A psychology-based recipe for climate action

Recent brutal weather will be everyday life if we fail to act on climate change. Our planet’s north and south poles experienced record heatwaves —simultaneously —in March of this year. The Texas power grid failed last year, and demand recently exceeded California’s and New York’s combined. A headline read, “Lake Mead, once the largest water reservoir in the U.S., now little more than a graveyard.” Throughout Europe, people are fighting deadly heat shocks like those already familiar in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Against presumed odds, this summer’s heat emergencies are happening despite a La Nina weather pattern that usually has a temporary global cooling effect.

Can we all tattoo “preventable surprises” on our foreheads? We have long known climate change’s causes, consequences and solutions. Nonetheless, our vast knowledge isn’t yet translating into enough action.

The biggest challenge now is to change how we collectively think and act. Here is a psychology-based recipe for engaging in climate action more urgently, effectively and successfully. Every ingredient will be helpful for the rest of our lives.

Face reality

Contrary to rampant mis- and disinformation, scientists are nearly unanimous: Climate change is here, it’s worsening, it’s human-caused, and it portends a dire future if we don’t get our act together.

We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions — and prepare for inevitable weather disasters, food and water shortages, worsening injustices, social conflict and much more. Acting now will cost far less as well as be far more successful than waiting and being forced to act later with fewer options.

Know thy climate self

Most people overestimate their climate-friendly actions. Assess your climate actions and inaction and congratulate yourself only when warranted. Consider your skills, personal contacts, opportunities, and other resources and determine how to best leverage them into helpful climate action.

Accept a share of responsibility for the future

Some are more responsible than others for our current plight, of course. However, going forward, we need a broad sharing of responsibility for taking better to limit and adapt to climate change. Feeling some responsibility for helping to achieve a meaningful goal like managing climate change is a powerful motivator.

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw made a similar point noting, “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” For more musical guidance, let’s collectively follow Tom Petty’s “I’m taking control of my life now. Right now. Oh, yeah.” Our wisest path forward is to take control of our future by demanding more proactive leadership from our policymakers and influencers (formal and informal) in every sector.

Recognize and exercise your agency

You have more power to help save the environment than you probably think. We have technologies to limit and reverse global warming; it’s myopic psychology, self- sabotage and lack of political will that hold us back.

As one of us (M. Mann) noted in his 2021 book “The New Climate War,” campaigning for systemic change can succeed when 25 percent of the public accepts the need. The challenge is that we may “approach one of these climate tipping points before we approach the other tipping point – the tipping point in the public consciousness.”

We can rise to this challenge, but only if we decide to exercise our agency to bring about changes to our political, economic, technological and social systems.

Your impact can be profound when contributing to our collective agency — power in numbers. Examples are voting, influencing policy, filing class action suits against climate culprits and protesting peacefully. We, and the representatives we elect, really can hold the worst polluters responsible for their actions.

Avoid backsliding

When news of progress appears, beware of moral licensing — the tendency to do or learn something commendable, slacking, and failing to keep up the excellent work. No more slip-sliding away from climate action and climate justice.

Rally around climate supergoals

A superordinate goal is a person’s, an organization’s, or even a country’s guiding principle or purpose. It is a genuinely compelling vision with a broader scope and longer time horizon than the subgoals that support it. When two or more parties value the same superordinate goal and cooperation can help achieve it, productive collaboration can develop between antagonists. Transitioning to clean energy is a superordinate goal that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy dependence, strengthen national security and the economy, and help save the planet. Shortly after the passage of the most sweeping climate plan in U.S. history, the Inflation Reduction Act, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called clean energy “the greatest peace plan of all.” Government officials like Granholm now see opportunities to export clean energy and to play a leadership role in “bringing that peace plan to the world.”

Here is another lofty supergoal: helping our species evolve more quickly, culturally if not yet biologically. Other species accelerate their evolution to survive climate change; many fail while others succeed.

Humans do not capitalize nearly enough on our key evolutionary advantages: envisioning likely and possible futures and adopting new ways of thinking and behaving. We squander these assets when past experiences, habits and circumstances prompt short-sighted business as usual and we neglect longer- term futures.

Thomas S. Bateman is professor emeritus with the McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia.

Michael E. Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. He is author of the recently released book, “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet.”