352: Catastrophe Apathy: Why understanding the climate crisis isn’t enough
Most people are concerned about the climate crisis, but all too often that doesn’t translate into action. This week we dig into the psychology behind ‘catastrophe apathy’ to understand the gap.
About this episode
Climate concern is not the problem. Most people have it. What's missing is everything that turns concern into action - and understanding that gap turns out to be a lot more complicated than it looks.
This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson sit down with Lorraine Whitmarsh, Professor of Environmental Psychology and Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations at the University of Bath.
Together they dig into the psychology behind catastrophe apathy: why understanding an existential threat doesn't always lead to action, and what the research says actually moves people.
Lorraine shares real-world evidence - including renewable energy tariffs that shifted 90% of customers onto green power simply by making it the default - and explains why trusted everyday messengers, from hairdressers to taxi drivers, employers to community figures, often have more influence than expert voices in reshaping what feels normal.
The conversation also revisits an uncomfortable history: how the personal carbon footprint, popularised by BP in the early 2000s, reframed climate responsibility around individual choices rather than systemic change. A framing so powerful that even environmental organisations adopted it. Who benefited most from that shift is a question the movement is still grappling with.
If systemic change requires public consent, and public consent requires political will, and political will requires behaviour change - how do you break the climate Catch-22?
Learn More:
🧠 Explore Lorraine Whitmarsh's research at the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, University of Bath
🔌 Read about the Swiss renewable energy default study — the experiment that moved 90% of customers to green energy by changing a default setting
🗳️ Learn more about citizens' assemblies on climate and deliberative democracy in practice
🌍 Read the IPCC's work on demand-side solutions and behavioural change in its Sixth Assessment Report
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
Join the conversation:
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Or get in touch with us via this form.
Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
Edited by Miles Martignoni
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
Full Transcript
Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Hello, and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.
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Christiana Figueres: I'm Christiana Figueres.
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Paul Dickinson: And I'm Paul Dickinson.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Today, we ask, how can people be persuaded to take action to make a difference in the climate crisis? Thanks for being here. All right, we're gonna get to an amazing conversation you two have just had with Lorraine Whitmarsh, who is an environmental psychologist here at the University of Bath and director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformation. I have to say it was a great discussion because what I thought the three of you did was really delve into what are the real barriers between getting the public engaged. And I thought she had some great insights, but I have to say, it did make me think a little bit of the story of the carbon footprint. Did you find yourself thinking about that as you were talking to her?
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Paul Dickinson: The sinister story, because there's probably a hundred stories of the carbon footprint, but there's one that's very famous, which I think you're going to share with us, Tom.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It was in the early 2000s, and older listeners like me may remember that at one point, the company formerly known as British Petroleum, changed itself to call itself Beyond Petroleum, which I liked personally. Which you liked, right? Under the leadership of John Brown. And at that time, they also did something else, which is to popularize the idea of a personal carbon footprint. Now, this is based on life cycle assessment analysis that have been around for decades. But they really put real advertising budget behind the idea that every individual can take responsibility for their own quote unquote carbon footprint and take action to reduce that. Now, this was seen at the time as a real breakthrough. But looking back now 25 years later...
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Christiana Figueres: And was then adopted by every single environmental organization that put their own carbon cap...
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: People thought it was brilliant. You just need to get people to change their diets, change their light bulbs, stop flying, and we're going to solve the problem. And the reframing did a few important things. It shifted the blame from companies to individuals. It depoliticized the problem. Regulation felt a bit less urgent. It was about what people themselves did. And it made it kind of all our responsibility. Now, if you look back a few decades later, I think you have to ask the question of whether or not this has been beneficial for our collective approach to deal with the climate crisis. What's your answer to that question?
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Christiana Figueres: There's a great word in German that does not exist in any other language, which is Jain, which is both yes and no at the same time.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right, right. Paul?
