Be the (climate) change you want to see in the world: Your choices matter
How much difference can I make choosing a salad over a steak, when fossil fuel producers emit greenhouse gases at the alarming rate? Can I stop global warming by riding a bicycle, when lots of cars fume all over the world?
100 companies are responsible for 71% of the world’s carbon footprint. Agriculture makes up for the lion’s share of the rest. Compared with these numbers not buying an extra pair of pumps seem like a drop in the ocean. Individual actions to tackle climate change are criticized in the blogosphere. This skepticism is partially supported by an article published in Nature Climate Change. The report showed that although lifestyle changes might be helpful to significantly reduce emissions, they alone are not sufficient to prevent global warming. More targeted measures should be undertaken. According to the alarming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we do not have much time left.
To figure out if personal choices matter, I turned to literature. After some search, I came across a Nature paper that seemed to offer some valuable information on the matter. The paper stated, ‘A subsequent pre-registered experiment provides causal evidence for the role of second-order normative beliefs in predicting energy conservation above first-order personal beliefs’.
Wait, what?! I needed a translation. After some googling and a dozen of sociological studies I figured out that that “first-order belief” is a fancy way to say “what we ourself believe”. “Second-order belief” is what we think others might think.
To put it simply, the results of the paper showed that people were more likely to reduce energy consumption if they believed that their community cared for it. Surprisingly, it did not matter if the participants cared about energy consumption themselves. In this case, the opinion of others played a key role in decision-making.
I found more studies showing similar results. For example, people were more likely to install solar panels in the neighborhoods where some solar panel were already installed. The community agents were 62.8% more likely to convince others to install solar panels if they had done it themselves.
Another study showed that people were more likely to give up flying if they knew someone who already did so because of climate change. The effects were higher if they knew a famous person who did that. Since aviation is unlikely to switch to renewable energy soon, personal choices make the biggest impact here. By choosing a train over a plane, you will not only directly reduce emissions from travel but also encourage transportation service to improve non-flying options.
Second to fossil fuel industry emissions are the emissions of agriculture. Reducing meat or removing it from the diet completely would allow cutting these emissions in half. Peer-effect plays a role in food choices, too. People in the cafeteria, who were told that 30% of Americans had started eating less meat, were more likely to order meatless lunch.
Every sustainable action has a ripple effect and influences others. And here the whole might be greater than the sum of its parts. If enough people join the green movement, our sustainable actions would become impossible to ignore. Although I understand that me choosing a salad instead of steak is not going to solve the global climate crisis, if all of us give up meat for just one day in a week it will send a strong message and become a building stone for the green future.
