What is human nature? Part 1

I have just visited some of the most spectacular and humbling natural landscapes anywhere. Rocks and soil possessed colours in combinations I couldn’t imagine. Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert was one of those places. The park is incredibly fragile; petrified wood and fossils lay exposed to humans to walk through (and climb on, sometimes). Taking petrified wood out of the park is a big felony, and signage repeatedly warns people not to take any wood out of the park. Yet, people still do. The park ranger we talked to called people’s trip to the park people’s “Me, me, me experience: my first trip to Petrified Forest, my first crime, my first time in jail.” Why do people do things they ought not to? Is it human nature? This is something I want to explore in a little greater depth over the next few weeks, for what we consider human nature can make or break efforts to protect ecosystems from destruction and efforts towards social justice.

Human nature seems to be an excuse to condone almost anything. If someone steals something, it is human nature to want something you don’t have. If life is an evolutionary battle, competition is the name of the game, and it is human nature to want to cut costs and pay low wages to stay ahead of the pack. And if the outcomes of our behaviour are destructive on place and to people, are we just following our human nature and instincts? This is the way the world works, we are made to believe. Things can be done in any which way is acceptable at the time, and if something goes wrong, well, it was human nature at fault.

At the same time, human nature is not only an excuse post facto, but it is also reason for why we behave socially. We see acts of kindness and tenderness, acts of heroism and altruism, acts around which reason cannot be wrapped in a neat bowtie. According to the Dalai Lama, gentleness is the basic tenet of human nature. There is a clear dichotomy that has emerged here. Human nature can be individualistic, pro-social, as David Sloan Wilson (who in fact uses his training in evolutionary biology to understand how neighbourhoods function well or poorly) would call it, or somewhere in between.

Everything, including competing notions of what human nature is, gets naturalized if enough people believe it. Humans are individualistic and selfish, and that’s how they ought to be, according to Ayn Rand. Yet selfish, individualistic human beings probably didn’t do so well in hunter-gatherer communities that we all descended from. Just like language, just like compassion, human nature is learned through social behaviour, through context, through relationships. If someone has been burned time and time again, he or she will believe that human nature is to fend for oneself…don’t trust anybody. Yet if someone has been shown kindness and compassion, even the hardest of hearts crumbles and melts and morphs into one that fundamentally reconsiders what human nature is, or ought to be.

What do you think?

Two years

I apologise for not having written much this past month. Part of me has been focusing on trying to complete my dissertation, while part of me felt that I needed a little bit of a break from writing, not because there wasn't much to write about, but because I was in need of some inspiration to maybe take my thoughts in different directions. I am glad to say that I have found such inspiration, albeit a sort of academic inspiration that can easily be erudite. I will try my best to interpret what I have been exposed to, through my discussions, to a language that is simpler.

Today marks two years since I began living trash free. The 29th of March has become more of a marker of the year than either New Year's Day or my birthday, because I feel that New Year's Day is a fairly arbitrary day in general, marking not much, and my birthday is something that doesn't necessarily signify a defining moment in my life to look back on. I am generally with friends partying or something anyway.

Here is a picture of most of my trash from year two--just a few pounds, less than six. (I am yet to quantify the recyclables in the white bag and the non-recyclables in the beige bag.)

In the first year, I was able to get by without buying almost anything. Of course I bought unpackaged second-hand things when I felt that I needed to, but on the whole, I definitely did not have the urge to buy anything new. Things changed a little bit this year, not dramatically, but substantively.

During my first year, I did not have to maintain and upkeep what I already had. The material things I had did me well. But this year, I bought a new cycle tire because one tire, which was at least six years old, was dry rotting. A different motivation, that of protection, led me to buy as a pad lock in Montreal for a locker to keep my passport and money in. The most difficult, yet most satisfying purchases of the year, however, were two pairs of soccer shoes--one for indoor soccer, one for outdoor. I had been meaning to buy some shoes for about a year now, because my old ones barely kept themselves together. That is all I bought.

Things haven't been challening on the whole, though. I must admit that at times I have been a little more lax with my behaviour, but I have not caved. Part of me feels like I have come to a fork in a path. I am at the point where I need to make another big step, another change in direction, a direction that will build off of the past. The other day, I was talking to a few engineering undergraduate students, part of the student group BLUELab, about engineering, the environment, and individual action. I want to write just a little bit about what two students asked me, and my responses to them.

Zach asked me, "Why wouldn't you live, say, carbon-neutral?" In the past, I had told people that the lens under which we think about our actions isn't necessarily that important; power dynamics and violence present themselves under each lens, whether it is oppressive working conditions or polluting someone's drinking water. Furthermore, since everything is inherently connected, one can follow the philosophical and moral paths that are created by an inquiry into this power dynamic and violence. While saying exactly this to Zach, I realised that maybe that isn't neccesarily the case, and that different lenses allow different insignts into how much this culture, and I, have to change. Because even though I have been living trash-free, I have still hopped into a car at times, and I have still taken a few flights to get to conferences, all of which have spewed greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. I live in Michigan, a state that is heavily reliant on coal for its electricity, and I have bought food that has been transported some distance. There is room for continual change.

On a very different note, Adam challenged me by saying that to him, living trash-free seems not that impactful, and that more systemic changes are needed. I have written about these issues of individual action in the face of large problems at length, and I have spoken about it elsewhere. But I take Adam's comment very seriously, because it reminds me about the importance of the public nature of the intimate and personal changes that need to be instantiated. Culture doesn't change if we don't. But we cannot be satisfied with "doing our part" by living off-the-grid, by living trash-free, by being advocates for peace in our own lives. Our lives must unfold on others around us.