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Paul Dickinson: I'm just quoting Donald Trump, 23rd of September, 25. The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions and they are heading down the path of total destruction.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: You probably didn't even know it was an oligarchy.
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Paul Dickinson: He said it at the United Nations in front of the entire world. I mean, I spent a quarter of a century encouraging companies and cities to reveal their carbon footprint, but I also think that there's a lot of complexity in here. So let's hear the interview.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Let's hear the interview. But I mean, the final point, just to help listeners understand, is the reason this is complex is it's made it about individual choices. But what has happened now is we've realized that actually there are big systemic things beyond our control, beyond the control of an individual. And if you look back now cynically decades later, can you say that BP, consciously or unconsciously, that's giving them the benefit of the doubt, we're shifting the target from themselves onto individuals. And for individuals, it ain't that easy to change. Now, I think what's great about this conversation with Lorraine is she manages to not go down either of those two different routes.
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Christiana Figueres: Or rather just say it's both.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: To say that the dichotomy can be existed with and brought back together. So let's go to that conversation with Lorraine Whitmarsh, Environmental Psychologist and Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations at the University of Bath.
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Christiana Figueres: Lorraine, thank you so much for joining us here on Outrage and Optimism. Actually, I think you should welcome us because we're here to be more correct because we're here on your home turf.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Yes, welcome to the University of Bath. It's lovely to have you. Well, thank you so much.
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Christiana Figueres: Lorraine, there's one, at least one thing that you have in common with climate scientists. And that is the frustration that they all communicate, that they are screaming from the rooftops, that they have data up the gazoo, and that the data and information doesn't really make any difference. We have heard that so many times from our friends, the climate scientists. How do you interpret that? Why is that?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): I think the reason for that is because there are lots of things that shape our behaviour. And we're fundamentally interested in behaviour change and what works to get people to adopt lower carbon lifestyles and more climate resilient lifestyles. And while what we think and feel is one set of factors that shapes our behaviour, it's usually quite a small one relative to things like the cost of products or how convenient things are or what's socially normal. All of those things in the environment around us are much stronger factors. So you can give people information about how bad climate change is or maybe even how cheap renewable energy is. But that is not necessarily going to overcome the wider cost convenience and other barriers that people will experience.
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Christiana Figueres: That make them actually stay with the status quo of their behaviour.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Exactly, exactly. And actually, that's another thing is that there is something called the status quo bias, which is that basically people just don't really like to change. They just go with the flow, the norm. So whatever is the kind of default set up is going to be a really strong influence on their behaviour. And most of the things at the moment in the world are set up more towards kind of higher carbon choices than lower carbon ones. So it's harder for people to make low carbon choices.
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Christiana Figueres: In your research, have you identified any golden levers that could be pulled on this to change behaviour?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): I wouldn't say there's a golden lever slash silver bullet, but I...
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Christiana Figueres: You see, I didn't want to use the bullet piece.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Oh, yeah, very good. I'll move it. I'll transition towards the golden lever term. That's a better one. No, not really because there are multiple factors that shape our behaviour. We tend to find that the most effective interventions are comprised of several elements. So they will be something that makes it easy, something that makes it cheaper, something that raises awareness, like it will have all of those factors. But there are some interventions that certainly work better than others. They're what we tend to call upstream measures, so things that change the context in which we're acting as opposed to downstream, which is usually kind of information provision where you're trying to persuade people but not actually make it easy for them. So the upstream stuff tends to work better. There are some really nice studies that do use kind of one approach that are quite effective. Perhaps my favorite one was conducted by a Swiss research group in collaboration with a Swiss energy company, where they shifted a quarter of a million energy customers by default onto a renewable energy tariff. And speaking of the status quo bias, about 90% of those people stuck with that tariff at least four years later, even though it was costing them a little bit more to get green energy, when they had to opt in to get the renewable tariff, only 3% did that. So the difference between 3% and 90% is giant. So I would say that that's seen a kind of short list of low-hanging fruit to get really big results if you want to change behavior. Those sorts of defaults are really powerful.
