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

TED Radio Hour

This episode of TED Radio Hour explores a new approach to climate action that emphasizes joy and personal well-being over guilt and sacrifice. Elizabeth Dunn, a happiness

Key takeaways

• Traditional climate messaging focused on doom and gloom has led to emotional exhaustion and disengagement.
• Behavioral changes that reduce carbon emissions often coincide with increased personal happiness, creating a virtuous cycle.

Main topics

• Joy-based climate action
• Emotional regulation in sustainability

Notable quotes

"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."

Conclusion

By reframing climate action as an opportunity for personal joy and empowerment rather than sacrifice,

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:00) How do you handle really big emotions? It starts with emotional intelligence. Speaker 5 (0:05) Emotional intelligence is, okay, A, what am I really feeling? B, is this emotion helpful or unhelpful for achieving my goal? If it's unhelpful, what am I going to do about it? Or what's my strategy for regulating it? Speaker 8 (0:17) The science of emotional regulation on Shortwave. Listen on the NPR app or wherever Speaker 1 (0:22) you get your podcasts. 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 Speaker 5 (0:44) just don't know what you're going to find. Speaker 1 (0:45) Challenge you. We Speaker 5 (0:46) truly have to ask ourselves, Speaker 1 (0:47) like, why is it noteworthy? And 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. Speaker 1 (1:01) I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and today's show starts with conflict in a relationship. Speaker 7 (1:07) 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. Speaker 1 (1:19) This is social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn. For Speaker 2 (1:22) 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 Speaker 7 (1:32) there was a lot of sort of shaming. And 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. Speaker 1 (1:47) Liz felt like a lot of us do. 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 Speaker 7 (2:12) learned that, you know, Chris's shaming looks were actually misplaced. She 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. Speaker 6 (2:32) Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Speaker 2 (2:35) 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 Speaker 7 (2:54) am not saying you've got to leave the lights on from now on. Like, by 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 Speaker 2 (3:04) 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? And 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 Speaker 1 (3:37) 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 Speaker 7 (4:02) 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. Speaker 1 (4:12) So 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. Before we get into sort of what you discovered, can we Speaker 6 (5:02) 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 Speaker 1 (5:27) 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 Speaker 7 (5:42) it did get too depressing for people. People 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. Now, 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. If everything's going to be terrible anyway, why bother taking action, right? Let's dive into the book then. Speaker 6 (7:34) It all starts with a bike ride for Speaker 1 (7:37) you. Set the scene, if you would, and take us there and what you discovered. Speaker 7 (7:42) 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. Speaker 2 (8:08) But Speaker 7 (8:09) 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. But 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. Speaker 6 (9:11) So why behavioral changes? Why not, I don't know, nudge for policy Speaker 7 (9:15) 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 Speaker 2 (9:37) too. Speaker 7 (9:38) And Speaker 2 (9:38) 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 Speaker 7 (9:57) 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 that 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 until you can vote in a federal election again. And I think that's the wrong message to give people. It's factually wrong and it's disempowering. Speaker 6 (10:22) 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 Speaker 1 (10:37) 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 Speaker 6 (10:55) a difference? 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. And I feel like we don't even talk about like straws are terrible. Now it's just a choice. But like, does that 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? Speaker 2 (11:24) 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. Speaker 7 (11:34) So, for example, the Speaker 2 (11:37) 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, Speaker 7 (11:52) you know, BP, the oil and gas company, was behind the original carbon footprint notion. And 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. Speaker 6 (12:36) So Speaker 7 (12:36) 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. And so the notion that we can take individuals out of the equation just makes no sense to me Speaker 2 (12:54) because our choices go beyond Speaker 7 (12:57) our own individual action and can influence Speaker 1 (13:00) 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