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  • "We are hurtling toward the day when climate change could be irreversible."

  • "Rising sea levels already altering this nation’s coast."

  • "China’s capital is choking in its worst pollution of the year."

  • "5% of species will become extinct."

  • "Sea levels rising, glaciers melting."

  • Okay.

  • Enough.

  • I get it.

  • It’s not like I don’t care about polar bears and melting ice caps.

  • I’m a conservation scientist, so of course I care.

  • I’ve dedicated my entire career to this.

  • But over the years, one thing has become clear to me: We need to change the way we talk about

  • climate change.

  • This doom-and-gloom messaging just isn’t working; we seem to want to tune it out.

  • And this fear, this guilt, we know from psychology is not conducive to engagement.

  • It's rather the opposite.

  • It makes people passive, because when I feel fearful or guilt-full, I will withdraw from

  • the issue and try to think about something else that makes me feel better.

  • And 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.

  • So it’s no wonder that scientists and policymakers have been struggling with this issue too.

  • So I like to 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 Americans 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 maybe some developing countries.

  • Again, it’s not like we don’t care about these thingsit’s just such a complicated

  • problem.

  • But the thing is, weve faced enormous, scary climate issues before.

  • Remember the hole in the ozone layer?

  • As insurmountable as that seemed in the 1970s and ’80s, we were able to wrap our heads

  • around that and take action.

  • People got this very simple, easy to understand, concrete image of this protective layer around

  • the Earth, kind of like a roof, protecting us, in this case, from ultraviolet light,

  • which by the way has the direct health consequence of potentially giving you skin cancer.

  • Okay, so now you've got my attention.

  • And so then they came up with this fabulous term, theozone hole.”

  • Terrible problem, great term.

  • People also got a concrete image of how we even ended up with this problem.

  • For decades, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were the main ingredient in a lot of products,

  • like aerosol spray cans.

  • Then scientists discovered that CFCs were actually 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, god no.”

  • And so 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 amazing.

  • And while stopping the use of one product is actually pretty easy, climate change caused

  • by greenhouse gasesthat’s much trickier.

  • Because the sources are more complicated, and for the most part, theyre totally invisible.

  • Right now, there is CO2 pouring out of tailpipes, there is CO2 pouring out of buildings,

  • there is CO2 pouring out of smokestacks, but you can't see it.

  • The fundamental cause of this problem is largely invisible to most of us.

  • I mean, if CO2 was black, we would have dealt with this issue a long time ago.

  • So CO2 touches every part of our livesour cars, the places we work, the food we eat.

  • 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 behavioral

  • 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.

  • We realized, 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 behavior.

  • We wanted to see over time over a year and with repeated messages, how do people, behave?

  • How does that impact the consumer behavior?

  • And what we found is that it's very different.

  • Some households were sent personalized 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 cancerwell, 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.

  • This strategy was also used at Paulina’s complex, and it definitely brought out her

  • competitive streak.

  • For me, the competition was what motivated me, because seeing your apartment number and

  • telling you that you are doing at the average, but you are not the best, was like, Why?

  • I’m doing everything you are telling me to do.

  • I always wanted the gold star, because it was like, “Oh, my god, I want to be like

  • the less consumption of energy in the whole building.”

  • And psychology studies have proved this.

  • 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.

  • Some people don’t want to say, Oh, I'm like 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 neighbors’.

  • 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 theyre not alone.

  • Even large companies are tapping into behavioral 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 behavioralnudgesdo seem to be advancing how we as a society deal with some

  • pretty complicated climate change issues, but it turns out were just getting started.

  • There is noquick 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.

  • That 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 welllike how were 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.

  • Climate Lab is a new series from Vox and the University of California, and well be exploring

  • some surprising ways we can tackle this problem.

  • If you want to learn more, head to climate.universityofcalifornia.edu.

"We are hurtling toward the day when climate change could be irreversible."

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