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Paul Dickinson: Because that wasn't a change of behavior, that was just doing it to them.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Well, this is, I guess, how you define behavior change, okay? So I think those people had a choice to maybe opt out and choose to have their energy come from wherever they wanted. But yeah, I guess a behavior is where you get your energy from. That's one type of behavior is sourcing your energy. So change the default. It makes it a lot easier for people, definitely.
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Christiana Figueres: To go back to your upstream and downstream, if you go far enough upstream, you remove choice. Well, let's just take, we were just joking about Costa Rica. Honestly, in Costa Rica, you don't have a choice because all energy is clean. So anyone who says, well, I'm a clean energy consumer. Well, yeah, of course, because you don't have any other option. So how far upstream do we have to go to remove the options? Because once you go there, then we're talking about systemic changes that are no longer within the purview of individuals. And that, of course, is exactly the opposite to what the fossil fuel industry has been arguing for a long time because they say, no, no, no, no, it's the consumer. If you are buying this energy or if you have a petrol or a fossil fuel card, then you're reliant on us. So where on that scale between choice and radical systemic change do you think that we have any opportunity to move?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): I mean, you're right, basically.
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Christiana Figueres: Because I think we're stuck on both is what I'm saying.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The approach that policy makers as well as industry tend to favor is leave it up to the consumers and not to intervene too much. Give them information, let them choose, maybe provide a few incentives to start things moving in the right direction, but don't go too far because they fear that you might get backlash and that consumers will say, this is interfering too much, we don't want this. The polling evidence actually suggests that publics around the world want governments to go further, they want more ambitious action. So there is this kind of misperception, I think, amongst policy makers about how far they can go. But the public want the barriers removed. It's quite clear from all of the focus.
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Christiana Figueres: They want the barriers removed by someone else.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): By the upstream actors, by industry and government. Absolutely, yeah, because it's like some people can go to enormous efforts to have a low-carbon lifestyle. But for the majority of people, there are some really pretty big barriers. Like it's literally just too expensive to have a heat pump or an electric vehicle for many people at the moment. And so they're going to have to wait or basically the government can just make it cheaper, easier, companies can do more. So there are things that those more upstream actors can do to start to create a kind of systemic change that then enables people to adopt lower carbon lifestyles in a way that is easier.
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Christiana Figueres: Or doesn't give them the choice.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Or potentially doesn't give them the choice. Now this is to the point of I guess democracy and how you bring people with you in that transition and so we're really interested in that as well. Essentially it is difficult to really go very far unless you are bringing people with you and having kind of a strong public participation approach. So this is why the rise of deliberative democracy and citizens assemblies and juries and things is really important because then you enable the public to feel part of that decision making and that transition that does start to shift things so that there's a kind of a new normal so that there are new defaults that enable people to do the right thing. So people want to be in that state but they want to kind of feel that they're part of that transition too.
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Christiana Figueres: Now, proverbially, there's this 89% of global population that proverbially want, as you say, their governments to take serious climate action. Those people don't vote for climate responsible leaders.
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Paul Dickinson: Why?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Yeah, that's a really good point. I think there is definitely what we call an attitude behavior gap. So the attitude is people are very worried about climate change and they want more action on it when it comes to acting and that includes voting. But also some of the things we've talked about, the consumer type actions. There are other things that come into play that may mean that they don't enact the concern that they experience. And so when they're choosing a leader, they're also thinking about, well, I would like lower bills, for example. And that's like the cost of living is biting and I'm going to choose a party that's saying they're going to fix that for me. And I'm worried about my children's health. And so I'm going to.
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Christiana Figueres: So other issues go up.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): And this is why I think if politicians can talk about the co-benefits of climate change in ways that really forefront those more tangible benefits to people like lower energy bills, these are the win-wins that can help in terms of this kind of like why people would want to vote for those parties.