Year three begins, and I am hoping to challenge myself in different ways.

What do you call it?

If a problem is "environmental", does that mean the environment needs fixing? That is what it seems to imply to most people. That is what drives the ecomodernism stance of continued technologisation, of continuing down a path of trying to find abundance and infinity in a finite and fragile world. And that is what drives geo-engineering projects...that it is not our behaviour that is at fault, but rather the ways in which the environment around us changes in response to our behaviour that is the real issue. Therefore, we feel that human intervention in the environment is what the solution should look like.

But what fundamentally needs to change? The environment? Or how we behave? I would say the latter, for an environmental problem exists only if we've created it (like pollution in water, like climate change), or if we perceive it (like the threat of hailstorms and tornadoes). Yet, if we call a problem "environmental" without also tagging the word "social" with it, then we fail to address the true causes of the problems.

This goes back to what I was trying to say in my last post. What we call things matters in how we perceive them. Words and names have the capacity to connote, and depending on our backgrounds, words bring to the surface a plethora of emotions, feelings, thoughts, and actions. Consequently, there are associations that I would not make, because they are incommensurable, because the existence of one thing makes the other impossible (or close to impossible). For example, a drastic re-envisioning of the world would be one in which food we eat would not be, as Michael Pollan states, marinated in crude oil. In an ecologically sustainable world, food that travels fifteen hundred miles before it lands on your plate just would not exist. Ecologically sustainable food provided to you graciously by Exxon? No, thank you. More and more "environmentally-friendly" cars that constantly require newer and newer materials and more and more material extraction from the Earth? No, thank you.

Associations matter. If I call something collaborative rather than competitive, that would at least provide some rhetorical force to collaboration. Customs, on an individual scale, and customary international law on a larger scale, are rhetorical forces. They associate practices with social relations, and consequently outcomes. (Of course, many of these customs need to change or be altogether done away with.)

What is required is changes in language and diction. We need a new vocabulary to describe the world around us. It would be nice if that vocabulary wasn't hijacked by those who profit most from keeping things the way they are. But I'm not holding my breath on it. Therefore, we must associate things that are commensurable, and avoid associating things that are not. We are avoiding the issue if we do the latter.

With guilt comes motivation

The Green Belt Movement, started by the recently departed Wangari Maathai (the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner), gets people to be in charge of their environment, their trees, their cooking fuel. Their goal is to "mobilize community consciousness- using tree planting as an entry point- for self-determination, equity, improved livelihoods and security, and environmental conservation." The movement was started in the face of large-scale deforestation and soil erosion, conspicuous corruption in the Kenyan government, and consequently great oppression to the local Kenyan people.

The problems facing rural Kenyans was of course massive, and it isn't difficult to imagine that many people can feel helpless in such situations. In an interview in 2004, Dick Gordon (who was at the time hosting a show called The Connection out of WBUR in Boston) asked Maathai how she motivated people to do something about the situation they are in. She said that she told people that to a certain extent, "the problems people face are of their own making." I started thinking about this statement, and wondered why it worked.

Granted that I am not a psychologist, I believe it works because it does two things. Firstly, it gives people agency over their own lives. In saying that "your behaviour/actions may be part of the problem," you tell people that while culture and society affects your life, you yourself are essential in your determination. Unless we are imprisoned (physically or emotionally), we all make choices for ourselves. We have to make choices for ourselves, whether to stay, whether to leave, whether to fight oppression and ecological degradation, or whether not to.

Secondly, the statement goes straight to the heart of what makes us human--that in the exposure of guilt, we seek to better ourselves. We can be motivated by someone telling us that we need to do more, that what we are doing isn't enough, that we can do better, especially if it comes from someone we respect. (Maathai was indeed highly respected and admired.) If the person we respect truly cares for us, we feel a genuineness about their assessments. (Maathai spoke genuinely.) We change behaviour then for many reasons. We may change our behaviour to seek approval, or to feel better about ourselves. Maybe changing is the "right" thing to do.


Lasting, meaningful change cannot come from coddling and fawning over how "amazing" we are. "You are doing great! Just change your lightbulbs." Rather it comes from pointing out the key questions and problems, and our willingness to accept those challenges.

Reconciling behaviour

We live our lives in ways that ebb and flow with the times, and it is a true that we are born in a time, and that we must live in that time. Nostalgia and reminiscence are nice and fun, but they cannot take away from the fact that life is lived now, or it is never. This doesn't mean that we accept all of the norms of the time we are in. Rather, the way we view the world must be nuanced and interpreted under the lenses of history and experience, as well as the immediate experiences we go through. Put more plainly, we must learn from the past, understand how the past has influenced the present, and see what needs to be done to avoid continuing behaviour that wreaks havoc on lives and this Earth. But even though we've gained a lot of knowledge over the past two hundred years, we've gained very little wisdom. Wisdom stands the test of time. Much knowledge can be fashionable.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of action or behaviour - those that are fashionable and ephemeral, and those that are true and good no matter what time or place or situation you are in. ("No duh," you might say.) It is clear that many fashionable behaviours, like industrialisation (it's been too long a fashion cycle, you might say!), are those that cause ecological degradation, and those that are good no matter what time we live in, like kindness and respect, are those that seek to preserve and sustain this planet. There is a dichotomy between scales here - industrialisation is a larger scale of activity than our individual lives. Why do many of our collective behaviours directly contradict our individual beliefs? I wrote earlier that the moral fabric upon which they operate is defined through the collection of our moralities. However, in the process of the weaving of the fabric, individual moralities are averaged out, resulting in a destructiveness that was from the outset unthinkable. 

