by Record heat, record emissions, record fossil fuel consumption. One month out from Cop28, the world is further than ever from achieving its common climate goals. At the heart of all these problems, according to recent research, is a “crisis of human behavior”, a term coined by an interdisciplinary team of scientists.
“We’ve socially engineered ourselves the way we’ve geoengineered the planet,” says Joseph Merz, lead author of a new paper that suggests climate collapse is a symptom of ecological overshoot, leading to exploitation any business on human behavior.
“We have to be careful about the way we’re handling it,” says Merz, who is co-founder of the Merz Institute, an organization that researches 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 address the symptoms rather than the root cause of the crisis. This leads, they say, to increased levels of the three “levers” of overactivity: consumption, waste and population.
They claim that unless the demand for resources is reduced, many other innovations are just sticking plasters. “We can deal with climate change and get worse,” says Merz. “The material footprint of renewable energy is not discussed enough. These energy farms need to be rebuilt every few decades – they’re not going to solve the biggest problem if we don’t address demand.”
“Oversupply” refers to the amount of Earth that human society is using to sustain itself – or grow. Humanity would currently need 1.7 Earths to keep resource consumption at a level that the planet’s bio-resources can generate.
Where climate discussion is often focused on carbon emissions, an emphasis on warming emphasizes material use, waste output and the growth of human society, all of which affect the Earth’s biosphere.
“Essentially, overindulgence is a crisis of human behavior,” says Merz. “For many years we have been telling people to change their behavior without saying: ‘Change your behaviour.’ We have said ‘be greener’ or ‘fly less’, but in the meantime all the things that drive behavior are pushing the other way. All these subtle and not-so-subtle hints are pushing the opposite – and we’re wondering why nothing is changing.”
The paper examines how neuropsychology, social signaling and norms have been used to drive human behaviors that grow the economy, from consumer goods to large families. The authors point out that ancient drives to belong to a tribe or to express one’s status or to attract a friend have been co-opted by marketing strategies to create behaviors that are not compatible with a sustainable life.
“The people are the victims – we have been exploited to the point where we are in crisis. These tools are being used to drive us to extinction,” says evolutionary behavioral ecologist and study co-author Phoebe Barnard. “Why not use them to build a truly sustainable world?”
Just a quarter of the world’s population is responsible for nearly three quarters of emissions. The authors suggest that the best strategy for combating overactivity is to use the tools of the marketing, media, and entertainment industries in a campaign to redefine our socially accepted content-intensive norms.
“We’re talking about replacing what people want to express, what they want to say about themselves. Currently, our brands are in high material demand – our clothes are associated with status and wealth, our materials are sourced from all over the world, most often shipped to Southeast Asia and shipped here, only replace them next season. trends. The things that people can attach status to are so fluid, we could be replacing them with things that have essentially no material footprint – or better yet, a positive one from the point of view of ecology of it.”
The Merz Institute runs a hyperactivity lab where they work on interventions to combat hyperactivity. One of these identifies “behavioral influence” such as screenwriters, web developers and algorithm engineers, all of whom are promoting certain social norms and may be working to rewire society relatively quickly and harmlessly by promoting a new set of behaviours.
The paper discusses the tremendous success of the work of the Population Media Center, an initiative that creates mainstream entertainment to drive behavioral change on population growth and even gender violence. Fertility rates have declined in the countries where the center’s telenovelas and radionovelas are broadcast.
Population growth is a difficult subject to present because of the not too distant history of eugenics and ethnic cleansing practiced in many nations around the world. However, Merz and his colleagues argue that it is important to address the issue because most of the climate gains from renewable sources and efficiency over the past three decades have been canceled out by population growth.
“It’s a question of women’s liberation, ironically,” says Barnard. “Higher levels of education lead to lower fertility rates. Who could claim to be against educating girls – and if so, why?”
The team calls for more interdisciplinary research into what they term the “crisis of human behavior” and concerted efforts to redefine our social norms and social desires that drive overconsumption. When asked about the ethics of such a campaign, Merz and Barnard point out that corporations are fighting for consumers’ attention every second of every day.
“Is it ethical to exploit our psychology for the sake of an economic system that destroys the planet?” asks Barnard. “Creativity and innovation are driving overspending. The system is driving us to suicide. It is conquest, entitlement, misogyny, arrogance and it comes in a fetid package driving us to the abyss.”
The team is convinced that solutions that do not address the fundamental drivers of our growth-based economy will only worsen the crisis of overspending.
“Everything we know and love is at stake,” says Barnard. “Both a habitable planet and a peaceful civilization have value, and we must be aware of using tools in ethical and justice-based ways. This is only about humanity. This is about every other species on this planet. This is for generations to come.”
“I’m frustrated that people sit there paralyzed thinking, what am I going to do? Or what do we have to do? Moral hazards are everywhere. We have to choose how to intervene to keep us working on a path forward as humanity, because everything is now set up to strip us of our humanity.”
