Psychology to shake our carbon-emitting habits

Anthony A. Davis writes about 37 different reasons why it is so hard to change our climate change habits. University of Victoria psychology professor Robert Gifford calls the barriers “dragons”.

Source: https://www.dragonsofinaction.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/doi_3dragon_header.png

They 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.1

Mistrust dragon

Seth Wynes, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of geography at the University of British Columbia, 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.”2 

Tokenism dragon

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.’ ”

References

1	(n.d.). The Dragons of Inaction – Diagnosing and Slaying the Barriers to .... Retrieved July 24, 2019, from https://www.dragonsofinaction.com/
2	(2019, July 22). Why we can't shake our carbon-emitting habits, even as the world burns. Retrieved July 24, 2019, from https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/why-we-cant-shake-our-carbon-emitting-habits-even-as-the-world-burns/