And how do we reconcile what we are doing now with what we should be doing, individually and collectively? I believe there can no reconciliation, other than appreciating the effort that some people and some organisations are making in trying to better this world. More importantly, however, there can be no reconciliation, because the way we behave just isn't sustainable. This is the crucial point; we cannot eat our cake and have it too. If we cannot agree to the sustainability of our of individual and collective lives, then there's no reason to continue behaving the way we do as individuals, and there is no way we should be allowing larger organisations to behave in ways that are against the values we preach as individuals.

On a lack of honesty

We always talk up the benefits of the way of life we preach, our economy - people will become richer, they will lead lives with more choice, they will grow the economy, they will make our country strong and powerful. Wonderful. That sounds hunky dory. Sign me up. What isn't said much, or what end up being treated as anomalies, are the costs of this way of life. We always act surprised when something goes wrong egregiously - "A massive oil spill happened?! Oh, my gosh!" "Sweatshops in Indonesia?! Oh, my gosh!" "Millions of people displaced because of the damming of a river?! Oh, my gosh!" (While massive and tremendous, climate change maybe doesn't count as something egregious.)

This has been going on for a while now, while all along there has been a continual, and exponentially rising degradation of our environment, and a continued and exponential rising of the injustices that come along with such behaviour. It seems that we have now accumulated enough data now that we can be honest to ourselves, and to others about what our way of life entails.

But we have blinders on our eyes and our psyches. We are still bound by our immediacy.

There is a lack of honesty about how we conduct ourselves. And so when we export our way of life to other places, our rhetoric is mired in dishonesty. We are dishonest about what it actually means to continually extract from the environment, and what this means for lives and communities of people that have survived without this way of life that we are imposing on them. But what does this dishonesty mean for those who are being dishonest? It means that we think that this is the only way things can be, this is the only way things should be. And so the bounds of our imagination are fixed on the status quo.

I propose something simple, yet powerful. The next time we make a choice in our lives, the next time we tell someone else to make a choice for themselves, or the next time we try to sell someone on an idea, be honest about the outcomes of those choices. If I decide to buy another computer, will it help me now? Yup. Will it help me grow my business? Totally. What will it mean to where the computer came from? Hard labour conditions and strip mining? Hmmm...okay. On the other hand, what does it mean to love and care for the environment? It will mean a preservation of what sustains us. Are we doing that now? Not really. What will that entail for you, me, our families, our communities? It will mean an upheaval, a change in our attitudes, and it will be difficult. To be honest seems to more difficult than being dishonest, then. But anything of true import is always difficult.

Are we fighting the right battles?

The impacts of human behaviour are felt throughout the natural world. If you just scratch the surface of the ecological issues facing us, you'll see that there are issues of all sorts regarding air and water and land degradation, biodiversity loss and persistent organic pollutants ending up in breast milk. Places that we have never even been to are now feeling the repercussions of our collective choices. And more likely than not, there are scores of environmentalists focusing on these issues. There are people that are trying to make sure that the air is clean, that our waters are unpolluted, that the soil isn't eroded. There are people trying to get certain plastics banned, and there are people that are trying to get coal-fired power plants reduce mercury emissions so that they don't end up in tuna that their children it.

As environmentalists, it seems that we're always fighting battles on many different fronts. Yet, as soon as one battle is won, the next one rears its head. There is no time to catch your breath. Oil spills are happening all the time. Once we've dealt with one toxic chemical being released into our waters, industry comes up with another chemical that we soon realise is toxic, too. Then we have to fight to ban that chemical. (Such is the same with human rights violations, which are, to me, the same issues as environmental issues.) There's something wrong here.


It seems as if we are tackling important issues (albeit slowly), but we are missing the most important point. We are saying, "Stop using chemical X," and then we quickly trust and hope that chemical Y that will end up in bottles will be benign. What we aren't doing with our approach, is taking down the systems of oppression, systems that will inevitably result in the constant abuse and mistreatment of our Earth and its people. I don't have to name these systems; it is plain to see what drives ecological degradation and injustice.

I believe that those who are vested in the current norms would have it no other way. They would rather have us fight these individual battles, have us compromise on these single issues, and not have criticise and reform what it is, truly, that results in the multitude of problems facing us. They are probably sitting in their offices and boardrooms, disconnected from the issues, not seeing the faces of people affected by an oil spill, not seeing the birds choking for air.

What we need is a radicalism that drives at the very heart of the crisis they face us. Our societies are founded on inequality and disrespect. We treat the Earth as inferior to ourselves, and we disrespect it. We "use" the Earth to provide us with rare earth metals for computers. We probably blasted a big hole in the ground to get to those ores. We treat those in "developing" countries, or those in places less powerful here in the US, those whose "natural resources" we're using here as inferior to us by disrespecting their lands and mountains and water.

The other day, I wrote a post titled I am not extreme. Indeed, our behaviours, different than those defined by the norms today, need to be those that would be normal in the world we want to live in - a world of equality, humility and respect towards everything. Yet that does not mean that our efforts today should not be viewed as different. In fact, our efforts and thoughts today do need to be radical. We cannot be satisfied with just keeping our oceans clean. If we commit ourselves to such a battle and see satisfaction in that, we will have allowed those that polluted the oceans ample opportunities to find new ways of degrading the land.