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Paul Dickinson: So two things here. One is like when you're talking about consumers, I'm always triggered by memory of John Alexander's lifetime thesis to think of people as citizens. And he's been on the show before. When you think about people, there's the democracy of the market and consumers there vote in the market with their dollars. And there's the democracy of the citizen as the public and the public interest in, I guess, voting for system change through the political process. I suppose they're in a bit of a dance. Is that right?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point that people have multiple roles. They are consumers, they are citizens, they're professionals. That often isn't necessarily sort of brought into thinking about climate action. They're members of communities, they're parents, they're so many things. And so in those multiple roles, there are actually lots of things that people can do, but they don't necessarily think of those contexts in which they can take climate change action. Most often, if they think about it at all, it might be as a consumer. So it is very much relegated to that consumer domain, and they don't necessarily think about it in those other domains, including the Citizen One, actually. So I think there's a really big job to kind of try to change the narrative to get people to think about those different ways in which they can make a difference. And because actually, especially because politicians, businesses, et cetera, tend to focus on the consumer, people therefore think about the barriers to buying a heat pump and buying an electric vehicle, whereas having a conversation with somebody at work or your manager, anybody could do that. So there are lots of easy things that people can do in these other domains that are maybe harder in the consumer context.
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Paul Dickinson: At the very start, you spoke about people not responding to information. And it's kind of crazy because the information comes, you know, world's going to be deranged by climate change. You know, your children, your grandchildren, are in the most terrible trouble. And it's kind of like, right, yeah, I agree with that. But there are all these other things, you know, actually, you know, why is it humans don't process existential risk?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): I think because we're fundamentally evolved to look at things in our immediate environment and the short term. And so we're not well adapted to think about long term risks, to think about global risks, to think about things that have some degree of complexity and uncertainty. So all of those things make climate change, what we call psychologically distant. It's something which is a bit hard to get to grips with essentially, whereas things in the here and now are very tangible things, things to do with cost and how your children are doing, etc. These are really things that are going to preoccupy most people. And this is why I think to really get people to take climate action, you have to kind of align climate action with those things that are really motivating people.
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Christiana Figueres: And you would, after realizing all these difficulties in this challenge, would you still argue that it is necessary to motivate and achieve individual behavior change in order to address climate? Or would you say, actually, I, as an expert in the field, I conclude that this is so complicated and so quasi impossible that we have to export everything to the systemic level?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): I wouldn't say that you can have one with the other, actually. I would say that you cannot have system change without the people that comprise that system doing things differently. Some of that is very at the individual level in terms of what you buy, how you vote, etc., what you do in your day-to-day life. But we can act collectively as well as members of communities, as organizations within the workplace and so on. So at different scales, we can take lots of action which together then moves the system forward. So I would say those two things are interconnected and you can't have one without the other.
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Paul Dickinson: We've talked about the sort of behaviour and all this. What about the messenger that delivers the message? Does it matter who is communicating to a citizen that they might enjoy or benefit or should or must change behaviour?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Yeah, very much so. So we know the message plays some role, what you convey to people. But who is saying it is also absolutely critical. So those people have to be trusted messengers. And trust is comprised of several things. The messenger has to be seen as somebody who doesn't necessarily have a vested interest. So they're not trying to push something or have a particular agenda. They also will probably have some level of competence as well. And that could be an expert, but it could just be more day to day experience. I've installed a heat pump and I can tell you it's working for me kind of thing. So I'm speaking from some experience here.
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Christiana Figueres: If I don't own a heat pump company.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Well, exactly. So that might contradict, yes, that would be quite clear that you would have a bit of a vested interest. So those two things tend to be comprised sort of more trusted messengers. And so if you look at the sorts of more effective ways of communicating climate change or getting people to take climate action, it tends to be through more informal networks. And so friends, family, employers, employees, kind of people that you meet in the workplace also influences within your local community. So I'm doing work with a colleague, Sam Hampton, who is particularly focused on everyday influences. So people are hairdressers and taxi drivers, maybe people who work within the church as well, church leaders. And these are people that have extraordinary influence, maybe over small periods of time, but with people that they, you know, their customers, for example, or their flock. So yeah, these people are going to be really trusted messengers.
