The Climate Awareness-Action Gap

The biggest barrier to us acting on climate change on an individual level is not awareness, but our values and priorities. A study from 2005 concluded that although 92% of Americans is aware the issue, yet in the 14 years since we have barely moved the needle significantly neither politically nor culturally. Many well-meaning groups try to make awareness and outreach their goal to tackle climate change, which unfortunately does not address the core underlying issue.

With the recent IPCC report concluding that we have 12 years to climate change the urgency has increased but our attitudes have only mildly shifted. There are obvious political failings despite the Paris accord, much of it restricted by our current economy system. The free market, while efficient in creating a vibrant world of abundance, is not capable of solving the climate problem.

There is no shortage of reporting in the mainstream media on climate change, yet is this coverage effective in generating change in consumer behaviour?

Countless articles published by mainstream media also outline practical steps that people can take towards lowering their own contributions to climate change. For example, BBC’s what would you be prepared to do? highlight daily choices that have readily available alternatives such as avoid eating beef, but the reach and effectiveness of such articles is questionable as beef consumption is stable and not decreasing.

Smarter people deny in smarter ways

Given the level of awareness we have, the chasm between awareness and acting on climate change is painfully obvious when witnessing little changes in lifestyle choices. There are no doubt some people who truly do not care about the issue and are happy to continue business as usual, often denying the science as a result of their motivated reasoning. However there are also many people out there who do care but fail to meaningfully change their behaviour. They may care about climate change but don’t adjust their lifestyle accordingly, often citing the lack of policy change as an excuse of inaction when both are needed simultaneously. The end result of both is behavioural change, so why not get a head start especially given the gravity of our predicament?

By doing so they undermine the notion that individual actions don’t matter, which is akin to saying one vote doesn’t matter. Our actions and consumption choices are votes which shape the society and economy—how did smart phones achieve nearly universal adoption within a decade if people didn’t all individually choose to buy one? After all, individual actions are the elementary particles of a mass movement, the grains of sands that make up a beach.

Policies are certainly an essential part of solving climate; individual action cannot greenify power generation when consumers can’t choose between sourcing electricity from a coal plant and a solar farm. Consumers, however, can reduce the impact of fast fashion simply by buying less. The solution is not one or the other, it’s both. The scope of our predicament really requires attacking it from multiple fronts, both governance and individual actions simultaneously, both public and private spheres together. Changing one’s behaviour and lifestyle is something you can act on immediately and make an impact while waiting for policy change.

When desires conflict

The main underlying issue with the climate emergency is not that people don’t want it resolved, but that doing so involves reducing luxuries we are currently enjoying. Climate denialists only reject the science because of the implications of policy change affecting their lifestyle—it is the root cause of their motivated reasoning resulting in the disbelief in the scientific consensus, and showing them more data would not change their stance as their core concern is not addressed.

Years of environmentalism has given us enough empirical evidence that people on the whole do not willingly sacrifice their lifestyle in order to live more ethically. Businesses naturally try hard to suppress damning images such as the cruelty inside factory farms, yet when consumers have do an ethical alternative, desire for convenience, hedonistic pleasure and cheaper goods still overwhelmingly influence their choices.

Consider the simple example of bringing a reusable shopping bag to buy grocery in order to eliminate the need for plastic bags. It is encouraging to see many people willing to make that lifestyle shift at a small convenience cost, but it never reached a mass effect and in the end corporations and governments had to step in and ban plastic bags.

Hybrids and EVs have existed for decades now, yet their market share is still disappointingly small. The argument that these cars are generally more expensive than their gasoline equivalent holds water for lower income families, but does not explain the vast majority of middle upper class and wealthy people who choose to buy Porsches and other luxury cars when they are completely capable of opting for an electric vehicle instead. The EVs may be more limited in range and flexibility, but surely the urgency to act on climate change should be a greater factor.

It is often argued that one has connect emotionally with the individual in order to evoke change. One long-running example is how animal rights organisations appeal to empathy in their campaigns against factory farming. Even though some individuals genuinely don’t care about the animal welfare, an appreciable part of the population empathises with the suffering when shown videos of animal abuse and cruelty. Yet most do nothing—there are more meat eaters than vegetarians in the world. They might try out vegetarianism or veganism for a while, but many who didn’t experience health issues will revert back to their meat eating ways. For most people, the pleasure of eating meat overcomes their desire to be ethical.