Our efforts and thoughts do need to be radical today, and we must reconcile this radicalism with the hope that there will be no need for such radicalism in our world. And we must always remember that we cannot hope for others to think and act radically unless we think so and do so ourselves.

What if scientists quit?

As any person that does research would tell you, any probing into nature and complex systems always raises more questions than answers. As a chemical kineticist, I can assure you that people haven't even agreed on the kinetics of hydrogen+oxygen, the simplest group of reactions physically possible in combustion. (I am at times worried that fist fights will break out at conferences over peoples' differences in the understanding of these simple kinetics.) As humans, we are curious, and it is nice to "know" more about how things and the world work. But inevitably, the rise of more questions makes us think that we should find the answers to those questions, which inevitably leads to more research. In no way am I saying that all research is bad, but I believe that there comes a time when more research is not the best use of our time, of our energy, of our emotions.

Climate change is a fitting example of this. We have known for decades now that greenhouse gases are responsible for climate change, and that it is humans that are responsible for the emissions of these greenhouse gases. Yet, there is more and more research being done into climate change, and more and more articles and assessments being published, and more and more grants being written, and more and more time and effort and money being expended. We are never going to know how the climate works totally, but we do have a good enough understanding of how it does. And more fundamentally, we know (we know, we know, we know, we know!) that our behaviour, our ethics, are driving us to release more and more greenhouse gases. What should we do about this knowledge? (Of course the techno-optimists will say, 'We need better technology.' Well, we know how well that has worked out...) More research is probably leading to more lost time.

What if scientists said, 'Enough is enough! The best use of our time is to actually mobilise and act on our findings, not to beat a dead horse and learn more about the nuances of climate.' What if scientists quit? What if they boycotted "research" and became activists? Many of you might say, 'Well, scientists are socially awkward, and they'd be terrible organisers.' Okay. But think about the power that they have. They are the ones bringing in money to institutions of "learning." They are the ones that are teaching the youth about the issues. And they are the ones that know full well how our behaviours are leading to ecological degradation. We know all that we need to know to make huge strides towards treading lightly on this planet. We just need to take those steps.

Many people have talked about the role of scientists and engineers in public policy. Robert Pielke Jr. does a good job at delineating those roles in his book The Honest Broker. But the roles that he talks about assumes that scientists rest within the current structures of society that lead to much inertia - the government-university-industry complex. Only a handful are out there, writing more publicly, trying to organise and mobilise.

FRACK YOU - Not learning from our mistakes

The issue of hydrofracking has all of the essentials of a prime example of how we treat the environment and other humans. It is a most visceral example of ecological degradation, too, because of the potential and already existing impacts it has resulted in. More on that later.

As with much environmentalism in this country, environmentalism is viewed under the lens of energy. There is a sense that if we can just find "clean energy," all our environmental woes will be things of the past. It is this mentality, coupled with our tolerance of high-risk corporate behaviour, that has led to the acceptance of hydrofracking as a way to find "clean energy." Add on top of this that this energy is not coming from the Middle East, and many have a reason to smile. Of course, it has helped the hydrofracking establishment that the hydrocarbon obtained from the process is natural gas, basically methane. As someone who has a little understanding of combustion, if you did want to burn something, methane is probably your least bad choice in terms of flame characteristics and the simplicity of the chemistry. What people are not thinking about is that the companies that are involved in the fracking are the very companies that have acted irresponsibly to people and the environment so far.

I think the issue of hydrofracking is less about these companies and their behaviour, which will not change as easily as we would hope, and more about what we think about what our lives need, i.e. energy. Many people are "techno-optimists" - they believe that these "breakthroughs" in "clean energy" will come; we just need to sit tight and believe. Given this techno-optimism and our inability to function without copious and excessive amounts of energy, we are willing to give free reign to those who will provide us the energy. But we are then shocked that they would take part in actions that lead to contamination of aquifers and rivers and pools full of radioactive wastewater and seas full of leaked oil. It is easy for us to tell these companies that "...hydraulic fracturing must be done in a way that protects the environment and public health,” but it is much harder for us to accept our complicity in their behaviour. Each and every one of us can reduce our patronage of these degrading entities. We can show that it is possible not to be defined by their existence and by what it is they sell us.

The data don't speak for themselves

One thing I have constantly thought about is, How do I get my message across? Over the past year, it has been interesting to observe how people react to the trashlessness. With something like trash, a visceral action and outcome, one would think that it would be easy to convince people about the impacts and tolls of their choices on society and the environment. Yet, it is never easy to convince people that their choices have an impact for several reasons. One, of course, is that people feel that their choices, in the grander scheme of things, are inconsequential. Two, they might agree with you, and choose not to act out of indifference. Three, they might agree with you, but choose not to act because changing their behaviour goes against everything they have been taught. There may be a resistance to change because that behaviour is deep-rooted culturally, and because people may see that everyone else is doing what they are doing...so that can't be wrong, right? This last reason is particularly challenging to address because true environmental activism does fly in the face of most all cultural norms and how we've structured our interactions amongst ourselves and the environment. In that light, Katie recently sent out an interview of Professor Andy Hoffman in The New York Times. He has worked for a while now with a dear friend of mine on climate skepticism. (I recommend you read this interview; it's really, really fascinating.) One thing Professor Hoffman said that struck me was, "So when I hear scientists say, 'The data speak for themselves,' I cringe. Data never speak. And data generally and most often are politically and socially inflected. They have import for people’s lives. To ignore that is to ignore the social and cultural dimensions within which this science is taking place."

