Save heat, save emissions, save fossil fuel consumption. A month on from COP28, the world is further away than ever from meeting its collective climate goals. According to recent research, at the root of all these problems lies the human “behavioral crisis,” a term coined by an interdisciplinary team of scientists.
“We have engineered ourselves socially, just as we have geoengineered the planet,” says Joseph Merz, lead author of a new paper that argues that climate collapse is a symptom of ecological overshoot, resulting from deliberate exploitation of human behavior.
“We need to be careful about how we are guided,” says Merz, co-founder of the Merz Institute, an organization that studies the systemic causes of the climate crisis and how to tackle them.
Merz and his colleagues believe that most of the climate “solutions” proposed so far only tackle the symptoms of the crisis rather than its root cause. This, they say, leads to rising levels of the three “levers” of overshoot: consumption, waste and population.
They argue that unless the demand for resources is reduced, most other innovations are just plaster that sticks. “We can deal with climate change and make it worse,” says Merz. “The financial footprint of renewable energy is dangerously underdiscussed. These energy farms need to be rebuilt every few decades; “Unless they meet demand, they won’t be able to solve the bigger problem.”
“Overshoot” refers to how much Earth human society uses to sustain or expand itself. To keep resource consumption at a level at which the planet’s biocapacity can be replenished, humanity would currently need 1.7 Earths.
Where climate discussions often focus on carbon emissions, the focus on exceedance highlights material use, waste output, and the growth of human society, all of which impact the Earth’s biosphere.
“In fact, overshoot is a crisis of human behavior,” says Merz. “For decades we’ve been telling people to change their behavior without saying, ‘Change your behavior.’ We say ‘be greener’ or ‘fly less’ but meanwhile everything that drives behavior pushes in the other direction. All these subtle clues and not-so-subtle clues are literally pushing in the opposite direction and we’re left wondering why nothing’s changing.”
The paper explores how neuropsychology, social signaling, and norms are used to drive human behavior that grows the economy, from consuming goods to having large families. The authors suggest that ancient impulses to belong to a tribe, demonstrate one’s status, or impress a mate have been co-opted by marketing strategies to create behaviors that are incompatible with a sustainable world.
“People are victims; We have been exploited to the point of going into crisis. These tools are being used to drive us towards extinction,” says evolutionary behavioral ecologist and study co-author Phoebe Barnard. “Why not use these to build a truly sustainable world?”
Just one quarter of the world’s population is responsible for almost three quarters of emissions. The authors suggest that the best strategy for countering extremism would be to use the tools of the marketing, media, and entertainment industries in a campaign to redefine our materially intensive, socially accepted norms.
“We’re talking about changing the things that people are trying to point out, the things that they’re trying to say about themselves. Currently, the material footprint of our signals is quite high; Our clothes are associated with status and wealth, their materials come from all over the world, mostly shipped to Southeast Asia and then shipped back here, only to be replaced with next season’s clothes. trends. “The things to which people can attribute status are so variable that we could replace them all with things that actually have no material footprint, or even better, an ecologically positive footprint.”
The Merz Institute operates an escalation behavior laboratory where they work on interventions to address escalation. One describes “behavioral influencers,” such as scriptwriters, web developers, and algorithm engineers, who all promote certain social norms and seek to restructure society relatively quickly and harmlessly by encouraging a new set of behaviors.
The article discusses the tremendous success of the work of the Population Media Center, an initiative that creates mainstream entertainment to encourage behavioral change against population growth and even gender violence. Fertility rates have fallen in the countries where the Center’s telenovelas and radio novels are broadcast.
Population growth is a difficult issue to address, given the not-too-distant history of eugenics and ethnic cleansing practiced in many countries around the world. But Merz and his colleagues insist it is important to confront the problem as population growth cancels out much of the climate gains from renewables and efficiency over the past three decades.
“Obviously this is a women’s liberation issue,” says Barnard. “Higher education levels lead to lower fertility rates. Who can claim to be against the education of girls; If so, why?”
The team calls for more interdisciplinary research into what they call the “crisis of human behavior” and concerted efforts to redefine our social norms and desires that drive overconsumption. When asked about the ethics of such a campaign, Merz and Barnard point out that companies are fighting to attract consumers’ attention every second of the day.
“Is it ethical to exploit our psychology to benefit an economic system that is destroying the planet?” asks Barnard. “Creativity and innovation drive overconsumption. The system is driving us to suicide. It comes with conquest, entitlement, misogyny, arrogance and a stinking package that drives us over the edge.”
The team is adamant that solutions that do not tackle the underlying drivers of our growth-based economies will only worsen the overshooting crisis.
“Everything we know and love is at stake,” Barnard says. “A livable planet and a peaceful civilization both have value, and we need to be intentional about using tools in ways that are ethical and fair. This isn’t just about humanity. This is true for every other species on this planet. “This is about future generations.”
“It pisses me off when people sit paralyzed wondering what I should do. Or what should we do? There are moral hazards everywhere. “We must choose how we intervene to continue working on a path that allows us to progress as humans, because right now everything is set up to deprive us of our humanity.”