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Paul Dickinson: I mean, thank you for this. I'm learning that the silver lever isn't necessarily something kind of out there at the big meta level. It's actually, it's proximate. It's possibly gradual. And it's sort of intimate that that's kind of where the behaviour changes, because we're not hardwired to sort of see a geopolitical risk. We're hardwired to sort of evolve in our domain.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Yeah, I think that's right. I think actually most people want to do the right thing, but they want it to be relatively easy. And I think, yeah, this is clear that we need this to be kind of a system change, but we need to kind of bring people with us. And yeah, I agree.
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Christiana Figueres: Is there also the piece of it not being perceived as punishment, as sacrifice, as going back into the caves, but rather being cool?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Yeah, very much so. I think actually, if you look at the way in which behaviour change for climate is often portrayed, it's assumed it's a sacrifice. It's like hair shirtism. And to some extent, that can be true because it can be more expensive. It can mean giving up some things. But very often there are co-benefits actually. And so the work of the IPCC that I'm part of has highlighted the fact that most of the things we can do on climate change have tangible co-benefits for individuals. They can improve health, well-being, mental health, air quality, biodiversity, many, many, many co-benefits that people value. So if the more we can talk about, actually, this is potentially making you happier. This is about improving your quality of life. And the evidence is there that it does that. I think, yeah, we're on to something to challenge this narrative that it's about sacrifice.
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Christiana Figueres: So maybe turn the tables completely around and say, yes, your health first and the co-benefit actually is decarbonism. So it's not that health is the co-benefit of climate, but rather turn it around completely.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): I think so, yeah, exactly. Because I think a lot of the new sort of discussion within IPCC and elsewhere is around kind of sufficiency. And so actually having enough that meets your basic needs so that you have a level of well-being, but not over-consuming. Because actually that doesn't even improve your well-being, but also it has environmental costs.
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Paul Dickinson: Sufficiency indeed, you don't want kind of obesity. And in terms of phasing things out, there's that, you know, the years ago, the fur coat sort of disappeared because it was an extraordinary advert that just said, it takes one, 14 dumb animals to make this coat and one dumb animal to wear it. And you saw the silhouette, the blood out of the back of the coat. I never saw fur coat ever again. Within this context, we can't deny that I found out recently that what I used to think was hundreds of billions, now more than a trillion dollars a year, are being spent on advertising, persuading people to essentially buy more.
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Christiana Figueres: Consume.
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Paul Dickinson: Consume, consume, consume. How do we respond to that? Is there any way we can use it? Is there some jujitsu?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): I think there's a couple of things I'd say. I think we need much stronger regulation in relation to advertising because there's some good work looking at how you can attribute emissions to advertising. Actually, because advertisers themselves claim that for every pound spent on advertising, they get so much more consumption achieved. Therefore, you can say, well, actually, they are accountable for an enormous amount of emissions.
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Christiana Figueres: For all that extra consumption?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): For, yeah, absolutely. There are some things that are being proposed around either banning adverts for really high emitting products and or putting warning labels on things to sort of be really explicit. Absolutely, exactly like cigarettes. It's exactly the same thing. So there are things that can be done to curb advertising and to sort of mitigate the effects of it. And at the same time, absolutely use the tactics of the marketers to promote climate action as being really desirable, as being normal, as being something that will make you happier and fulfill all your desires. And there is good evidence that many of those things really will do that. So you can even be honest about it.
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Paul Dickinson: Honest advertising, okay, I may catch on.
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Christiana Figueres: Is it in Aksumaran or does it really exist?