Climate change is something we all have to face. But for the reasons described above, people may not want to change their behaviour, which directly contributes to the problem. The verdict on the veracity of climate change, or global warming, has been out for decades now, and yet, many people just don't believe in it. Thousands of papers and much effort has been invested in international assessments. But, it just is so damn hard to convince people (Act II) that have made up their minds. What is particularly interesting is how people choose to believe some things, and act on them or use that beliefs, and choose not to believe other things. For example, let's take the jet engine. Many decades, people are still trying to figure out how to get those things to work better. Most times, we don't even know the complex fluid mechanics going on in the engine. Yet, the understanding about the combustion and fluid mechanics and control of engines has come, not surprisingly, from the same process, social and political, that has proven that climate change is real and human induced. (I am talking about the "scientific, peer-review process.") But people will very readily put themselves on a plane, and "trust that the engineers and scientists did their job in assuring their safety," while at the same time not believe that those very planes are ecologically impactful. This is exactly what Professor Hoffman is getting at. Traveling on a plane to visit a foreign land or see relatives is important to people, but anything that will change or take away the ability to do so will be fought till the very end.

Guest blog #17: Laura Smith on durable change and rethinking incentives

"I should preface this post by saying that what you are about to read is 100% my interpretation on the writing and teaching of my adviser in the School of Natural Resources, Raymond De Young. He teaches a course on the Psychology of Environmental Stewardship, and has written articles with such titles as “Changing Behavior and Making it Stick.” So, in writing this post, I find myself in what I refer to as another “channeling Ray” moment.

When we talk of scaling up environmental behavior change, the question of incentives inevitably arises.  It is a commonly held belief that monetary incentive, in particular, is the only way to insight individual change on a massive scale. There is no doubt that financial payoff for do-gooding has magical powers. However, as a behavior change strategy, it has its pitfalls, not least of which is durability. But I will get to that in a moment.

Perhaps the first question regarding financial incentives or disincentives is this: who pays? Incentives for going green are often temporal in nature, and the kitty eventually runs out. Recent politics around budgetary issues suggest that these pots of money could be even more rare in the coming years.  Disincentives, on the other hand, force the consumer to pay up, which is perhaps a dicey proposition in "economic hard times."  From a purely economic standpoint, there are good reasons to rethink monetary incentives to drive environmental behavior change.

There is another compelling reason – behaviors driven by reward have a notorious “back to baseline” effect when the incentive is removed. In other words, materially incentivized behavior typically goes back to previous unsustainable levels when the rewards go away. Research has shown this effect time and again with a multitude of environmental and health-related behaviors. So, unless someone is willing to pay the price indefinitely, we can hardly expect durable change.

Disincentives are a slightly different story, since these can be put in place for lengthy periods of time, perhaps yielding the desired trend over time (think gas tax). Like incentives, this is a technique of coercion, and because of that, it poses some interesting challenges. Psychological reactance is a common one, and describes the behaviors of people who go out of their way to mess with the system.  

The driving law in Sao Paulo, Brazil illustrates well some of some issues with disincentives. To reduce its daunting pollution and traffic problems, the South American mega-city put a law into effect that allows license plates with odd numbers to drive on certain days of the week, and even numbers the other days. Unfortunately, the city did not simultaneously provide reasonable alternative transportation choices. As a result, many people ended up changing the times they drove to skirt hours of enforcement, and in some extreme cases, bought a second car so that they could legally drive every day. Neither behavior was an intended consequence of the law that was supposed to curb unnecessary driving and encourage carpooling.

So, the behavior change goal can’t conflict with needs basic to one’s livelihood. But say we are dealing with behaviors more benign.  How do we encourage durable change?

Change from within

One alternative to techniques of coercion (change from the outside) is helping people to construct their own internal motivations for the behavior in question (change on the inside). This can be spurred through our relationships with inspiring people, time in nature, time spent learning about environmental issues, and the list goes on. Personal change is ideally bolstered with a supportive social network. So, in some ways, the strategy implies an incentive program that is individually tailored, and maintained, by each person…in their own heads…and supported by a loving community. 

Durable change, in this light, may take effort to get people started, but becomes self-maintaining over time. 

Now, if you need to change behaviors of a lot of people and fast, and you don’t necessarily need the behavior to stick, get out your wallet! There is no doubt that incentives and disincentives have a valid role to play in environmental behavior change. But isn’t it nice to know that they’re not the only way?"

~Laura "Smitty" Smith

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This post on durable change dovetails wonderfully with some of the thoughts from a recent post. I have written about durable change a few times (here, here, here), too. Laura raises some very interesting points, some of which I have been trying to articulate over the past year. The notions of "incentive" and "disincentive" in our world almost always seems to boil down to a monetary issue, and money viewed under the economic structures of today has different powers than maybe another framework you might conjure up. I personally believe that when it comes down to it, the talk about things being "economical" and "efficient" must be moved away from, particularly when viewed under our current framework, and especially because of the nature of the compromises that this framework results in. 

We cannot wait

I do not intend this post to be in any way discouraging. Rather, I hope it lays out, to some extent, why it is that matters need to be taken into our own hands, yes, yours and mine.

I had a wonderful day today, which was spent talking with Patrick about the issues raised because of individual action and the arguments for it. One of the major questions that has come up during this past months is, Why focus on individual action? Getting organisations that have impacts much larger than my own to decrease their environmental impact by even 0.01% will dwarf anything I have been able to do over the past fifty-four weeks. I agree. That would be wonderful to do, and I encourage all of us to continue our efforts to do so. The obvious way to get such organisational change is government policy. People might think that we should focus our efforts on getting some national or regional policy passed. Yes, we should, and I encourage all of us to continue our efforts to do so. People have told me that there need to be "incentives" to change behaviour, or at least some policy that pushes people to change their behaviour. Yes, that is needed.

