Sugar Words

“The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share” ~Lady Bird Johnson. If this is true, then why don’t we care for the environment?  The answer is – Heuristics.

Heuristics is a quicker way to reach a decision, and it is not always optimal. The question we should be asking is – what goes inside a mind of an individual before reaching the decision when it comes to conserving the environment? Let’s look at it one by one.

First, it is difficult for people to grasp the broader environmental impact of their actions. Something The Good Place show on Netflix portrayed pretty well. For example – I buy a vegan ice cream that comes packed in a recyclable container, from my perspective, I am making an eco-friendly choice. But on the other side, the way the ice cream is produced might be doing an equal amount of environmental damage.

There are so many balancing choices we make like using a bicycle for an entire month to make that trip by flight or eating fruits for three days to not feel bad about using the air- conditioner at night, thinking we are doing our part of environment conservation, but in reality, we aren’t. All this stems from a cognitive perspective and balancing heuristics as explained by Patrik Sörqvist and Linda Langeborg. The reason for individuals continually making wrong choices is – we simply aren’t aware of the consequences anymore.

Now, coming to the part – why individuals aren’t even trying to protect the environment. One thing that I have continually observed in environment-related news is – how rapidly we are approaching doom. This translates into – any effort by an individual (according to one’s capacity) will not be enough because fate is inevitable unless someone initiates drastic large-scale changes.

This negative enforcement technique by media is not working the way it was supposed to. When every individual thinks that their efforts will be in vain, the collective incentive vanishes, and no one does anything to pollute less or conserve the environment, and hence there is no large-scale change. Hong Vu (assistant professor of journalism at Kansas University) said during the research (How media around the world frame the climate change), “Media can tell people what to think about. At the same time, framing can have an effect on how people think about certain issues.”

Further, the whole idea of sustainability lies in the concept of two time periods – present and future. When news headlines constantly push ‘no foreseeable future’ down our throats, individuals unconsciously calculate their costs and benefits.  And the conclusion is – using up a resource today becomes economically efficient/ attractive (even though it is not) than in the future.

Lastly, the environment is an open-access resource. Therefore, the benefits of the environment are not exclusive to any individual. Though the resource is rival i.e., if I pollute or overharvest, the resource(environment) quality or quantity diminishes for everyone else. From the very beginning, we have learned that greed is the real devil behind the deterioration of the environment. And after we allege these so-called greedy people for their horrendous sin, we expect them to change their behaviors and make large-scale changes to reduce pollution. This in itself is an irony – we cannot call out someone to be intrinsically wicked and then expect the same person to do good by all, even if that means they will lose out in the process. We need to stop treating climate change as a political issue because it is not about the votes but about what kind of lifestyle we all want to have today and tomorrow.  

You all would be thinking that why I am taking the side of the “greedy” people. I will reason this out for you all. First – we all look out for our self-interest that is pretty much why all the incentives in the economy work, so in some sense, we all are greedy. Second – the inability of the market to signal when the efficient consumption of the environment is reached is specifically why the environment is damaged above the optimal level (where both economy and ecology are in harmony). In simple terms, individuals think – “If I don’t use it, someone else will, rather I should use it first” (even if that means damaging the environment). But in this process, they reduce their future earnings.

How? the resource needs replenishing, but once we overharvest, we deteriorate resources to such an extent that they cannot be replenished in a given period. Due to this, the availability in the future is lesser, fetching lower profits – but companies/ individuals are not aware of this. Currently, the fishing industry is going through the same phenomenon.

When this failure of the market to account for the limited supply of resources (environment) is coupled with being fed the idea of no tomorrow, the result is – neither individuals nor organizations are motivated to look for sustainable options. So, the first step to induce individuals to conserve the environment is to change how we communicate the urgency of turning around the accelerating climate change.

And enough with the blame game, if we want to see substantial change and adopt environment-friendly technologies, practices, and methodologies. And yes, we all need to walk that extra mile and make an effort to google the impact on the environment of the products we use every day (at the least).

Every change starts from an initial perception. Let us change the way climate change is perceived, and the rest will follow.