These changes are real and very significant, so it’s no wonder that some MPs Westlake spoke to said they were more interested in reducing emissions through technological advances than changing behaviours. But emissions from things like diet, aviation and our homes are proving more stubborn – and these are areas where behavioural change could 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 signalling” and, when asked about reducing their own emissions, some seemed concerned about being seen as environmental radicals. “I think you have to try to set an example but not be too saintly,” was how one MP put it.
This anonymous MP expresses something I think many people feel intuitively. We compare our behaviour to that of those around us – or those in public life – and feel judged if our own behaviour doesn’t match. If my neighbour has solar panels and I don’t, well, he must think I’m just not caring enough about the environment, right? Faced with these awkward moral questions, it’s easier for MPs – and leaders of all stripes – to preach about things we can do to reduce emissions that don’t involve any moral calculations about our behaviour.
But that leaves out something really crucial. Decisions about climate change and our individual behavior Down have a moral component. That doesn’t mean that if someone takes an extra flight every year that makes them a bad person, but our moral obligations to other people and future generations should be at least part of the decision-making calculus. Westlake says that serves an crucial purpose — not to punish people for going on vacation, but to focus attention on people whose lifestyles really do have a particularly high carbon footprint.
I often think about this vigorous when it comes to food, and especially when it comes to alternatives to beef, which has a huge carbon footprint compared to almost every other food product. Many people hope that making plant-based burgers inexpensive and tasty will be enough to convince a huge number of meat-eaters to go plant-based. When I sit through conferences on alternative proteins, no one wants to talk about the morality of eating meat, although I suspect that’s a major motivator for many people there. They assume that this argument won’t convince any proponents of pea protein burgers or anything else.
Maybe they’re right. But I suspect that if we ignore the moral component of climate decisions, we drastically limit the scope of our climate ambitions. The point is not that morality should be the entirety or even a significant part of our decision-making, and we shouldn’t expect people to be morally consistent. Morality isn’t the entirety of the climate story, but it’s not exactly a footnote either.
“The process of deciding, ‘Are you going to fly this plane?’ needs to be normalized,” Westlake says. “That doesn’t mean you stop doing everything, but it does mean you’re making decisions with climate impacts in mind.” And that’s part of why leaders—by Westlake’s estimate—really matter. It matters when Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris, and it matters when Taylor Swift takes a low private jet flight. If we assume that we all should be thinking about behavior in the context of climate change, then it follows that some people should pay much more attention to it than others.
And that brings us to MPs’ caution about encouraging behavioural change. One MP Westlake spoke to was reluctant to discourage flying, saying it was unfair to ban families from taking one foreign holiday a year. When behavioural change does appear in the press, it is often framed in absolute terms—stop eating meat, stop flying, stop driving—and so on. But by ignoring behavioural change altogether, we miss the opportunity to focus on the wealthy outsiders who are taking on what Westlake calls “differential responsibility” for fighting climate change. Rather than cringing at the thought of behavioural change, perhaps those in power should focus on their fellow leaders.