However, my questions in rebuttal are these - Who is going to get the government to enact policy, and what exactly is the nature of that policy? What ethical (and consequently legal and economic) foundations are those changes in behaviour going to be adopted on? Any change that stands a chance at truly addressing the nature of the problems that face us will necessarily require a fundamental rethink of our ethical structure. Furthermore, "incentives" are introduced all the time in our country, and are as quickly taken away - take for example production tax credits for renewable sources of energy. Given the magnitude of the issues that face us, "incentives" that have the potential to be taken away are in some sense a waste of time in trying to get passed, particularly how the sausage factory of the government is adept at watering policies down to be mere lip service. The changes that are required in our society need to be durable.

As I have written about previously, any durable change (here, here, here) that comes can come from nowhere but from our own lives. It is our choice. It is through the collective projection of our lives outwards that we currently allow the existence of ecologically destructive organisations and governments. Also, I highly doubt that a large fraction of people in the US will be willing to do something because the government forces them to, particularly when it comes to the environment. As Professor Andrew Hoffman said, "There’s a segment of the population that sees environmentalists as socialists, trying to control people’s lives."

It is clear to me that not everyone thinks that environmentalists are trying to control people's lives. What that means is that each one of us can be that example, to these people, at least, that shows that making the meaningful changes in our lives is not only necessary, but also doable.

What motivates us? A call for thoughts

I received an e-mail a few weeks ago from Donna LeGrand, a retired lawyer living in Raleigh, North Carolina. She said that she wanted to try to move towards living trash-free! How amazing! She later called me, and we talked for about an hour about her life and her thoughts. I asked her what motivated her to think about doing something like this. She said that she had been doing much to decrease her environmental impact and trash production. But one fine day, just like any other day, she opened her kitchen pantry, and saw this....

She thought to herself, "Look at all of this stuff I have to throw away." I am not going to write more of her story here, because her story is best told by her, and I hope she will write a piece to share with everyone. But I wonder what it was that day that made her say that to herself.

I have tried to think about what motivates and encourages us to make changes in our lives. There are of course incredibly thoughtful people that have thought about these things before, and have made efforts to make other people change their behaviours. This can take the form of little signs or thoughts, as has been done at Georgia Tech. It seems like the motivations or the triggers exist all around us, yet we are sheltered, and we live overloaded lives. Motivation can also come from people we love, people we respect, and people who we don't agree with. What is interesting is that we are surrounded by all of these potential triggers and stimuli all of the time.

One time occurrences, such as weather events, of course at the other end of the spectrum, and are the most vivid cases that may result in behaviour changes, particularly because they can etch themselves in people's minds. Events, such as weddings and birthdays and parties and concerts can do that, too. But with environmental issues, particularly those with large characteristic times for their unfolding, such as climate change, it is hard to point to individual events as outcomes of our behaviour. It would be hard to convince people in the US that they are being oppressed because of climate change, especially because climate change isn't as visceral as an F5 tornado.

But the problems exist, and people need to be motivated to act on issues that they may or may not be affected by. This is a difficult question, and I cannot say I have much to say at this point, or today. (I will think about this and share some more thoughts if I think of anything.) Therefore, I am hoping that you will be willing to share your thoughts with on what motivates you. I will leave this question open ended, and you are encouraged to write about most anything. What would be particularly interesting to share are those key events that impacted you and your beliefs and your behaviour. If it is something environmentally related, that will be awesome. If you have pictures to share, that works, too.

On the building of community

It is clear that as important as individual actions (1, 2, 3, 4) are, the scale of the issues facing us are vast and dark. Addressing these issues will require the mobilisation of the hearts and minds of more than just a few people. Indeed, the importance of community cannot be understated.

On the day before the one year anniversary of this project, I hope that this project has been worthwhile for you to read about, because it has been an extremely wonderful journey for me. It is my sincere hope that I have not been forceful in imposing my views on other people, and if I have, I apologise. My hope is that this is just the beginning of a conversation, the building of a community. I was talking to Melissa yesterday about the new section to the blog, Traveling at home. She was excited about it, particularly because one of the important aspects of it is the building of community. She felt though, on the other hand, that this current project could have the potential of alienating people. I wanted to speak to the building of community that can arise out of individual actions that stand in direct opposition to the status quo.

I fully understand that my thoughts on this subject are naive, but I have experienced nothing short of wonderful positive energy and thoughts over the past year. Many people don't believe or do what I do, and that is okay. I think there are two ways to go about living, particularly if you are trying to induce a change in behaviour - with whatever you do, you can alienate people, or you can encourage people. Any behaviour either reinforces norms, or speaks out against them. It is plain to see that there are vast organisations, companies, neighbourhoods and communities that are invested in behaving a certain way. Many of these behaviours are ecologically degrading. Given these vast investments, any behaviour that stands in opposition to them is sure to affect large numbers of people, or at the very minimum, speak out against them. At the same time, I am surrounded by friends and family, people that actually have faces and names to me, and people whose facial expressions and words affect me immediately and directly.

