Less guilt, more joy: A new chapter for climate action

0:00This message comes from NPR sponsor Raymond James, a firm where wealth management, banking, and capital markets solutions start with the connections between people. That's the power of personal. Disclosures at RaymondJames.com. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?

0:40And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And today's show starts with conflict in a relationship. So when I moved to Vancouver, I lived with my boyfriend, Chris, and he was a passionate advocate for climate change, which I really respected. But honestly, it made him pretty hard to live with. This is social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn. For one thing, when I left a room, if I didn't turn off all the lights, he would shoot me this withering look like, why do you hate the earth? You know, and there was a lot of sort of shaming.

1:26And so I kind of associated that feeling of not being good enough, of not living up to this high standard with the climate change movement. And honestly, I think that kept me outside of it for a long time. Liz felt like a lot of us do, that it's impossible to live an environmentally friendly life. And that climate warriors like her ex just make us feel bad about our habits and not want to think about the warming planet at all. But Liz started to see things very differently when she talked to a colleague at work, climate expert Zhang Zhao, who goes by Jay-Z for short. I learned that, you know, Chris's shaming looks were actually misplaced.

2:09She calculated for me that I could leave the lights on in my two-bedroom condo for the rest of my life, and the carbon emissions cost would be equivalent to eating 13 hamburgers. Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Now, here's the thing. Where you get your energy is a very important question. But if you live in a place with clean energy, then the choice to kind of leave your lights on just doesn't matter that much. And again, some people have gotten mad at me because they're like, it's so important to turn the lights off. Like, it's going to bother me to leave the lights on. And I am not saying you've got to leave the lights on from now on.

2:49By all means, if it gives you a sense of satisfaction to turn the lights off, turn those lights off. That's great. But don't shame other people for not turning the lights off. And show yourself some compassion. If you just ran out of the house and realized the lights are still on, that's okay. It's not going to matter that much. And in fact, so many of the things that we've been told are really important just turn out to be pretty trivial when you really do the math. That said, other things really do matter. And so one of the things that I wanted to figure out once I learned this, I wanted to figure out, okay, so what really matters and what doesn't?

3:22And can we just let those things go that don't matter and focus on those higher impact actions and find the ones that actually make us feel good? The idea that climate change has gotten too depressing to talk about, much less act on, really bothered Liz. Because she is a very well-known happiness researcher who has spent more than two decades at the University of British Columbia studying which habits bring us more contentment and joy. Happiness is kind of nature's reinforcer. So if we can change our behavior in a way that actually makes us feel better, we are going to be much more likely to stick with it.

4:03So today on the show, how caring for the environment can make us happier. From the foods we choose to eat, to the way we travel, to how we spend our money. specific habits that have been shown to be both good for the planet and good for our own contentment. It's the premise behind the book, Leave the Lights On, How Joyful Decisions Can Save Our Species, by Liz Dunn and her colleague Jay-Z. They believe that this new, more positive approach to climate change can stop making individuals feel like there's nothing they can possibly do to stop global warming. and make them feel more empowered to take actions that actually matter.

4:50Before we get into sort of what you discovered, can we talk about how sentiment towards talking about climate change has changed? I feel like there was this moment, maybe, I don't know, a few years back, where climate was everywhere, everyone was talking about it. And now, honestly, journalists are told, do not put the word climate in your headline because people won't click it. And you even say in your acknowledgments that a book editor said to you, yeah, books about climate don't sell. What is going on with the public image of climate? Is it just too depressing? I think that it did get too depressing for people.

5:36People felt like they're aware of it. So I think, you know, I would call the 2010s maybe the doom and gloom era of climate change communication. And the thing is that it got people's attention. So I think the focus on kind of scaring people and talking about how, you know, awful everything was made people sit up and listen for a period of time. But the problem is doom and gloom messaging doesn't necessarily motivate action. Negative emotions get exhausting over time. So there was a really incredible global mega study looking at 60 ,000 participants from 63 different countries and testing 11 interventions that were all designed to promote action on climate change.

6:27Now, one of these messages was kind of a traditional doom and gloom message about how terrible climate change is and how bad everything's going to be. And at first glance, it looks like that message worked really well. It was one of the messages that people were most likely to share on social media. However, this doom and gloom message actually undermined people's willingness to take a more effortful form of action. So it's not surprising to me that people started to tune out. They felt like, I know what you're going to say. I don't really want to hear this again. And I think that has left us in a moment where people really don't want to talk about climate change and almost just want to pretend that it's not happening or perhaps that it's not our responsibility as individuals to care.