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Paul Dickinson: Last question for me, because I know our time is coming to an end. You're incredibly eloquent on this theme of the sort of nudge and the driving. What were the philanthropic gods to give you a billion pounds or dollars or euro or something to deploy to behaviour change or to campaigns for regulatory and policy change? How would you spend the money?
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): I don't want to be annoying and say they're kind of related, but they're kind of related. So I think it would be about a campaign that gets people to accept regulatory change, but through that, you would then achieve the behaviour change. It's about having like citizens assemblies all over the place, bringing people together to say, let's make it easier for people to do the right thing, essentially.
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Paul Dickinson: Thank you so much for digging into this.
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Christiana Figueres: Thank you so much.
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Paul Dickinson: And dealing with these topics at the IPCC level, where they're critical and that sufficiency phrase actually got kind of tingled down my spine. I kind of thought that's a really brilliant way of framing the human challenge.
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Lorraine Whitmarsh (guest, University of Bath): Thank you. It's been lovely to be here.
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Christiana Figueres: Thank you very much.
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Paul Dickinson: I was saddened to have to change my view, which I never liked to do. So I kind of came into this with a sense in my head that the next big step is policy and regulation and everything else is not working. And what I think I learned during the discussion was that it's naive to believe that policy and regulation don't emerge from a context of existing behavior change. If you go for something quite radical, I can actually remember being a cigarette smoker 32 years ago, and we'd smoke on the underground and things like that. And then the London Underground said you can't smoke on the underground anymore, or we'd smoke on airplanes. And then the airplane company said you can't smoke on airplanes anymore. It sounds crazy, but actually, I might experience each time, it's kind of like, I'm glad about that, actually, I want to give up smoking. So go back another 30 years or more, smoking very dangerous, very bad for your health, leads to lung cancer, heart damage. So I was already in a place where I was like, I want to change, and I'd had various goes of giving up smoking, which hadn't worked. And then the government kind of chipped in with bans on underground, bans on airplanes, and it helped. But it was a, this is what I've learned, is it's a symbiotic relationship, information leading to attempts at behavior change, leading to regulation and policy, in hopefully a positive ambition, Luke, to quote Nigel Topping's memorable phrase. What do you think, Christiana?
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, I agree, and I think it is helpful that she understands that this is a feedback loop that feeds on itself in a positive way, and hopefully in a cyclical way. I also think that when you do something that is responsible on climate, most people want to do it for other reasons that are not climate. But there are so many people out there who are despondent about climate, and for whom taking personal action and personal responsibility within their own sphere of influence is actually very good for their mental health. So it's not just that personal or individual behavior change affects the whatever emissions, your personal emissions, that is also true. But the ramifications go beyond that. It's also about, it enables me to feel that I have some agency. It enables me to feel like, yes, this is a huge problem. It is, as she said, the psychological distance is certainly still there. But if I can take something, if I can put a heat pump in, if I can choose what kind of electricity, if I can do something that is specific, it gives me, yes, reduces my footprint and gives me a sense of, I can do something. I can contribute.
00:26:33.463 --> 00:26:40.563
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah, I have to say, I was just really appreciative listening to the conversation, how deep and sophisticated it's now become. Because I think that there was a time when there was a baked in assumption that we just need to tell people the risks and how bad it is, and that will somehow lead to change in society. And I think people in the climate movement have been guilty of being a bit confused as to why there's not more change happening. And I think even relatively straightforward concepts like psychological distance versus immediacy, like we now have language that put around those different elements. It did make me think about all three of us spend quite a long time together with friends thinking about how do you message this stuff? How do you phrase it? How do you associate it with other co-benefits that get people more engaged in the issue? Who are the messengers that can reach out to try and cut through? And while listening to her talk, it did make me think that that's part of the story. Of course, that's really important. But we also need to be much more cognizant of the 3D universe that people are living in. To give you an example, yes, of course, bills are important. Yes, of course, health is important on climate. But on health, for example, we talk about air pollution. That might be relevant and motivating for some people. But people have got a lot of concerns. Life's busy. They're running around. They've got jobs. They're doing different things. To expect someone to turn their life around, because you talk about air pollution, is probably unrealistic unless they've got a three-year-old in daycare next to a major road. If you talk about affordability, yes, that might be really motivating for somebody who's really struggling to afford their bills 10, 20 percent off as you shift to renewables. Some of these changes happen in our energy supply chain that's going to be really motivating. But actually, there are also a lot of people who don't think that much about their bills and it just goes out by direct debit and they're not necessarily-
00:28:23.783 --> 00:28:24.983
Paul Dickinson: Or haven't got the investment money.