I believe that it is easy to alienate people even when if message comes with a clear conscience. As cliche as this may sound, the conversation is important, not the antagonism, and a convincing argument followed up with steadfast action is a steady rock. Any new course of behaviour must come from somewhere. And I can only hope that the combined power of words and actions will serve their purpose of growing some communities, speaking out against others, while at the same time maintaining civility and respect.

On encouragement and reinforcement

It is natural for us to want to be told that what we are doing is good - hopefully, we want to be viewed as responsible, caring, loving and respectful to (at least some part of) this world. Some people will take this to mean that they will do whatever it takes to support their families, some may take this to mean that they will do whatever it takes to combat social injustice. Regardless, people want to be told that they are right, that they are doing good for themselves, their families and their communities, and hopefully our world. I would think that those interrogating new technologies want the encouragement of their peers and colleagues, even though to some of us those technologies as environmentally degrading. But it is clear that many if not most of our actions and behaviours are degrading the environment. How is it that people should be told that their actions are actually not in the best interest of the greater world outside of their families? How is it that we can change how people behave and change the social norms of what is acceptable?

Trash is a wonderful example of this. Many people may think that just making sure that your trash is thrown in a receptacle is good enough, and that that is the responsible thing to do. Putting trash in a receptacle means that you aren't littering, and that the containment of trash doesn't aesthetically degrade the surroundings. But trash is not a good thing, and the act of trashing is not a good thing. Poonam had the wonderfully simple idea of changing signage on trash cans - instead of having them say "Trash," she proposed that they should say "To Landfill." It seems like just a change of words would have a huge impact on people's behaviour and perception of their actions. I arrived at Georgia Tech just a couple of days ago, and one of the first things I noticed was this...

How wonderful! Not only are words being used, but pictures, impactful ones, are being used to hopefully get people thinking about their actions. I contacted the building manager, and he has now put me in touch with the administrator in facilities and operations to see what it took to do this, and how this change has affected behaviour of people using the receptacles.

I do believe that it takes "negative" images and thoughts and problems to encourage us to action. That is not a surprise. But how might we be open to criticism in our responses to these problems? This is a fundamental issue with environmentalism. In a technologically driven world, in a world based on natural resource extraction, our approaches to solving environmental and social issues are founded on these very principles. By encouraging these approaches and making people "feel good" about them, we reinforce ideas that just aren't sustainable. I struggle with this, and I wonder where the balance lies between the positive forms of encouragement ("What you are doing is good.") to negative forms of encouragement ("What you are doing is not good."). How do you tell people? How do you convince people? 

First of all, of course, I must be open to such criticisms, and if you have any, please, please tell me.

On our obligation to nature

I wonder whether the state of society and environment that we are faced with has been inevitable since the very beginning of the human species. We are faced with massive challenges of health and futurity. All the world and all the species that comprise it are at stake. Glaciers and watersheds and trees are at stake. These are the systems that support us, and that nurture us in ways we are unable to fully understand. The Earth will of course continue to exist with our without us, regardless of the environmental destruction we are causing through our careless behaviour. Yet I wonder, are humans behaving in a way that is natural? Are consolidation, economy and industrialisation natural outcomes of our mental capacities? Is the consequent environmental degradation associated with those social constructs a natural outcome?

I think back to defining moments in our history, and wonder whether it just had to be this way. We have been evolutionarily graced with mental capacities and abilities to communicate and feel emotions (not to say that other species aren't graced with these features), as well as the ability to used these abilities to dominate our landscapes and ecosystems. Therefore I wonder whether environmental degradation by a species capable of thinking a natural thing. I think we can trace the roots of much environmental harm to the settling of people. People chose to spend time in a single place, and plant a seed, and hope that it grew into a plant that fed them, rather than let nature do that for them. Yet hunter-gatherers survived for many hundreds of thousands of years, successfully. I would not be typing this blog post if they didn't survive. These groups of people were social, and they had customs and rituals. They would move around in search for what nature provided them. In fact, with agriculture, we have in some sense tried to play nature. Agriculture of course has led to segregation of efforts, and time to do things other than search for food. If you think along the lines that I have, this inevitably leads you down the road of humans extracting too much from a place, and not being in harmony with a place that is expansive. Wants inevitably grew over time, and contact with people from elsewhere made us want what they had. People from one place set out to conquer people from another place, with weapons and violence. They did so because they wanted the control of resources to satisfy their wants. Time passed, and consolidation of power happened because people have been able to use coercive power to wield control. Consolidation happened not only in government, but also in the the ability to provide necessities of life - water, food and shelter. All of this has led to environmental harm, as I've discussed previously in the blog.

Many might say from a religious or ethical standpoint that nature was created for us, and therefore our control over it is axiomatic. Some might say that we are just another animal species, and that since we've been graced with such amazing capacities, we are just implementing those capacities in a way that ensures our survival and comfort and pleasure. Yet I do feel that we cannot think of ourselves as just another species out to survive for ourselves. The argument of survival of the fittest just doesn't hold water in our world. I believe, as Wendell Berry has alluded, that there comes a point in the spectrum of mental and emotional capacities that we assume the burden of obligation - the obligation to be kind and respectful and caring to what it is that sustains us; we have an obligation to nature. Our societies and communities are full of obligations and defined by them - taxes and trust and e-mails and phone calls. In some sense, we cannot call ourselves human if these obligations didn't exist. So why not make the logical leap to an obligation to nature? Such an obligation will not allow us to think that what we do - clear cut forests, build massive artificial lakes, construct tall buildings - is natural. Progress in the way we've defined it cannot be assumed to be natural. Our mental and emotional capacities place on us the burden of defining our societies and communities and priorities with reverence, consideration, respect and wonder for all it is that surrounds us. We are obliged to do so.