7:18if everything's going to be terrible anyway, why bother taking action, right? Let's dive into the book then. It all starts with a bike ride for you. Set the scene, if you would, and take us there and what you discovered. So I was biking to work. It was a sunny autumn day. I was enjoying my bike ride, but I was also thinking about climate change, as you do. And I was thinking how it's kind of a bummer that my life's work on happiness had no bearing whatsoever on what I believe is the most important existential challenge of our time. Then I started thinking about biking. So I bike to work because I arrive in a much better mood than if I drive my car.

8:00But of course, biking is also one of the most sustainable forms of transportation. And then it kind of dawned on me that in fact, so many of the things that we need to do as individuals and as societies in order to tackle climate change are also good for our happiness. So when I got to work, I made a beeline for my colleague Jay-Z. She's one of the world's leading experts on the behavioral side of climate change. She's also known among our friends as the human carbon calculator because she knows the carbon emissions of basically everything we do. So I kind of spilled out this idea to her. I probably had a little bit of a crazy look in my eye because I was so excited about this idea.

8:38But she told me later that she had kind of a light bulb moment where she realized that happiness might be the missing weapon in the fight against climate change. And from that day forward, we really started working together to try to find what we call sweet spots. So behavioral changes that people can make that not only help tackle climate change, but also make them happier. So why behavioral changes? Why not, I don't know, nudge for policy change? So there's this notion that governments and businesses need to deal with this problem and individuals have no role to play. And I think governments and businesses have an enormous responsibility to tackle this problem, but all of us have a role to play too.

9:28And in fact, the International Panel on Climate Change says individual behavior change can reduce global emissions by 40 to 70 percent. So in other words, about half of the difference that could be made in carbon reduction can come from individual action. So I also think that it disempowers people when we make them feel like they have no role to play. Like it's just up to governments and businesses. And then, you know, if it happens to be the case, the government of your country is not prioritizing climate change, then there's just nothing for you to do except maybe sit back and wait a few years till you can vote in a federal election again.

10:08And I think that's the wrong message to give people. It's factually wrong and it's disempowering. Okay, I want to push back a little bit. We know that it was BP, British Petroleum, that sort of pushed this concept of every person having a carbon footprint and that each individual can calculate it for themselves. There are some people who say that this was an attempt by the energy sector to shift the responsibility to individuals off of them. I mean, we see that time and time again. So what is the thinking right now of where actually doing something as little old me makes a difference? Like I just think of, you know, I went to the coffee shop this morning and it said there was a sign that said, if you'd like a straw, please ask for one.

10:54And I feel like we don't even talk about like straws are terrible. Now it's just a choice. But like it doesn't make a difference. Where is that line of like, you know, feeling like being a good citizen versus actually contributing to lessening or protecting our planet? So I think many of the things that we as individuals have been told we should do in order to be good environmentalists or to talk climate change are indeed trivial. So, for example, the straw that you choose is not going to have a massive impact. But there are other things we can do that genuinely do matter. And I think that part of the problem here is that indeed, you know, BP, the oil and gas company, was behind the original carbon footprint notion.

11:50And it was a calculated attempt to shift the blame from, you know, big businesses onto individuals. And so that's left the idea of sort of individual action with this kind of taint. But it's still the case that individual actions can matter. So as one example, you know, we need governments to build safe infrastructure for active transportation. So we need governments to build bike lanes, but we also need individuals to get on their bikes and use those bike lanes. So it's really a yes and kind of situation where we need governments to take action, but then we need individuals to respond. And it's really a kind of reinforcing cycle.

12:40And so the notion that we can take individuals out of the equation just makes no sense to me because our choices go beyond our own individual action and can influence others. When we come back, more with author and social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn. We'll get into the nitty gritty, why eating more maple syrup is good for the planet, and why you should go ahead and treat yourself to that nonstop flight. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

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14:54Hey there, if you are loving this show, then I have a favor to ask of you. Would you mind giving us a review wherever you listen? Like this one from Claire, who says, TED Radio Hour is a great way to gain knowledge and insights from the brightest minds on the planet. This is my go-to podcast when I'm road tripping or between true crime binges. Thank you, Claire. Please consider leaving a rating or a review of your own. It helps more people find us. Okay, back to the show. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, we're talking to Elizabeth Dunn. She is a social psychologist and co-author of the new book, Leave the Lights On, How Joyful Decisions Can Save Our Species.

15:44Liz and her collaborator Zhang Zhao, who goes by Jay-Z, say that by focusing on high-impact climate actions that also bring us joy, we will stick with those habits. We will avoid burnout and help the planet in the long run. Let's dig into that. Should we start off with food and my favorite, most delicious tip of yours, which is that maple syrup is actually good for the planet in addition to being extremely tasty. So maple syrup is like the magical elixir of climate change in the sense that the more maple syrup trees we have in production, the more carbon they're sucking out of the air. And, you know, as a Canadian, I am legally obligated to encourage people to seek out Quebec maple syrup, which in particular has this really great profile of actually reducing carbon.

