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Friday, March 22nd, 2024

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Author:     Madalina Vlasceanu, Kimberly C. Doell, and Joseph B. Bak-Coleman et al.
Source:     Science Advances
Publication Date:     7 Feb 2024
 Link: Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries
Stephan:  

One would think that the leadership of all the nations of the world understood by now that the only way to successfully address the challenge of climate change would be for all governments to agree to a plan and each pass national policies to implement that plan. Obviously, this is not happening in any effective way. Why not? Here is an. enormous international study by several hundred scientists involving 59,440 participants from 63 countries. What that means is that this study should be taken very seriously. Unfortunately, it is not a happy report. What that tells us is we each need to begin thinking about what is going to happen to our local area, and what can we do to prepare ourselves. I am setting it up for you to click through and read the entire scientific article because I think this issue is so important. Once again the November election makes the choice very clear: the Democrats are far from perfect but they are planning to take serious steps to prepare for climate change, The TCPs (formerly the Republican Party, as a party doesn’t even accept the reality of climate change.) If you are planning for you and your children, and their children to survive in anything like the present quality of life you better vote only for Democrats.

Figure 1 Credit: Science Advances

Abstract

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.

INTRODUCTION

The climate crisis is one of humanity’s most consequential and challenging problems (1). Successfully rising to the challenge depends on both “top-down” structural changes (e.g., regulation and investment) and “bottom-up” changes (e.g., individuals’ and collectives’ beliefs and behaviors). These bottom-up processes require widespread belief in climate change, […]

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1 Comment

  1. Rev. Dean on Friday, March 22, 2024 at 2:22 pm

    We must start by taxing the ultra rich and their companies which make people cut down forests, which we need to protect the environment. We must also tax them heavily and redistribute money to the elderly and the disabled and the poor people all over the world!