Record heat, record emissions, record fossil fuel consumption. One month after Cop28, the world is further than ever from achieving its collective climate goals. According to recent research, at the root of all these problems is the human “behavioral crisis,” a term coined by an interdisciplinary team of scientists.
“We have socially engineered ourselves as we geo-engineered the planet,” says Joseph Merz, lead author of a new paper proposing that climate collapse is a symptom of ecological overshoot, which in turn is caused by the deliberate exploitation of human behavior.
“We need to become aware of how we are being manipulated,” said Merz, co-founder of the Merz Institute, an organization that researches the systemic causes of the climate crisis and how to address them.
Merz and colleagues believe that most climate solutions proposed so far only address the symptoms and not the cause of the crisis. This, they say, leads to increasing levels of the three ‘levers’ of overshoot: consumption, waste and population growth.
They argue that unless resource demand is reduced, many other innovations will be just a band-aid. “We can address climate change and make the exceedance worse,” says Merz. “The material footprint of renewable energy is dangerously underexposed. These energy parks have to be rebuilt every few decades. They won’t solve the bigger problem unless we address the demand.”
‘Overshoot’ refers to how much earth human society uses to sustain itself – or grow. Humanity would currently need 1.7 Earths to maintain resource consumption at a level that could restore the planet’s biocapacity.
While discussion of climate often focuses on carbon emissions, a focus on overshoot highlights material use, waste production, and the growth of human society, all of which impact Earth’s biosphere.
“Overshoot is essentially a crisis of human behavior,” says Merz. “For decades we have been telling people to change their behavior, without saying, ‘Change your behavior.’ We said ‘be greener’ or ‘fly less’, but in the meantime all the things that drive behavior have gone the other way. All these subtle signals and not-so-subtle signals have literally gone in the opposite direction – and we’ve been wondering why nothing is changing.”
The article explores how neuropsychology, social signaling and norms have been exploited to drive human behavior that grows the economy, from consuming goods to having large families. The authors suggest that age-old urges to belong to a tribe, signal one’s status, or attract a mate have been co-opted by marketing strategies to create behavior incompatible with a sustainable world.
“People are the victims – we have been exploited to the point where we are in crisis. These tools are being used to drive us toward extinction,” said evolutionary behavioral ecologist and study co-author Phoebe Barnard. “Why not use them to build a truly sustainable world?”
Just a quarter of the world’s population is responsible for almost three-quarters of emissions. The authors suggest that the best strategy to combat transgression would be to use the tools of the marketing, media and entertainment industries in a campaign to redefine our material-intensive socially accepted norms.
“We’re talking about replacing what people are trying to signal, what they’re trying to say about themselves. Right now our signals have a very large material footprint: our clothes are linked to status and wealth, the materials are sourced from all over the world, most often shipped to Southeast Asia and then shipped here, only to be replaced by the next season’s clothes. trends. The things that people can attach status to are so fluid that we could replace them all with things that essentially have no material footprint – or better yet, that have an ecologically positive footprint.”
The Merz Institute runs a laboratory for excess behavior, where they work on interventions to address excess behavior. One identifies “behavior influencers” such as screenwriters, web developers, and algorithm engineers, all of whom promote certain social norms and could work to rewire society relatively quickly and harmlessly by promoting a new set of behaviors.
The article discusses the enormous success of the work of the Population Media Center, an initiative that creates mainstream entertainment to stimulate behavior change on population growth and even gender violence. Fertility rates have fallen in countries where the center’s telenovelas and radionovelas have been broadcast.
Population growth is a difficult topic to broach, given the not-too-distant history of eugenics and ethnic cleansing practiced in many countries around the world. However, Merz and colleagues emphasize that it is important to address this problem as population growth has offset most climate gains from renewables and efficiency over the past thirty years.
“Frankly, it’s a women’s liberation issue,” Barnard says. “A higher level of education leads to lower fertility rates. Who could ever say they are against girls’ education – and if so, why?”
The team calls for more interdisciplinary research into what they have called the “human behavior crisis,” and for concerted efforts to redefine our social norms and desires that drive overconsumption. When asked about the ethics of such a campaign, Merz and Barnard point out that companies fight for consumer attention every second of the day.
“Is it ethical to exploit our psychology for the benefit of an economic system that is destroying the planet?” Barnard asks. “Creativity and innovation lead to overconsumption. The system drives us to suicide. It is conquest, entitlement, misogyny, arrogance and it comes in a stinking package that drives us to the abyss.”
The team is convinced that solutions that do not address the underlying drivers of our growth-based economies will only worsen the overshoot crisis.
“Everything we know and love is at stake,” Barnard said. “A habitable planet and a peaceful civilization both have value, and we must be mindful of using tools in ethical and justice-based ways. This isn’t just about humanity. This goes for every other species on this planet. This is about future generations.”
“I get frustrated when people are paralyzed thinking: what should I do? Or what should we do? There are moral hazards everywhere. We must choose how we intervene to allow us as humanity to work on a path forward, because everything right now is aimed at robbing us of our humanity.”