The psychology of climate change

I was listening to Jonathan Porritt this morning on Radio 4 bemoaning the fact that politicians are only just waking up to the idea that tackling climate change should not be framed wholly negatively – as dourly doing less. He talked about transport, citing the fact that Government wonks have recently come back from parts of Europe and undergone a collective epiphany: reducing carbon emissions needn’t be simply about leaving the car in the garage and paying though the nose when one takes it out, but rather about getting from A to B in terms of an integrated high-class transport system.

I was listening to Jonathan Porritt this morning on Radio 4 bemoaning the fact that politicians are only just waking up to the idea that tackling climate change should not be framed wholly negatively – as dourly doing less. He talked about transport, citing the fact that Government wonks have recently come back from parts of Europe and undergone a collective epiphany: reducing carbon emissions needn’t be simply about leaving the car in the garage and paying though the nose when one takes it out, but rather about getting from A to B in terms of an integrated high-class transport system.

This chimed with me as I spent nigh-on six hours in the back of a Nissan Micra driving from Devon to London yesterday. This seemed like a mild form of torture: a strange combination of boredom and stress. I normally take the train and will find it difficult to do the journey by car again – despite the distinctly non-high-class nature of British trains, a 2 hour 15 minute journey where one can read in comfort is a joy compared to bouncing along (or not) on highly congested roads.

This brings me to Porritt's point – it would be much easier to promote behaviour-change that reduces carbon emissions if it is sold as part of a more enjoyable, less stressful future. The gap between Britain and the rest of Europe here is partly about quality of service, but also about cost. Some European countries far more heavily subsidise train travel than we do, and are able to pass on savings to travellers because services are not privatised and fragmented.

But here’s a slightly deeper point. Psychology and neuroscience tell us humans are congenitally bad at dealing with complexity – in particular, at connecting their individual behaviour to aggregate effects they cannot see. I was at the Cabinet Office last week and a civil servant told me that Defra has a job on its hands persuading fisherman that certain fish stocks are dangerously low. Fisherman see fish right in front of them and this biases their judgement by overriding the less palpable information that scientists purvey - information detailing fish stocks at the aggregate level. Psychologists call this the ‘availablity heuristic’ – what’s in front of a person’s nose is disproportionately valued or emphasised when making decisions.

We are also very bad at thinking about unpleasant things. Neuroscientists have discovered mechanisms that mean we will put out of mind bad things because we just don’t like thinking about them. This gives us a useful sense of optimism. But it leads to bad decisions - presenting changes in behaviour necessary to counteract climate change as grim froms of restraint means we just put the topic from our minds. We quite naturally don’t want to spend our days pervaded by a sense of low-level dread.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, as Porritt argued this morning. However, I think we could go further here. Making behaviour-change enjoyable will only get us so far. Travelling on a Swiss train one might think ‘it’s not so bad’. But travelling more often by train is only one of many substantive changes needed in the way we live, if we are to reduce our collective carbon footprint. Some of these changes just won’t be any fun and here we need leadership to make the case for the harder choices. So far there seems to be little political leadership. How could there be more?

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done numerous experiments that seem to confirm there are, what he calls, five basic ‘moral senses’: concern about harm, fairness, in-group loyalty, authority and spiritual purity. Haidt argues that western societies do not always successfully integrate and promote all five senses, liberals caring about the first two, conservatives all five.

Here’s a question: Isn’t climate-change the kind of issue that would benefit by being framed in a moral register that stretched beyond the two moral senses popular with liberals? Here are some reasons why this might be so.

First, given the availability bias, we find it hard to relate our individual actions to everyone else in the world (we find it hard to not make a car journey based on the rather abstract fact that it will contribute a small amount to overrall carbon tonnage). Perhaps it is better to start local then, and make use of existing loyalties.

When I was in Switzerland recently I noticed much food is labelled ‘aus der region fűr der region’ – from the region, for the region. Apparently a lot of Swiss make sure they buy food with such provenance. But the reasons why they do this are varied – some out of low-carbon concerns, some out of old-fashioned loyalty to a locale, some out of a feeling that Swiss standards of quality are higher.

Two things are key here:  first, whatever the reason for buying local, consumer behaviour relates to something tangible – the region in which one lives. Second, loyalty to the in-group is appealed to as well as a sense of fairness and harm. In short, the labelling is psychologically effective because it works with, not against, a general cognitive bias (the ‘availabilty heuristic’), but also because it appeals to three rather than two moral senses.

However, the point is not only that we should pull all the levers we can in changing behaviour, it is also that moral reasons are a compelling and easy way to change behaviour. If one had to understand all the complexities of global injustice that climate change brings, one would be overwhelmed. So it might be much easier to appeal to existing moral senses that are ingrained, such as in-group loyalty. But not only might this be simpler and more effective, it makes people feel better if they think they are doing the right thing. So perhaps we don’t just need sparkling and efficient trians, we also need a sense of moral purpose that connects with as many of us as possible on the local or individual level? And perhaps this is where politial leadership is most needed?