These changes are real and very significant, so it is no surprise that some of the MPs interviewed by Westlake said they are more interested in reducing emissions through technological progress than behavioural change. But emissions from factors such as diet, aviation and our homes are proving more persistent, and these are areas where behavioural change can play a much bigger role.
Westlake asked MPs what they thought about promoting low-carbon behaviour. Two MPs told him they thought it would be seen as “virtue-showing”, and when asked about reducing their own emissions, some seemed concerned they would be seen as environmental radicals. “I think it’s to try to set some kind of example, but without being too saintly,” said one MP.
That anonymous MP is expressing something that I think a lot of people feel on an intuitive level. We compare our behaviour to that of the people around us (or people in public life) and feel judged if our own behaviour doesn’t match up. If my neighbour has solar panels and I don’t, well, they must think I just don’t care enough about the environment, right? Faced with these uncomfortable moral questions, it’s easier for MPs (and all kinds of leaders) to preach about things we can do to reduce emissions that don’t require any moral calculation about our behaviour.
But this overlooks something really important: climate change decisions and our individual behavior. do They have a moral component. I don’t mean that if someone takes an extra flight every year they become a bad person, but our moral obligations to other people, and to future people, should be at least part of the decision-making calculus. Westlake says this serves an important purpose: not to punish people for going on vacation, but to direct attention to people whose lifestyles actually have an exceptionally high carbon impact.
I think about this dynamic a lot when it comes to food, and particularly alternatives to beef, which has an outsized carbon footprint compared to almost any other food. Many people hope that making cheap, tasty plant-based burgers will be enough to get a large number of meat eaters to switch to the plant-based side. When I attend conferences on alternative proteins, no one wants to talk about the morality of eating meat, even though I suspect it’s a major motivation for many of the people who attend. They assume that argument won’t sway anyone in favor of pea protein burgers or whatever.
They may be right, but I suspect that if we ignore the moral component of climate decisions, we drastically limit the scope of our climate ambition. It’s not that morality should constitute all or a significant part of our decision-making, and we shouldn’t expect people to be morally consistent either. Morality is not integral to the climate story, but it’s not exactly a footnote either.
“The decision-making process of ‘Are you going to take that flight?’ needs to be normalized,” Westlake says. “It doesn’t mean you stop doing everything, but it does mean you make decisions with climate impacts in mind.” And that’s part of the reason why leaders, in Westlake’s view, really matter. It matters when Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris, and it matters when Taylor Swift takes a little hop on a private jet. If we accept that we should all think about behavior in terms of climate change, then it follows that some people should pay a lot more attention than others.
And this brings us back to MPs’ caution in encouraging behavioural change. One MP Westlake spoke to was reluctant to discourage air travel, saying it was unfair to stop families from taking one foreign holiday a year. When behavioural change appears in the press, it is often couched in absolute terms – stop eating meat, stop flying, stop driving, etc. But by dismissing behavioural change altogether we lose the ability to focus on the wealthy marginalised who bear what Westlake calls a “differential responsibility” in tackling climate change. Rather than cowering at the prospect of behavioural change, perhaps those in charge should focus their attention on their fellow leaders.
