardment of news and
information about the threats posed by climate change can ironically
overwhelm a person’s impetus to do their bit to combat it. “We have both
experienced some overload that results in paralysis in terms of, how do
we act on this?” confesses Biel. Importantly for Biel and Panchysyn,
Wynes’s class also suggested the most effective ways people can reduce
their carbon footprints.
A former high school science teacher, Wynes began his research on
climate change mitigation after experiencing difficulty answering
students’ questions about the most effective ways to help combat it.
These are tricky questions, says Wynes. “Some of [the solutions] involve
sacrifices,” he explains. “They involve interactions with the rest of
society . . . What are the cultural cues you get about being a
vegetarian? How is eating meat related to perceptions about masculinity?
There is so much intertwined in these questions that often make it
difficult to adopt actions that could save the climate.”
In his own research, Wynes—who cited Gifford’s findings in class—found
evidence of a “climate mitigation gap,” where education and government
recommendations often miss the most effective actions Canadians and
others can take.
For instance, he says, few governments say the most effective ways to
reduce carbon footprints include having one less child, ceasing air
travel, living car-free and eating a plant-based diet. Instead, much of
the educational and government literature focuses on less effective
measures, such as hanging clothes out to dry, or installing more
efficient LED lighting in homes.
The reason for that, Wynes suggests, is a “foot-in-the-door” strategy.
“Communicators emphasize easy-to-perform actions that get people started
on environmental lifestyles, and hope that people adopt more important
actions later. Unfortunately, with the scale of the climate problem, we
don’t have time to focus on small changes anymore.”
Wynes’s research focuses on such questions as, “How do we motivate
people to change?” We have, in fact, managed to motivate past
improvements in areas strongly resistant to change; in Canada, we
reduced the number of smokers, normalized the use of seat belts and made
dumping garbage on roadsides and parklands abhorrent to all but a small
percentage of reprobates. That’s why Canada’s deputy ministers handling
environmental files wanted to consult Gifford to craft effective
policies that a large segment of the population would actually be
willing to implement. And, says Gifford, it’s why organizations like
Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have been increasingly leveraging
the related expertise of psychologists to mould their campaigns and
programs. It’s also important, adds Gifford, “that we test those
policies and interventions as they are going along to make sure they are
effective and remain acceptable.”
One troubling finding in Wynes’s research is how misinformed people are
when they engage in what psychologists call “moral licensing.” “We do
this with dieting,” says Wynes, explaining the term. “We say, ‘I went
for a jog, now I can eat cake.’ Some people do this with green
behaviours: ‘I have recycled for a year, so therefore I can go on a
vacation to Cuba.’ ”
Wynes has conducted as-yet unpublished research on how well people
understand their own carbon footprints. For instance, how long would a
person need to forgo eating foods packaged in plastics in order to
offset the greenhouse-gas impact of eating meat? What he discovered is
that “people are pretty terrible at making those trade-offs. Probably
worse than they are about making similar decisions about their diets,
for example.”
One area Wynes focused on was air travel, noting that travel is a
particularly hard habit to rewire in people. The morning Wynes’s course
started, Panchysyn was planning to book a flight from Vancouver to
Calgary. She pondered, though, whether a train trip might be more
environmentally friendly. It is significantly better, she learned in
Wynes’s class. According to the website EcoPassenger—which calculates
the CO₂ output of various trips by train, plane or automobile—a trip by
train from Paris to Berlin, for instance, emits 26.1 kg of CO₂. The same
trip by plane produces about 142.1 kg, roughly five times more. Once
skeptical of buying carbon offsets to counter the impact of their travel
bug, the couple are now considering them. “We wish that the signposts on
how to act on these things were more obvious,” says Biel.
Laurie Gould, 71, a former teacher, also attended Wynes’s climate change
course. “I have always been very concerned about minimizing my footprint
on Earth. I went to the class because I felt what I was doing was
minimal,” says Gould. Even with the advice of her daughter, a marine
biologist, Gould still felt uncertain about how to best do her part for
a healthier planet. “I had done the obvious things . . . I don’t use wax
paper. I don’t use paper towels. I try to find environmentally friendly
soaps. But I was stymied about my car.”
That car is her much-loved 2002 Honda Accord. Was it better for the
planet if she traded it in for an electric or hybrid vehicle? The
answer, she discovered in class and verified with her own research
afterwards, is yes. She’s now planning to visit dealerships in Vancouver
to test-drive electric and hybrid vehicles. “The incentives that the
federal and B.C. government are offering certainly make the purchase
more affordable right now,” said Gould in an email a few days after the
course ended.
Since the course, she’s been busy busting a few more dragons. On the
last day of class she had a GIC come due, and on the same day put that
money into a sustainable fossil-fuel-free investment fund. And after
learning from Wynes about the massive amount of greenhouse gases emitted
by the beef industry, “last night I cooked up the last pound of ground
beef in my freezer and plan to never cook beef again,” says Gould.
“That will be hard,” she says, “because my two grandsons love my
meatballs. So I’m hoping to find a good recipe for ground turkey or
chicken meatballs that they will like. I recognize that I’m able to do
these things because I live a privileged, middle-class Canadian life.
But I also realize that it is my comfortable kind of lifestyle that is
responsible for much of the CO₂ emissions that are destroying our
atmosphere.”
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