16:40And here's the cool thing. If you have just a teaspoon of maple syrup a day, you can put a whole other maple tree into production. Let's contrast that to chocolate, which unfortunately not great for the planet. You did a study actually about how one can responsibly enjoy chocolate. Can you tell us about that? So as a happiness researcher, I buy a lot of chocolate. It's a great way to study pleasure. And in one experiment, we brought students into the lab and asked them to eat a little bit of chocolate. We observed them and we had them fill out surveys about their enjoyment of the chocolate. Then we politely asked one group of students to please refrain from eating any chocolate for one whole week.

17:24Meanwhile, we sent other students home with a big bag of chocolate and asked them to eat as much as they comfortably could over the ensuing week. And finally, we had a control group that just didn't get any special chocolate-related instructions. Then we brought everybody back into the lab a week later and once again asked them to eat a little bit of chocolate. Now, the first thing that popped out of the data is that people enjoyed eating chocolate in our lab less the second week than they did the first week. And this is like the sad reality of the human experience encapsulated in a single study.

17:56When we repeat a pleasurable experience, we tend to enjoy it a little bit less. But there was this important exception. So students who had been asked to temporarily give up chocolate exhibited this enhanced capacity to savor it, to really appreciate it and reap enjoyment from it. So what this tells us is that having high-carbon foods that we enjoy – Like chocolate. Like chocolate. Having these high-carbon foods we enjoy a little less often can actually enhance our capacity to savor them. So I've put this into practice with steak. I will admit, as somebody who wrote a book on climate change, I really enjoy steak.

18:37Now, the traditional advice would be I need to give up steak. But instead, what I do is I went from having it pretty often, pretty regularly, kind of as a habitual dinner, to having it as a treat. And when I have it, I really enjoy it in a way that I did not when I was having it more regularly. I am curious. When you mention something like steak, I think, oddly, of politics. Because I feel like so – from what I've observed is that people – red meat Republicans is something that is a phrase, right? So how do you begin to bridge that divide when a habit becomes associated with a policy? Yeah, so I would say climate change has become a very polarizing issue, at least in the United States.

19:25In contrast, the desire for happiness is universal. So people actually Google how to be happy even more often than how to get rich. So that's one of the reasons that we really want to center happiness in this conversation about climate change because it draws more people in. So I don't think that promoting self-denial is a winning strategy. And when we make environmental policy be tied to this sense that you have to give up things that you enjoy or that somehow you need to display your political identity by making this very specific set of choices, I think it's a losing strategy. I guess I would contrast that, which is, you know, the alternative meat industry that was sort of like taking off three, four years ago.

20:14It has kind of not taken off anymore. It is tanking, in fact. Do you think that's related, that it was seen as some sort of, I don't know, the people were denying themselves or it was seen as like, oh, those lefty hippies who eat their fake meat? Like, what do you account that for? I mean, I just think fake meat is not that delicious. Maybe that's me. Not only that, Beyond Meat Burgers actually aren't that great in terms of carbon emissions. So you would be better off eating a BLT than a Beyond Meat Burger in terms of carbon emissions. So we actually entitled our chapter on food in defense of bacon because bacon is actually not like a super high carbon emissions food.

20:58It's very delicious. And you can use just a little bit of it. So like one strip of bacon, like sprinkled over some Brussels sprouts makes those Brussels sprouts so much better. And so again, I don't think we should be pitting the desire for pleasure against the desire to fight climate change because really these are compatible approaches to life. Can we just touch back on the point we mentioned earlier about individual action and whether it makes a difference? Because I can imagine someone's like, seriously, lady, you want me to eat a bacon sandwich and tell me that that's saving the planet? But how do these behavioral changes add up in terms of reducing global emissions?

21:40Do we know? So individual choices, while each one, you know, doesn't necessarily make a massive difference. So your lunch choice today is not going to determine the future of humanity. It is the case that all of these little choices that we're all making all the time kind of add up. And not only that, but the choices that we make can actually influence the choices other people make in ways we would probably never imagine. So thinking about this in the area of food, one of my favorite little studies on this was actually done by my colleagues at the University of British Columbia. So we have this little cafe on our campus where each day there's a vegetarian entree and a meat entree available for lunch.

22:24And what my colleagues did was just to surreptitiously observe people placing their lunch orders. So people are just standing in line at this cafeteria placing their lunch order. what they discovered was that 72 % of the time people ordered the exact same dish as the random stranger standing in front of them. I'll have what he's having. Exactly. Right? And so what this means is that your own little action of like choosing that vegetarian entree is actually influencing the person behind you. And what I think is cool about this study is like if you're somebody who you're trying to make pro-climate choices, you're trying to choose more vegetarian food, you don't need to lecture your friends about this or talk to them about how the world's going to end.

