“While our nation develops clean energy strategies
to reduce large-scale industrial pollution, this study empowers
individual Americans with the knowledge that they can take action
today in their daily lives,” said Peter Lehner, Executive Director
of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We all have an
opportunity to significantly reduce climate change pollution and
cut costs at the same time.”

Focusing exclusively on simple and affordable behavioral
changes, the research indicates that Americans can reduce our
nation’s annual carbon emissions by one billion metric tons below
business-as-usual emission levels by 2020 through small
modifications in the sectors of home energy use, transportation,
food consumption and waste. 

One billion metric tons is equivalent to 15% of the United
States’ 7 billion tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions and
roughly equivalent to the total annual emissions of the United
Kingdom and Saudi Arabia combined.

Suggested behavioral changes in the study include: reducing
unwanted catalog subscriptions, decreasing vehicle idling, using a
programmable thermostat, replacing seven lightbulbs with CFLs,
setting computers to hibernate mode, shutting off unused lights,
and eating poultry in place of red meat two days per week.

All of the recommendations offered in the study are available to
be adopted immediately, at little or no cost, and will reduce not
only emissions, but home energy, transportation and food costs as
well.

The analysis details how each of the common sense actions can
result in significant emissions reductions when implemented across
the country. For example, if Americans collectively cut personal
food waste in by 25%, the nation could eliminate 65 million tons of
greenhouse gases, which is approximately the emissions generated
from 11 million cars - or roughly all the cars in New York and
Missouri combined.

The findings were presented this week by NRDC executive director
Peter Lehnerat the Garrison Institute’s Climate Mind and Behavior
symposium, which convened leading thinkers and practitioners in the
fields of climate change and environmental advocacy, neuro-,
behavioral and evolutionary economics, psychology, policy-making,
investing and social media.    

“The behavioral approach by no means replaces or competes
against other policy, regulatory, market and technology innovations
which we need,” said Jonathan Rose, co-founder of the Garrison
Institute.” But it’s one key front among others in the quest for
climate and energy solutions, and conservation now is key while we
move forward on those other fronts. Economists and people who
study behavior and decision-making have broken through to new
understandings of human behavior and human choices, based on brain
physiology and evolution.

Technology has been seen as the key to
combating climate change. Shifts in behavior can have a more
immeduate and less costly impact

They can explain for example why we may be slow individually to
do simple things well within our capability that would reduce our
climate impacts, even though it would be in our interests to do so,
or why we are much more likely to make those changes when we know
we’re not alone, that others will do it too, and our contributions
will aggregate. The opportunity now is to start applying these
sorts of insights concertedly to get people to adopt them
faster.”

Participants in the symposium were tasked with working together
on ways to get individuals to shift behavior on a large scale, and
sketched out dozens of new collaborations, from community
organizing to building management to communications and social
networking - all designed to actualize the massive potential for
positive climate impacts through individual choices and behavior
shifts.

“Neo-classical economics provides a powerful model for thinking
about the world, but new research in behavioral economics
highlights the ways in which neo-classical economics only give us a
partial view,” said Rebecca Henderson, co-director of the
Harvard Business School’s Business and Environmental Initiative and
a participant in the symposium. 

“Behavioral economics may be able to help us make progress on
meeting the challenges of climate change; the new research points
out how our decisions are driven not only by self-interest and the
dynamics of the market but also by our emotions, by our commitments
to the communities of which we are part, and by our innate sense of
fairness. I think this work has the potential to help us
design and implement large-scale behavioral changes, not only on
the individual level, but in organizations, policies and
markets.”