Inside Behavior Analysis
Volume 1 | 2009 | Number 1
The Human Response to Climate Change and the Role of Behavior Analysis
Presidential Scholar Essay
By Melissa J. Allman
At this year’s Presidential Scholar Address at the annual meeting for the Association for Behavior Analysis International, Dr. Lonnie Thompson, Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences and world renowned paleoclimatologist, discussed the human response to global climate change. Dr. Thompson’s research has revealed that global warming and glacier retreat are occurring at unprecedented levels, a claim substantiated by his work reconstructing and compositing data obtained from drilled ice cores that provides a 5,000 year window into the past. The time to act is now, and the challenge is effect a positive human response. The science of behavior analysis, and in particular topics related to choice responding and behavioral economics, may be useful in understanding aspects of the human response to climate change and effecting positive behavioral change. In Dr. Thompson’s words “as a society we have three options: 1) prevention, 2) adaptation, and 3) suffering.” At face value, this may seem a clear choice; option 3 is least desirable and choice may be directed towards 1 and 2. However all options share features which may account for why the “human response to this issue is unclear.”
A variety of health—and lifestyle—related behaviors have been studied by behavior analysts, and a common feature of many is they are governed by short- and longterm variables. Effecting behavior change in smokers is a useful metaphor to understanding the human response to climate change. Smokers for example, may favor the immediate positive consequences of smoking, and temporally discount the long-term negative consequences. Ironically, if the negative consequences of smoking behavior were more immediate, rates of abstinence (positive behavior change) would likely increase. These principles of behavior analysis likely underpin certain efforts to make the negative consequences of smoking more salient (e.g., increased cost; pictures of diseased lungs on cigarette packets in Europe), which are effective in reducing rates of target behaviors. Essentially, the human response to climate change is amenable to a similar type of short- and long-term analysis.
Short-term variables likely relate to everyday choices or response allocation towards ‘greener’ alternatives, which may involve both positive and negative consequences. For instance, these alternatives may be unfamiliar (and thus carry an unknown degree of risk), costly/effortful, and violate current behavioral habits (which are difficult to change). Social factors such as the desirability of the response (and any impact on social status), compliance with societal norms/trends, and individual morality may also influence response allocation. Perhaps one way to promote a positive response to climate change is to reduce the perceived costs (and effort) associated with selecting ‘greener’ alternatives. For example, in the state of California some cars are fuelled by liquid hydrogen; they are filled up at regular gas stations, fuel costs are equivalent to gas, and these vehicles look and perform like regular cars. It is has been said of them, ‘they are the car of the future, because they are so much like the car of today’. Principles of behavioral economics predict that increasing the availability of low-effort/cost, highly substitutable ‘greener’ alternatives should shift response allocation towards these options (particularly if the relative cost of the current response increases). Matching law further dictates that more responding tends to be allocated towards options that result in higher rates of reinforcement, and increasing short-term positive consequences of selecting ‘greener’ alternatives may be beneficial.
Long-term variables, in addition to delay discounting, likely relate to the perceived consequences of global climate and environmental change. Dr. Thompson’s research demonstrates and further predicts loss of ice cover, sea-level rise, changes in weather patterns, and catastrophic effects on a variety of species, including humans (his option 3). For most people, the notion of ‘polar ice-caps’ draws upon abstract, secondary experiences (e.g., from television, books) as does ‘imagining’ the global environmental consequences of climate change. Typically direct, rather than indirect, experience with an outcome better supports behavior. Although weather may be a ‘realworld’ observable marker of climate change, the extent to which people associate their (individual and collective) behavior with the weather is somewhat spurious. At the individual level, there may also be a perceived lack of contiguity between 1) current behavior and observable ‘real-world’ consequences to climate change; and 2) ‘greener’ alternatives and observable ‘real-world’ consequences (both positive, and the prevention of negative). This lack of contiguity is arguably one of the most fundamental factors which mediate the human response. The question then becomes, how can ‘greener’ alternative behaviors be maintained when they produce few observable consequences (and are effectively, non-reinforced)?
Shifting the human response towards ‘greener’ alternatives and maintaining positive behavior change is a challenge for behavior analysis. Individual and societal motivation needs to be sustained; much like a smoker who has not yet experienced any adverse health consequences of their behavior, people may be less motivated to change to ‘greener’ alternatives if they have not perceived any negative consequences of their behavior in the past. One strategy may be to increase the salience of the long-term consequences of climate change by emphasizing those cues which are observable in the present; both positive (which we may lose) and negative (which may get worse). This type of effort was evidenced by the popular documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, for which Dr. Thompson was a consultant. Many of those in attendance at his Presidential Scholar Address most likely felt like a smoker who has been shocked into realizing they have a shadow on their lung: Dr. Thompson’s address stressed the extent of global climate change that can be witnessed today and the timely manner in which humans must modify their behavior, and for which the consequences of global climate change will be felt.
Dr. Thompson’s research has revealed the extent of current, and future, global climate change and this trend in dramatic warming and melting is due to factors attributable to our behavior. The challenge for behavior analysis is to better understand the factors which underlie the human response to climate change, and ultimately how this response may be shifted to significantly alter the trajectory of climate change in the future.