23:10Just when the waiter comes over and says, you know, are you ready to order? You just say yes and like place your vegetarian order first. Other people are then going to be more likely to copy you. Can we shift to other habits? We've talked a lot about food. Let's talk about shopping in general. One of the things that I know people say often, at least in my neighborhood, is like, oh, I ordered it from Amazon, and then they sort of look at you stricken. Like, I know that's really bad, but I did it anyway. I'm a terrible person. Is that true? Is ordering online terrible for the environment? Let's leave aside monopoly big tech companies and whatever people think about Jeff Bezos, but actually for the environment.

23:55So the idea that ordering online is inherently bad for the environment is a myth. In fact, online shopping can actually cut emissions in half compared to driving around to all the stores that you need to go to. The exception there is that online shopping could be a problem if it spurs us to buy things that we don't need. And we want to minimize returns. So it's not so great if you're ordering like seven pairs of jeans online, trying them on, and then returning six of them. So that's going to be a problem because most of those jeans are actually not going to get resold. But as long as you are ordering things online and keeping them and using them, then that's actually a pretty efficient strategy.

24:39And the reason for this is that online delivery services typically use highly efficient vehicles and highly efficient routes. So they're actually doing a better job of getting these goods around than we would probably do ourselves. And this is especially true, again, if you have to drive around to different stores. If you happen to be so lucky as to live in a highly walkable neighborhood where you can just walk to everything, get everything that you need that way. I mean, of course, that's going to be an awesome strategy. But for so many Americans who need to get in their cars to buy the things that they need, it would actually be better to let those things come to you.

25:14While we are on the subject of how we spend our money, one of your best known findings is on the happiness that comes from spending money, not on buying things for ourselves, but actually spending money on other people and giving it away. Can you remind us about that finding? Because, well, we could all always use that reminder. Yeah. So my research suggests that people actually get more happiness from using money to benefit others than to benefit themselves. And in one of our earliest studies on this topic, we actually went out on our beautiful campus at the University of British Columbia armed with cash.

25:48And we literally walked up to people and handed them either a$5 or a$20 bill, which we asked them to spend by the end of the day. But there was this one catch. So we told half the people they had to use this money to benefit somebody else. We told half the people they had to use this money to benefit themselves. And what we discovered was that people who had been assigned basically by the flip of a coin to use this money to benefit others ended up feeling happier that day compared to people who had been assigned to use that money on themselves. And so when it comes to climate, you know, there's opportunities to make a difference in terms of fighting climate change by donating money to organizations that are doing really wonderful work there.

26:31And I think that can be a great way to use some of our money. So instead of obsessing over what exactly we should buy and whether what we're buying is environmentally friendly enough, instead using some of that bandwidth to just pick a really great climate organization and make a donation, I would love to see people think about their money in that way. So I have saved the final category for last because really what you've said so far works for me. I mostly eat vegetarian. I try to give charitably. I love maple syrup. But it's the travel. I love to travel. It is the way I like to spend my money.

27:12I'm not big on shopping. And I just feel so guilty about it. And it's a huge bummer because I know a lot of people like this is their pleasure to see the world. And the question that my husband and I are always wrestling with is like, should we just stay home? Give us the lowdown on flying and what we should and should not do. So as a happiness researcher, I have done work on how buying experiences provides more joy than buying material things. And this is definitely something that I embrace in my own life. I also love travel. I love vacation. And we wanted to write a chapter of our book on vacation.

27:54But we honestly kept putting it off because we were like, I don't know. This is like we're not going to be able to find any sweet spots here. This is just going to be bad news. But I was so joyfully surprised to discover that I was wrong and that actually there are great ways that we can reduce our carbon emissions while still enjoying the pleasure of travel. For one thing, let's just start by acknowledging that flying does have a really outsized impact in terms of carbon emissions. And this is particularly the case for long haul flights. So, for example, somebody who eats vegan all year long, but then flies from New York to Thailand for the holidays, will end up with the same carbon emissions as somebody who was eating meat all year, but stayed home for the holidays.

28:41No way. So it really does matter. Wow. These long haul flights. But again, that's a New York to Thailand flight. So how far you go really matters. And often we can get somewhere pretty awesome in a two-hour flight and then the carbon emissions aren't going to be all that high. We can also think about making those long haul vacations something that we do, but something that's really a treat. Something I try to think of it like the Olympics. You know, I want to take my son to Europe. He really wants to see Spain play soccer. I'm like okay we will do this but it's going to be you know a very special thing as opposed to just a standard summer vacation now if you are going to fly taking a non-stop flight really makes a difference so non-stop flights are going to come with a much lower carbon price tag than even a one-stop and this is because fighting gravity to get into the sky burns a lot of fuel And so we can both save ourselves time and cut carbon by taking direct flights.