Hey everyone, last week I said that I was done with my survey. But there is one final response that I hadn’t shared. I thought this topic deserved greater attention and thus I wanted to give it a post of its own. It was regarding why even though my respondents knew and believe in climate change, yet they may not be as willing to adopt an environmentally friendly lifestyle.
As we can see that reasons are wide ranging. We can see that by far convenience is one of the most prominent reasons as to why the respondents did not adopt a more Env-friendly lifestyle. Convenience is issue that I think can be solved in two ways first in an intrinsic mental drive to face “discomfort” as they think it is worth it and the other is extrinsic, for the authorities to help make it convenient for you.
Intrinsic Factor
I think to bolster one’s intrinsic drive for the environment would as we all know education. With greater knowledge of the climate crisis, so climate concern would be the drive to make a change in one’s lifestyle. Yet this also depends on the individual’s mindset and may have the opposite effect of causing one to give up and think it is inevitable.
Extrinsic Factor
To overcome this I the the extrinsic factors would play a huge role which I think can come in the form of empowerment by the authorities. With the knowledge, platform or methods of taking action thus effecting change this may help to prevent one from spiraling into climate apathy.
In this paper when they speak of climate action they split it into two types. Activities that are good for the environment (Pro-environmental activities) and activities that are impactful for the environment (Environmentally Significant activities).
I think that there is a sweet spot in which activities are both pro-environmental and also environmentally significant. Of course, all activities regardless if they are only in one category, should be encouraged. After all littering is not environmentally significant but still should not be done.
I think giving people the knowledge of the relative importance or contribution of the various economic activities is important, for them to know which activities are environmentally significant. Knowing an activity’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would help individuals reduce their activities that do not adversely impact their convenience yet are environmentally significant. People in general know that fossil fuels produce GHG emissions, but do they know which facet of their life is the one that is most significant in contributing to it?
One may think that more GHG emissions are produced in the latter rather than something that looks “clean” like the engine of an airplane. This may be a possibility, as we humans are a visual species. Another example would be the carbon footprint of beef in comparison even other meat like chicken. With this people would have greater awareness of environmentally significant activities than do not require as much “loss” to their convenience. Which may become an impetus to further adaptations in their lifestyle to achieve a more sustainable one.
See you next week!
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Hi Li Zhe,
Indeed, there would be activities that are both environmentally significant and pro-environment. (I must admit that I had some trouble understanding that table because the headers aren’t obvious and the categories aren’t clear cut. Perhaps low/high impact on the environment against beneficial/harmful to the environemnt would have been better).
In that case, do you think it is more important to focus on high impact activities that require more effort to change, or low impact activirties that are easier to change?
On that note, where would you classify the use of single-use plastic bags, bearing in mind that some alternatives may be more harmful to the environment (https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/reusable-plastic-bags-most-eco-friendly-option-in-spore)?
~STEK
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Hi, personally I think that we should focus on high impact activities. Yet this is not to say that we shouldn’t encourage low impact activities as well as every bit helps. Additionally, individuals can start with this low impact activities that are easier to change and gradually try to shift to activities that are “harder” to do. As for your second question, I think the framework of pro-environmental and environmentally significant activities is just a guide. In real life activities have pros and cons and try as we might, we will find that we are unable to fix everything into our neatly created boxes. This calls for an adaptive approach to face the environmental crisis and this reminds me of scientific thinking. In which our knowledge continually expands and previously accepted norms and changed and adapted in face of new information.
-Li Zhe