Contributions of Psychology to Limiting Climate Change

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-66-4-303.pdf

Contributions of Psychology to Limiting
Climate Change

Paul C. Stern
National Research CouncilPsychology can make a significant contribution to limiting the magnitude of climate change by improving understanding of human behaviors that drive climate change and human reactions to climate-related technologies and policies, and by turning that understanding into effective interventions. This article develops a framework for psychological contributions, summarizes what psychology has learned, and sets out an agenda for making additional contributions. It emphasizes that the greatest potential for contributions from psychology comes not from direct application of psychological concepts but from integrating psychological knowledge and methods with knowledge from other fields of science and technology.Keywords: climate change, energy consumption, environ- mentally significant behavior, behavioral change

As has been amply documented elsewhere, the processes of global climate change that have been increasingly observed in recent decades are driven largely by human activities (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007; National Research Council, 2010a). The human activities that directly produce physical changes in Earth’s heat balance, such as burning fossil fuels, clearing forests, and raising cattle, are driven in turn by other human activities, including government policies, the growth and migration of human populations, economic and technological development, and the behavior of individuals and households as consumers, members of organizations, and citizens. These actions are influenced in turn by human attitudes, predispositions, beliefs, and social and economic structures (National Research Council, 1992; Swim et al., 2011, this issue). This article discusses what psychology has contributed and can contribute to limiting the magnitude of climate change by altering the human activities that affect it.

A Framework for Psychological Contributions

Psychology can contribute to limiting climate change by improving understanding of climate-relevant individual, household, and organizational behaviors that affect climate change and the many personal, social, economic, institutional, policy, and social-structural factors that affect these behaviors, as well as by helping devise ways to turn that understanding into effective interventions. Most of the efforts of psychologists, and most of this review, focus on consumer behaviors. These can be conveniently divided into choices that affect emissions of greenhouse gases directly through household purchases of energy and choices that affect emissions indirectly through the purchase of goods and services that affect the climate through their production, distribution, and disposal. This article focuses mainly on the direct effects because they are large (about 40% of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States; Bin & Dowlatabadi, 2005) and because more is known about the behavioral factors that drive those emissions. It also briefly discusses psychological factors in organizational behavior and in acceptance of policies and technologies.

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[arachadillo]

1. Speaking of Climate Change and Psychology

http://greennature.com/article715.html">Public Opinion, Prospect Theory and Climate Change

Current blips in public opinion on climate change appear to be a function of a successful fossil fuel industry campaign to change the American frame of reference. They are slowly becoming more risk adverse to change, perhaps partly due to the current great recession, and partly due to Republican Party propaganda.

IMHO, some counter-strategy should be employed that makes Americans more risk-seeking to solve the climate problem, i.e., risk seeking in the sense that they would accept, for example, a carbon tax (used for renewable R&D), as a way to address the problem.

The same phenomena is showing up in Australia where the ALP, in conjunction with the Green Party, are currently losing the public opinion battle with respect to their climate change proposals.