00:28:24.983 --> 00:28:27.483
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Haven't got the investment money and the money just goes out. So I think that there was a lot in the rich conversation that she had about the psychological relevance of these issues to our lives. How you look at the entirety of someone's life and their values and their challenges and the context that they live in, and how do you really get into the context of thinking about this? How do you make this relevant for them? I'm just really glad there's people like her working on this and looking at the research because I think that we've got a lot further to go to really understand it.
00:28:55.083 --> 00:28:56.483
Christiana Figueres: We do have a lot further to go. I mean, I didn't come out of that conversation feeling like, okay, we now know exactly what we're going to do at all. I just came out of that conversation going like, it is more complex than we thought. And she's absolutely true. Nothing that she said took me by surprise, but just the compounded effect of every argument and every challenge that she put on just made it like, wow, this is really complicated at the individual level. And the other thing that she made me think of is the oil and gas exporting countries have understood everything that she explained and are now playing it in fast forward speed in the Plastics Convention. Yeah. Because they have understood that individual behavior change is very, very difficult. In fact, they hope that it's not likely or perhaps even not possible. And the reason why the Plastics Convention at the end of last year couldn't proceed and basically came down to no decision is because the fossil fuel exporting countries who see that their fossil fuels are no longer competitive for electricity generation are now no longer competitive for transport, at least like transport. They see that they have a long tail in business continuity with petrochemicals and with plastics. And so they want to protect that. And what they did in the plastics community and in the Plastics Convention is say, well, we're not going to agree on anything that would aspire to stop production until you all agree on something that curtails consumption. Right. So, I mean, that is the executive summary of this whole conversation with Lorraine. And they have understood that. They have it so clear. They don't even need to do any of the PhD research. They know exactly what it's about and they have us by the tail. Yeah.
00:31:06.003 --> 00:31:08.423
Paul Dickinson: And so, we do need to focus on that last. And I think it's a very significant concept of sufficiency. And I actually think that this idea of us thinking, I'm glad that IPCC are thinking about it like, well, what is sufficient? I mean, clearly, that we're not going to put some kind of arbitrary limit on all kinds of human activity. But back in the day, religious forces would say, it's easier to get the camel through the eye of the needle, which I think is not like a sewing needle, but it's a very hard thing to do than to get a rich person into heaven. And there were these senses that there was inequalities and possibly ethical wrong about excessive wealth. I think a notion of sufficiency could be a contemporary, more ecological limits-based way of phrasing things. And quite frankly, it's possible that billionaires, which want to give their money away to a certain extent because they would associate an excess or gross over-sufficiency with that kind of wealth. And we could start to get in a bit of a balance about how we live with each other. Because one planet, nine billion people, excesses of beyond this realm of sufficiency lead us into a place can cause us to be obese, can cause us to be unhealthy, and not help us find a path towards coexistence with nobility or at least conscience.
00:32:22.843 --> 00:32:31.143
Christiana Figueres: India has long argued that two tons per capita should be the limit that everyone accepts. Of course, it happens to be the per capita emission of India. Of India. But, you know, I mean, India has argued this for a long time. They have said if we all put a personal cap on our emissions and it's two tons per capita, we would have a very different world. We would be able to address climate in a timely way.
