🌍 Why personal carbon footprints matter 🌱

I often hear people, including in the climate community, dismiss the concept of a personal carbon footprint. I believe this is a mistake🧵 The most common argument against the personal
#carbon footprint is that the fossil fuel industry created it. This is untrue, though BP and other actors popularized it for very problematic reasons.

But even if true, the concept can still have scientific and practical value!

🚨It's finally out!!🥳

In @NatureClimate, we present a highly ambitious vision for how to realize the full potential of behavioral science for climate change mitigation🌍

It's been quite the journey, so I'm beyond excited to tell you about it🧵
nature.com/articles/s4155… People are increasingly realizing the importance of behavioral changes in climate mitigation, and more researchers from within and outside behavioral science are entering the area.⭐️This is great news⭐️

We make six recommendations to help maximize the impact of this work!💡🌱

On Wednesday, I spoke at the pre-conference on sustainability at #SPSP2024.

I talked about bridging the #individual and #systemic perspectives in psychological research on #climate change mitigation🌍 #SP32024

🧵with highlights (in the hope someone finds them useful🙂) Climate change mitigation demands rapid change across all levels of society.

The two "extreme" positions of solely advocating for individual responsibility or only system-level changes are faulty and undermine progress.

Thankfully, these positions are becoming outdated🙏

Individual climate action is crucial for speeding up climate change mitigation. Unfortunately, people too often equate individual action with consumer behavior, but there are many other opportunities for taking impactful action. Here's a 🧵with some suggestions. #ClimateActionNow Two important points before I start:

1. The impact potential of behavioral changes generally scales with socioeconomic status.
2. Changes to consumer behavior are still critically important. We need to change how we transport ourselves🚲, what we eat🥦, and how we live🏘️.

🌎One of the most important research topics in #EnvironmentalPsychology is the link between pro-environmental behavior (PEB) and subjective wellbeing. Understanding and addressing this link will be crucial for realizing behavioral changes and adopting ambitious policies.🧵 A quick note: I rather dislike the term "pro-environmental behavior" because it refers more to the motivation behind behavior rather than its environmental impact. But this is a topic for another day, so I'll stick with PEB here for communication purposes 🙃

To what extent does individualizing climate change undermine the likelihood of implementing systemic solutions? 🌎This is a complex topic, but here's a🧵with some thoughts. Before we dive in, I want to acknowledge that this thread was provoked by a new preprint from @davidhagmann and colleagues. My perspective is different from theirs, but I recommend reading their paper. osf.io/z2vwb/

Arguments against individual climate action are posted at a never-ending pace. Here’s a 🧵from a behavioral scientist on why individual behavior change is in fact critical for tackling the climate crisis. #individualANDsystemchange Let’s begin by disarming the most common argument against individual action: that the carbon footprint was created by the fossil fuel industry.

🚨New ESM study on how food environments, situational factors, and self-control influence healthy food choices led by @janmbauer with @LuciaReisch & @wilhelm_hofmann and published in @socscimed. I really like this paper, so here's a 🧵on why that is.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… I'm a huge fan of experience sampling, which we here use to build bridges between research on physical micro-environments/choice architecture and on self-control. We explored if selecting oneself into certain environments matters for the healthiness of out-of-home food choices.

.@netflix has created a new guide with climate actions to accompany #DontLookUp . I served as an advisor alongside much more prominent scholars like @jrockstrom @KHayhoe @MichaelEMann @GlobalEcoGuy @DoctorVive. Netflix did a good job! A short 🧵 why.
dontlookup.count-us-in.com/steps First, why on earth was I invited to be an advisor? Well, apparently the climate action guide was inspired by a framework from my recent article in @NatureEnergyJnl with @KA_Nicholas, @efesce, & @tdietzvt. This was a pretty neat validation of our work! nature.com/articles/s4156…

Excited to share a new article on carbon labeling in @NatureClimate with @tdietzvt, @michaelvandenb6, @rlshwom, Khan Taufique & Paul Stern.

We find carbon labeling a promising mitigation initiative but perhaps not for the reasons you think. A long🧵...
nature.com/articles/s4155… BACKGROUND: We reviewed the literature on how carbon labeling systems can influence consumer and corporate behavior to reduce GHG emissions. We also refer to the literature on energy labeling, which is more developed.

There is inequality in who causes climate change, who experiences its consequences, and who can fix it. As we show in @NatureEnergyJn, people with high socioeconomic status disproportionately affect the success or failure of climate mitigation. A thread.

nature.com/articles/s4156… People with high SES not only have excessive carbon footprints through consumption, but they also have disproportionate power through their roles as investors, role models, participants in organizations, and citizens.

Excited to share a new paper on the environmental impacts of clothing. With data from four countries, we show how impacts vary across the life cycle and between countries. We find strong country differences with U.S. consumers having the greatest impacts.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… We also show that the largest share of associated environmental impacts is created during the production phase, except in the U.S. where it's the use phase due to more frequent washing and drying. Transport from factories to markets and disposal matter little overall (2/6)