To understand and neutralize potential net zero spoilers, behavioural scientists advise that we look within ourselves. Ingrained human tendencies can reinforce resistance to change or subvert good intentions before they turn into action.
Accordingly, the International Energy Agency’s most recent progress report concludes that global populations will need to adjust their lifestyle practices more quickly if 2030 and 2050 targets for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are to be achieved. Speaking during a recent online presentation sponsored by the research institute and innovation incubator, Net Zero Atlantic, Professor Robert Gifford, a behavioural psychologist affiliated with University of Victoria’s School of Environmental Studies, tallied dozens of factors that could be undermining progress — collectively labelled as the dragons of inaction.
“Different groups have different dragons,” he noted. “To start, you might want to consider the barriers that are easiest to overcome. Where’s the low-hanging fruit and where would we be banging our heads against the wall? Which kinds of messages work and which kind of incentives work?”
Sustainability managers and tenant engagement specialists may be familiar with many of the dragons, which Gifford delineates into seven broad categories of human response to physical, intellectual and emotional stimuli. These shape how people perceive, validate and act on information, and reflect a combination of cultural and peer influences, personal experiences and tastes, and biological hard-wiring.
Human tendencies that can undermine climate action include: disproportionate focus on the near term; rationalization to sidestep rational conduct; desensitization to accustomed scenarios; and passivity when confronting uncertainty. Headline-grabbing extreme weather events often occur thousands of miles away; scientists warn of perils decades into the future; and both the events and the warnings lose their novelty and capacity to alarm with ongoing exposure. Meanwhile, people are less likely to try to do things differently if they lack relatively convenient alternatives or are skeptical about the impact — negative or positive — of their individual actions.
“We have an ancient brain that prioritizes here and now. When we developed as a species 300,000 years ago, that was all that really mattered,” Gifford reiterated. “A lot of climate change things are not really here; they’re happening somewhere else. And they’re not really now; they’re going to happen in 2030 or 2050. So it’s really easy to discount things that are not near us.”
Relevance and proximity counter detachment and inertia
To counter this detachment and inertia, he recommends programs and campaigns that emphasize relevant and immediate climate threats — something that should be easy enough to do following a spring and summer of intense storms, heat waves and wildfires — and clarify and simplify ways to undertake emissions-reducing and/or resilience-boosting actions. To accentuate the local context, gardeners, birdwatchers or campers could be encouraged to document the changes they are seeing and to share their findings through online forums.
“People respond when they know, this animal, this plant, is being affected right here in our backyard,” Gifford said.
In program design, positive affirmation may be more effective than naming and shaming underperformers. While humans commonly compare themselves with others, they also tend to take heart from those with greater failings. “We excuse ourselves by saying: that other person is worse than me so, therefore, I am sort of okay,” Gifford advised.
The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) recipe for behavioural change focuses on measures that can steer individuals away from fossil fuel options for transportation, heating and cooling. Its top recommendation for “clear and consistent policies and investment” largely addresses what Gifford categorizes as the “risk” dragons. These could be: financial, related to the cost of switching to electric vehicles and heat pumps; functional, related to uncertainty about new kinds of technology; or physical, related to the fear of walking, cycling or scootering in urban traffic.
At the same time, the IEA approach could bring out the “discredence” dragons, particularly through associated recommendations for “price signals to direct certain habits” and “mandatory restrictions on some behaviours”. This may take the form of disdain for the perceived inadequacy of offered incentives or resentment and/or defiance of perceived intrusion and overstepping of authority.
“I call it the two-year-old dragon that’s saying: you can’t make me do it,” Gifford quipped.
Dragon-slaying tactics look to mules and honeybees
Would-be dragon slayers are turning to data analysis to try to identify which behaviour traits are most helpful and most hindersome to climate action, which dragons are most pervasive in various demographics, and how they might be subdued or redirected. Gifford stresses the importance of evaluating the uptake and outcomes of incentive programs and then using that information to refine incentives and information campaigns that can be targeted to groups with differing priorities and outlooks.
“It’s a research agenda that a lot of people are working on, but we need a lot more work on this,” he observed.
Other suggested dragon-slaying strategies are well aligned with commercial real estate conventions. Those include a multidisciplinary response applying insight and expertise from a range of different practitioners, and catalyzing the group Gifford defines as the “honeybees”.
Like the pollinators performing good deeds for the planet as an offshoot of their own biological imperatives, human honeybees pursue and invest in sustainable initiatives for reasons other than the environment. For example, cost savings and occupant comfort have long been two such reasons underpinning energy upgrades in the buildings sector, while demands to meet investors’ and tenants’ ESG expectations are increasingly coming into play. From a behavioural science perspective, Gifford suggests there’s no pressing reason to quibble about the root motive.
“There is a lot of self-interest that happens to bring about good stuff,” he acknowledged. “If they’re doing the right thing, maybe their attitude doesn’t matter that much.”
Even so, it will likely to be left to the group he calls the “mules” — those who are committed to climate action and carrying the load of moving it forward — to figure out where the dragons are vulnerable and to take them on. Ultimately, it’s about altering behavioural momentum.
“Behavioural momentum is fancy jargon for habit,” Gifford explained. “Mostly, we do today what we did yesterday; we automatically do some of these things. It can be a reason for continuing to do a bad thing, or behavioural momentum can be a good thing if we start engaging in climate-positive habits.”
Barbara Carss is editor-in-chief of Canadian Property Management.
