How to change consumption patterns

The climate crisis is getting progressively more dire every year: more extreme events happening more frequently. In order to even slow the rate of warming, it is vital that we dramatically reduce the rate of GHG emissions per year. Even though reaching zero-emissions any time soon is impractical, we can still reduce emissions by a lot each year. However, this requires a significant change in consumption patterns on a global scale. Consumption has to shift in two ways:

1. To cleaner forms of energy: eg, renewable power instead of thermal, or natural gas instead of coal.?
2. To more efficient consumption: eg, public transport instead of private, smaller vehicles instead of larger, etc.

There are several reasons why people don’t change their consumption patterns.

1. Lack of awareness/information about how serious the problem is.
2. Indifference: feeling that their actions don’t have a material effect.?
3. Absence of cost-competitive options: If the green option is more costly, people will not buy it. Eg, biogradeable/resuable packaging vs. plastic packaging.
4. Desire for comfort/convenience: If the green option is inconvenient–takes more time or energy or is less comfortable or reliable–people will not buy it. Eg, public transport vs. private, or cars vs. two-wheelers.?

All these are very valid, natural reasons why people will not change their consumption patterns.?

A lot of environmental activists and researchers who deeply care about this cause think that changing these consumption patterns is just a matter of informing and persuading people. If only people understood the magnitude of the problem, they would do the right thing for the greater good.?

A lot of engineers, technologists and techno-optimists think that changing? these consumption patterns is just a matter of inventing newer technologies and products that are greener, and offering them to people. In short, that technology will solve this problem just as it did with food production, infectious diseases, etc. ?

I believe a change in consumption patterns requires sustained, coordinated action on three different fronts: technological improvements, government policies, and cultural change. The purpose of this article is to list all the levers in each of these areas that can influence the trajectory of this crisis. I hope this will prevent us from overly focusing on one lever to the exclusion of others.

Technology

Technological improvement has two effects: it makes products cheaper (eg, Li batteries, solar panels) and it expands the set of available choices available to us: eg, transoceanic flights only became viable when aircrafts became efficient and reliable enough. We need two kinds of new technologies for the green economy:

1. Clean energy technologies to replace existing ones that emit GHGs. For example, renewable energy generation, green cement, biodegradable packaging materials, etc.
2. Energy efficiency technologies: more efficient vehicles, aircrafts, trains, Air conditioners, etc. Efficiency improvements have always been happening (eg, mileage increase in cars, energy efficiency improvements in refrigerators), but are often iterative and less sexy. They happen behind the scenes, but still require continued investment as well as a push from government policy.

Technological innovation requires capital and talent. While the actual innovation is often market driven and done by private enterprises, and funded by private investment, the government can often create a suitable environment to encourage capital and talent to flow to these areas.?

Public Policy

Technological improvements can have a long gestation period from basic research to applied innovation to product development. To encourage technological improvements in areas critical for the climate crisis, the government can enact several policies both to create supply of green economy products and to encourage demand for these products.

Supply-side policies

1. ?Increase funding for basic research. This has already been happening in the US and Europe, but clearly can be increased further. In particular, some of the solutions for problems in India are likely to be found by Indian researchers and innovators that have to be funded by the Indian government.
2. Set up educational and training programs at all levels: college, post-graduate and even vocational training. The government can mandate these at least at public universities.
3. Incentivize manufacturing: There are several schemes by the Govt of India and various state govts to encourage manufacturing of green economy products: batteries, solar panels, electric vehicles, etc. Similar schemes now exist in most countries.??
4. Be the first buyer: The government can seed new categories of green economy products by being the first buyer. The government of India through EESL did this with LED lamps and more recently with electric buses. Such policies accelerate the market adoption of new technologies.

Demand-side policies

1. Mandates: Eg, emission norms such as BS-IV, BS-V etc., PUC cards.
2. Penalties: Eg, higher tax on older (higher emission) vehicles.
3. Incentives: Eg, electric vehicle rebates, incentives for rooftop residential solar plants.
4. Progressive consumption tax: People argue that taxing or penalising consumption is inflationary and unfair: it hurts poor people and poor countries more than rich ones. It might reduce trade (eg, taxing travel will discourage tourism) which is also inflationary. We don’t have to ban consumption, or tax it uniformly. But we can tax it progressively, and judiciously.? For example:?

Progressive consumption tax will flatten consumption at the high end while not affecting it at the low end. Thereby making it fairer and less inflationary.

Culture Change

Culture is defined by what we value as a society. Some cultures value efficiency (eg, Japan), others value size (eg, US). Culture is very deeply rooted and therefore is very slow to change. For example, the slow food movement that started in the US in the 70s and was influenced by Asian and Mediterranean food cultures took 40 years to go mainstream where today organic food options are available in most grocery stores.?

To change consumption patterns, it is vital that we change the culture around consumption: both what we consume and how much we consume. Cultural change will manifest in two different ways: changing consumer behavior, and changing government policies. Afterall, in a democracy, the government executes the will of the people. We must recognize that changing consumer behavior will be very slow and could even take a generation or two. As Elon Musk said: people don’t change, they just die.?

So, it might be easier to pressure governments to change policies than to influence large numbers of individual consumers. This can be achieved by a combination of scientific and economic analysis of government policies toward the climate crisis, and via activism to make the climate crisis an important election issue.

Summary: In general, changing govt policies, specially around mandates, taxes and incentives, is the quickest of the three forces. Technological improvements happen over a medium term, and can be uncertain since technological breakthroughs cannot always be predicted. Cultural change takes the longest to take effect. All of us fighting the global climate crisis should keep in mind all these forces at play, and their impact timeline, when trying to change consumption patterns. Some of these levers can affect consumption far faster, and more immediately than others. For each climate related problem, the right combination of these levers should be identified, analyzed and advocated for. One should refrain from being blinkered or ideological about it.