‘We can do it’ proponents point to triumphant struggles such as abolition of slavery, universal suffrage and civil rights. But all these victories were predicated on getting access to something hitherto denied. Resolving the ‘global emergency’ through a miraculous reduction in greenhouse gas emissions requires the very opposite: billions of people relinquishing something they already have. ¹

Now consider the substantial lifestyle change that really solving climate change would involve. We’re talking about not only significantly reducing meat intake, but also reducing weekend getaways by flying, fast fashion and keeping up with latest gadgets and trends. “Most people, of their own volition, will not cut back on flying, no matter their attitude toward the environment.”

The climate change movement rarely highlight these negative aspects and focuses on positive narratives, which is understandable to avoid being condemned as being pessimistic, but given the state of affairs one also has to portray the situation honestly.

Capitalism served its purpose; now it needs to evolve or be replaced

Advocates for systemic change to mitigate the degradation of the environment have existed since the days of Malthus², and while that it’s true that we have managed to overcome every existential crisis that we’ve come across thus far, climate change is on a whole new level as it requires us to re-examine the parts of human nature that our economy leverages (or exploits). Capitalism is successful because it indulges the ego with finely tuned, empirically tested marketing to make us lust after products and lifestyles. Meanwhile the promise of personal success and riches drive entrepreneurs to invent and produce fantastic things that makes our lives easier. Yet it’s that very same features of human psychology that created this abundant world is unsustainable at our population and consumption levels.³

Media coverage on climate change is pervasive and admirable compared with the past, but overall few people click on and read these articles in comparison to say sports, royal family drama or Trump’s latest antics. Climate change activism is not without its celebrities. Yet despite the combined star power of David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg making the issue front and centre, paradigm shifting action has yet to take place … recycling rates are low, fashion companies still post record profits, smart phones are still being replaced every 2 years. Most people in the end fall prey to apathy. Unless it is in front of our eyes and affecting our daily lives, there’ll always be a collective bias towards business as usual though we may temporarily empathise with those affected by extreme weather events that climate change is making more and more frequent.

Combine that with the fact that news feeds on social media are highly personalised, those who are already apathetic or skeptical will only see articles that confirm their existing beliefs, making behavioural change all but impossible. It’s a positive feedback loop that needs to be broken by careful intervention.

Can the gap be closed?

“Environmental attitudes have been found to have a varying, usually very small impact on pro-environmental behaviour. This is unexpected because we tend to assume that people live according to their values.” … “People who care about the environment tend to engage in activities such as recycling but do not necessary engage in activities that are more costly and inconvenient such as driving or flying less.” Mind the Gap - A. Kollmuss & J. Agyeman

I do not want to end on a pessimistic note, but one must face empirical evidence when facing a challenge of this magnitude. The first IPCC report on climate change was published 29 years ago in 1990. The Inconvenient Truth came out 13 years ago in 2006. Yet the message is ignored other than a core group of dedicated environmentalists.

There is hope, given the rise of groups willing to protest and act on the science behind climate change such as Extinction Rebellion. There’s an increase in veganism, a boon in meat replacements brought on by the likes of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, but until it results in closure of cattle farms and slaughterhouses their impact on the climate is minimal. There’s Flugscham / flygskam / vliegschaamte and many small groups valiently willing to fly less. Flying Less to reduce academia’s footprint, even a climate scientist going against the grain and not travel to conferences.

None of these movements have achieved anywhere near critical mass, and like most ethical movements these pockets of hope fail to engage the silent majority, who are content with their SUVs and materialistic pleasures; those who practice restraint are perpetually in the minority. It’s not about giving up on everything, only significant reduction in areas of economic activity that are scientifically shown to cause the most emissions and those that are wasteful. We will still live comfortable lives with many fascinating possibilities in the ideal case of a sustainable, minimally extractive circular economy.

The complacency of modern living and an economy that depends on a high level of wasteful consumption need to be challenged and our priorities re-examined on a mass scale. When the majority of countries and companies are willing to leave profits on the table⁴, and when the majority of people are willing to forgo some opulence in exchange for a sustainable future, we will know that people are truly acting on climate change.