Climate striking the right tone

As former nonprofit CEO and as a brand & design strategist for some years I’ve been fortunate to work with dozens of inspiring organisations and causes striving to improve the world. Some went on to become hugely successful and others less so - which constantly made me wonder - why do some causes MOVE people more than others? Now, as the world turns its attention to the Global Climate Strike, Extinction Rebellion and similar movements it’s clear that there is positive momentum building and people are increasingly ready to act. This is a huge chance to make progress toward tackling climate change so it’s critical we don’t squander this opportunity - the time is running out.

 That’s why I have some controversial advice for climate efforts based on my experience, behavioural psychology and design principles…

We need to change the way we talk about climate change.

 Doom-and-gloom messaging isn’t working; humans tend to tune it out. We know from psychology that fear and guilt is not conducive to engagement. It's the opposite. It makes people passive, because when I feel fearful or guilty, I withdraw from the issue and try to think about something else that makes me feel better. With a problem this overwhelming, it’s pretty easy to just turn away and kick the can down the road. ‘Somebody else can deal with it.’

It’s no wonder that scientists and policymakers have been struggling with this issue too. Some say that climate change is the ‘policy problem from hell’. You almost couldn't design a worse problem as a fit with our underlying psychology or the way our institutions make decisions. Many people continue to think of climate change as a distant problem: distant in time - that the impacts won't be felt for a generation or more; and distant in space - that this is about polar bears or some developing countries.

It’s not like we don’t care about these things — it’s just such a complicated problem. But the thing is, we’ve faced enormous, scary climate issues before and we have succeeded. Remember the hole in the ozone layer?

As insurmountable as that seemed in the 1980s, we were able to wrap our heads around that and take action. People had this very simple, easy to understand image of a protective layer around the Earth - kind of like a roof, protecting us, in this case, from ultraviolet light - which had the health consequence of giving you skin cancer.

Okay, so that got your attention? Then they came up with this fabulous term, the “ozone hole.” Terrible problem, great term. People also got a concrete image of how we even ended up with this problem.

For decades CFCs were the main ingredient in a lot of products, like aerosol spray cans. Then scientists discovered that CFCs were destroying the atmospheric ozone. People could look at their own hairspray and say, “Do I want to destroy the planet because of my hairspray? I mean, hell no.”

What's interesting is that sales of hairspray and those kinds of products and underarm aerosols started dropping quite dramatically. People listened to scientists and took action. Now scientists predict that the hole in the ozone layer will be healed around 2050.

That’s actually pretty damn amazing.

And while stopping the use of one product is pretty easy, climate change caused by greenhouse gases … that’s much trickier because the sources are more complicated, and for the most part, they’re totally invisible.

Right now, there is CO2 pouring out of tailpipes, there is CO2 pouring out of buildings, there is CO2 pouring out of data centres, but you can't see it. The fundamental cause of this problem is largely invisible to most of us. If CO2 was a murky yellow gas, we would have dealt with this issue a long time ago. But CO2 touches every part of our lives — our cars, the places we work, the food we eat and the energy we use. 

 So, how do we make that visible? And what will actually motivate people to act?! My next post on Monday will share the takeaways from scientific studies and successful brands who have designed proven techniques for changing behaviours for the better. 

For now, let’s just focus on one thing: our energy use. How do we make that visible?

That was the initial goal of UCLA’s Engage project, one of the nation’s largest behavioural experiments in energy conservation. What we’re trying to do is to figure out how to frame information about electricity usage so that people save energy and conserve electricity.

The idea is that electricity is relatively invisible to people. The research team outfitted part of a student housing complex with meters that tracked real-time usage of appliances and then sent them weekly reports.

So you can see how much energy the stove used versus the dishwasher or the fridge. They realised, because of this project, the fridge was like the monster.

So lucky for them, their landlord upgraded their fridge to an energy-efficient one. They also learned other energy-saving tips, like unplugging their dishwasher when not in use and air-drying their clothes during the summer months. And researchers, in turn, discovered where people were willing to cut back.

The Engage project wanted to know what types of messaging could motivate people to change their behaviour. To see over time over a year and with repeated messages, how do people behave. How does that impact the consumer behaviour? What they found is that it’s very different.

Some households were sent personalised emails with their energy bill about how they could save money; others learned how their energy usage impacted the environment and children’s health.

Those who received messages about saving money did nothing. It was totally ineffective because electricity is relatively cheap. But emails sent that linked the amount of pollutants produced to rates of childhood asthma and cancer — well, those led to an 8% drop in energy use, and 19% in households with kids.

Now, in a separate study, researchers brought social competition into the mix. First, they hung posters around a dorm building to publicly showcase how students were really doing: red dots for energy wasters, green for those doing a good job, and a shiny gold star for those going above and beyond. This social pressure approach led to a 20% reduction in energy use.

We are social creatures, and as individualistic as we can be, turns out we do care about how we compare to others. And yes, we do like to be the best. Most people don’t want to say, “Oh, I’m the average. No, my usage is different and I want to be able to act on it.” And people can act on it because with these meters, they can now see their exact impact.

A company called OPower — is playing with this idea of social competition. They work with over 100 utility companies to provide personalized energy reports to millions of customers around the world. Now consumers can not only see their energy use but how it compares to their neighbours’.

Like the UCLA study found, this subtle social pressure encourages consumers to save energy. It’s been so effective that in 2016, Opower was able to generate the equivalent of two terawatt-hours of electricity savings. That’s enough to power every home in Miami for more than a year. And they’re not alone.

Even large companies are tapping into behavioural science to move the dial. Virgin Atlantic Airways gave a select group of pilots feedback on their fuel use. Over the course of a year, they collectively saved over 6,800 tons of fuel by making some simple changes: Adjusting their altitudes, routes, and speed reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by over 21,000 tons. These behavioural “nudges” do seem to be advancing how we as a society deal with some pretty complicated climate change issues, but it turns out we’re just getting started. The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) is also extensively investigating how behavioural economics and nudges can be used to help people avoid overdraft fees.

There is no “quick fix.” We need people changing their companies, changing their business models, changing the products and services they provide. This is about broader-scale change. And part of this change includes embracing what makes us human. It can’t just be a guilt trip about dying polar bears or driving around in gas guzzlers.

We need to talk about our wins, as well — like how we’re making progress, really being aware of our energy use, and taking advantage of that competitive spirit we all have in order to really move us from a state of apathy to action.

Global warming is by far the biggest issue of our time. Let’s make sure we strike the right tone to make progress now.

All views are my own.