we are hurtling toward the day when
climate change could be irreversible
i've seen sea levels already altering
this nation's coast china's capital is
choking in its worst pollution of the
year five percent of species will become
extinct sea levels rising glaciers
melting okay enough i get it it's not
like i don't care about polar bears and
melting ice caps
i'm a conservation scientist so of
course i care i've dedicated my entire
career to this
but over the years one thing has really
become clear to me
we need to change the way we talk about
climate change
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this doom and gloom messaging just isn't
working
we seem to want to tune it out
and this fear this guilt
we know from psychology is not
conducive to engagement it's rather
opposite it makes people passive because
when i feel fearful or guiltful i will
withdraw from the issue and not try to
think about something else that makes me
feel better and with the problem this
overwhelming it's pretty easy to just
turn away and kick the can down the road
somebody else can deal with it
so it's no wonder that scientists and
policy makers have been struggling with
this issue too
so i like to say that climate change is
the policy problem from hell you almost
couldn't design a worse problem as a fit
with our underlying psychology or the
way our institutions make decisions many
americans continue to think of climate
change as a distant problem
distant in time that the impacts won't
be felt for a generation or more and
distant in space that this is about
polar bears or maybe some developing
countries
again it's not like we don't care about
these things it's just such a
complicated problem
but the thing is we've faced enormous
scary climate issues before remember the
hole in the ozone layer as
insurmountable as that seemed in the
1970s and 80s we were able to wrap a
hedge around that and take action
people got this very simple easy to
understand concrete image of this
protective layer around the earth kind
of like a roof protecting us in this
case from ultraviolet light which by the
way has the direct health consequence of
potentially giving you skin cancer okay
so that now you got my attention
and so then they came up with this
fabulous term the ozone hole terrible
problem
great term
people also got a concrete image of how
we even ended up with this problem for
decades
chlorofluorocarbons or cfcs were the
main ingredient in a lot of products
like aerosol spray cans then scientists
discovered that cfcs were actually
destroying the atmospheric ozone
people could look at their own hair
spray and say do i want to destroy the
planet because of my hairspray i mean
god no and so what's interesting is that
sales of hairspray and those kinds of
products and you know underarm aerosols
started dropping quite dramatically
people listened to scientists and took
action now scientists predict that the
hole in the ozone layer will be healed
by around 2050.
that's actually pretty amazing and while
stopping the use of one product is
actually pretty easy
climate change caused by greenhouse
gases that's much much trickier
because the sources are more complicated
and for the most part they're totally
invisible
right now there is co2 pouring out of
tailpipes there's co2 pouring out of
buildings there's co2 pouring out of
smoke stacks but you can't see it the
fundamental cause of this problem is
largely invisible to most of us i mean
if co2 was black
we would have dealt with this issue in a
long time ago so co2 touches every part
of our lives our cars the places we work
the food we eat
for now
let's just focus on one thing our energy
use how do we make that visible
that was the initial goal of ucla's
engage project one of the nation's
largest behavioral experiments in energy
conservation what we're trying to do
is to
figure out how to frame information
about electricity usage so that people
save energy and conserve electricity the
idea is that electricity is relatively
invisible to people
the research team outfitted part of a
student housing complex with meters that
tracked real-time usage of appliances
and then sent them weekly reports so you
can see how much energy the stove used
versus the dishwasher or the fridge we
realized because of this project that
the fridge was like
the monster
so lucky for them their landlord
upgraded their fridge to an energy
efficient one
they also learnt other energy saving
tips like unplugging their dishwasher
when not in use and air drying their
clothes during the summer months and
researchers in turn discovered where
people were willing to cut back
the engage project wanted to know what
types of messaging could motivate people
to change their behavior
we wanted to see over time over a year
and with repeated messages
how do people behave how does that
impact the consumer behavior
and what we found is that it's very
different
some households were sent personalized
emails with their energy bill about how
they could save money others learned how
their energy use impacted the
environment and children's health
those who received messages about saving
money did nothing it was totally
ineffective because electricity is
relatively cheap
but emails sent that linked the amount
of pollutants produced to rates of
childhood asthma and cancer while those
led to an eight percent drop in energy
use and 19
in households with kids
now in a separate study researchers
brought social competition into the mix
first they hung posters around the dorm
building to publicly showcase how
students were really doing
red dots for energy wasters green for
those doing a good job and a shiny gold
star for those going above and beyond
this social pressure approach led to a
20 reduction in energy use
this strategy was also used at paulina's
complex and it definitely brought out
her competitive streak for me the
competition was what motivated me
because seeing your apartment number
and
telling you that you are doing at the
average
but you are not the best was like
why i'm doing like everything that you
are telling me to do i always wanted
their
gold start because it's like oh my god i
want to be like the less consumption of
energy in the whole building
and psychology studies have actually
proved this
we are social creatures and as
individualistic as we can be turns out
we do care about how we compare with
others and yes we do like to be the best
some people don't want to say oh i'm
like the average no
my usage is different and i want to be
able to act on it and people can act on
it because with these meters they can
now see their exact
impact a company called opower is
playing with this idea of social
competition
they work with over a hundred utility
companies to provide personalized energy
reports to millions of customers around
the world now consumers can not only see
their energy use
but how it compares to their neighbors
like the ucla study found this subtle
social pressure encourages consumers to
save energy
it's been so effective that in 2016
opower was able to generate the
equivalent of 2 terawatt hours of
electricity savings
that's enough to power every home in
miami for more than a year
and they're not alone
even large companies are tapping into
behavioral science to move the dial
virgin atlantic airways gave a select
group of pilots feedback on their fuel
use
over the course of a year they
collectively saved over 6 800 tons of
fuel by making some simple changes
adjusting their altitudes routes and
speed reduced their carbon dioxide
emissions by over 21 000 tons
these behavioral nudges do seem to be
advancing how we as a society deal with
some pretty complicated climate change
issues but it turns out we're just
getting started
there is no quick fix we need people
changing their companies changing their
business models changing the products
and services they provide this is about
broader scale
change and part of this change includes
embracing what makes us human that it
can't just be a guilt trip about dying
polar bears or driving around in gas
guzzlers we need to talk about our winds
as well
like how we're making progress really
being aware of our energy use and taking
advantage of that competitive spirit we
all have in order to really move us from
a state of apathy
to action
global warming is by far the biggest
issue of our time
climate lab is a new series from vox and
the university of california and we'll
be exploring some surprising ways we can
tackle this problem
if you want to learn more head to
climate.universityofcalifornia.edu