00:32:54.183 --> 00:32:57.003
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So this idea, of course, as you both know, has been around for a long time. I remember tradable emissions quotas in 2007 had like a policy paper behind it. Have you ever spoken to any politician who has any intention of trying to sell this to the public?
00:33:07.983 --> 00:33:16.583
Christiana Figueres: No, I have spoken to many NGOs who are proposing or have proposed in the past, for example, the contraction and convergence theory. Do you remember? It was a beautiful theory.
00:33:18.703 --> 00:33:19.923
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Beautiful theory.
00:33:19.923 --> 00:33:22.683
Christiana Figueres: Honestly, it made so much sense. Contraction because the countries or the per capita countries are way up, it should come down.
00:33:30.503 --> 00:33:31.263
Paul Dickinson: Or been there. All countries on one tonne a year immediately sell the other tonne they're not using and get a massive influx of funds.
00:33:38.443 --> 00:33:43.343
Tom Rivett-Carnac: The question is, the reason that is a beautiful idea, that has remained a beautiful idea for 30 years. And nothing more than a beautiful idea, albeit very well explained and very compelling to people like us, has never had anything approaching, even fringe political support.
00:33:53.883 --> 00:33:57.743
Paul Dickinson: Except in countries with very, very low emissions, where they think is a great idea.
00:33:57.743 --> 00:33:58.043
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right. But in countries that would have to change, whether change or well, paying is a form of changing, but yeah, pay or change or something, it's had no support. So in a way, there's no pathway to it. You have to find change in the way Lorraine is talking about, which is more to do with nudging, it's more to do with choice editing, it's to do with making it easier. It's tougher. It's tougher.
00:34:18.463 --> 00:34:19.023
Paul Dickinson: It's both. One may lead eventually to the other. I could quite see, by 2040, some sort of rationing system starting to get introduced because it's a logical and fair way to deal with it. That's how we deal with lots of things.
00:34:30.303 --> 00:34:31.123
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I just think it's hard. I think anything like that is really hard politically, but that's not to say it's not a brilliant idea.
00:34:36.263 --> 00:34:39.523
Paul Dickinson: And in World War II, it's how the whole food system was run. People got rations for their food.
00:34:42.463 --> 00:34:45.563
Tom Rivett-Carnac: If we have that level of shared purpose, we can achieve anything. There's no doubt about that.
00:34:46.263 --> 00:34:48.823
Paul Dickinson: If we have that level of shared purpose, we can achieve anything. There's no doubt about that. Tom Carnac.
00:34:50.643 --> 00:34:57.083
Christiana Figueres: If we have that level of scarcity, but in this case, we would have to self-impose the scarcity.
00:34:57.083 --> 00:34:57.863
Paul Dickinson: Scarcity is there. It simply requires the imposition of self-control to achieve the reality of its necessity.
00:35:02.063 --> 00:35:05.683
Tom Rivett-Carnac: You go and win an election based on self-control, and I'll be very impressed.
00:35:06.923 --> 00:35:08.683
Christiana Figueres: I'll vote for you.
00:35:08.683 --> 00:35:09.503
Paul Dickinson: I got one vote.
00:35:09.583 --> 00:35:10.363
Tom Rivett-Carnac: You have to vote. You have to run for election in Costa Rica.
00:35:13.343 --> 00:35:20.923
Paul Dickinson: Last night, we watched Bernie Sanders saying that Zoran Mandani started with 1% and worked his way up to a clear majority. So I got one vote, Christiana. I'll take that to the bank. Let's go.
00:35:24.143 --> 00:35:24.483
Tom Rivett-Carnac: All right. I'll vote for you too. Two. It's double.
00:35:26.823 --> 00:35:29.823
Paul Dickinson: I'm up 100% in the last minute.
00:35:29.823 --> 00:35:30.223
Tom Rivett-Carnac: All right. I think that probably leaves us. Takes us to the end of the episode.
00:35:32.383 --> 00:35:32.723
Christiana Figueres: All right. Bye. Bye-bye.