Objects and materials: Shape and design

Glass bottles have been something that have constantly made me think, of course, not because I drink our of them (although I do at times enjoy those very liquids...draught), but because others do, a lot. Bottles have a lot of value in many ways. They hold liquids very well, and the fact that they have a small place from which to drink from means that they reduce potential opportunities for spilling. They are thick and feel heavy, and therefore, make you feel like you are actually holding something. In fact, they feel very much like pint glasses. But I think it is very interesting how two almost identical objects in function can result in two very different responses after use. (I guess I am talking primarily about Western countries in this post.) After using a pint glass, the natural thing one may do is put the glass in the sink, or in the dishwasher. After using a glass bottle, on the other hand, the tendency for one is to put it in the trash can or recycling bin. We think it okay to reuse one of the objects, but find it odd to reuse the other, in general. The only difference between the objects is that one of them has a curved, narrowing top, while the other opens or is the same area as the base. But if you can pour a liquid into a pint glass, you can pour into a bottle, just gingerly.

On the left is a picture of a big bottle. We can absolutely imagine popping the top and drinking the beer in the bottle, but very few would wash the bottle out and use it as a glass. But what if the top of the bottle didn't exist, as in the picture on the right? In that case, once we would have had a beer from the "bottle," we would probably think that we could reuse it, and then keep it as a glass, just like many people do with Ball jars. But again, we can easily use the bottle to fill water from a tap, and just use it as a glass. (You may know that in many countries, the tops of bottles are cut off; the bottoms then serve as glasses.)

Therefore, it seems that the difference is the social learning that one shape is acceptable to use only in certain ways, when in fact, there is very little difference between many of the objects we think are different. This raises several interesting questions about design and learning and behaviour. There are probably very small things we can do physically to common objects such that we might think they are multi-purpose. These changes can have huge consequences - reduced quantities of things going to landfills, reduced need for recycling, increased reusing, increased sentimentality, increased pass-me-downs, decreased natural resource extraction, etc. etc. etc. 

The other night, Marco raised the very interesting case of the bee in the urinals (here, here). Here's a picture of the bee.

 

What this simple little change has done (you can read why by clicking the above links), particularly in high-volume places such as airports and malls, has been to reduce the amount of cleaning required, the chemicals required for cleaning, the water used for cleaning, and on and on. Maybe it is worthwhile to think about how we can make just small changes to what surrounds us to change our perceptions of use. It would be interesting to see how the learning is passed between people with these changes.

On the deficiencies of the law

I continue to seek to motivate individual action. Yesterday, I came across the notion of proactive law, which is a growing school of thought, particularly in the European Union. Proactive law is "a future-oriented approach where the goal is to promote what is desirable and ex ante maximise opportunities while minimising problems and risks." This philosophy of law has, it seems, primarily been applied to creating a better business environment for people, such that "an optimal mix of regulatory means...best promote(s) societal objectives..." But it may not be terribly difficult to think about proactive law in the context of environmental law - given that we know there are environmental problems created by the way society functions, we may be able to pass enforceable legislation such that environmental harm is minimised through future societal actions. (There are of course issues with developing a dialogue with nature itself, unless people try to represent the views of nature.) Most environmental laws have been retrospective, setting legal boundaries of action because of past environmental harm. However, these laws do potentially grant authority to regulate future behaviour of people and businesses, just like the Clean Air Act (first adopted in 1970) was judged to be applicable to regulate greenhouse gas emissions a couple of years ago.

There seems to be an inherent contradiction between future-oriented law and the way humans have been behaving so far, because humans will likely continue to behave in the same way in the future. But with our behaviour, we have created over the past few hundred years a society whose understanding of its actions cannot be fully comprehended right now, and may never be. For example, what does it mean for our human relationships that we now have new forms communication that inherently limit time with other people? Such a question is hard to wrap our minds around, and we will not know the full consequences of such a change in momentum until many years have gone by. So how might we be able to create laws that bind us to a desired future outcome? Furthermore, the interesting thing about law is that it is made in the context of its time, given our sensibility of the issues facing us - the US Constitution was drafted in the late 18th century, and many of us know that there are significant issues surrounding the interpretation and validity of the Second Amendment today, which was adopted in 1791.

I write about this, because as I mentioned previously, the sentiments behind the law come out of the weaving of our collective moralities - in the end, the law may lose the force that a few of us might want it to have. But it is clear that personal actions now, in the present, can guarantee that at least our individual exoneration from the behaviour that may degrade the environment or trample on social justice now and in the future. We may never understand the outcomes of our actions given the complex web of interconnectedness today, but choosing not to participate in such behaviour guarantees that at least for us, such proactive law is superfluous and unnecessary.

On goodness (and kindness - replace goodness)

Problems of the environment, social justice, and sustainability inherently cut through traditionally defined boundaries of thought, discipline, and government. Much of the cause of these issues is just that, an artificial compartmentalism and reductionism put in place because of a willingness and penchant to see things in isolation, rather than in a whole. At the same time, we have grown to rely so heavily on this compartmentalism that addressing these problems seems too big for any one group of people or any one organisation to tackle. Many, especially those with power, argue that addressing these problems will only affect other problems our communities face, such as unemployment. What many realise now is that traditional modes of thought and behaviour may not be those we wish to pass to future generations. But the question remains - how might we address large problems like sustainability?

As I have tried to point out over the past ten months, personal responsibility is a necessity in envisioning a world less impacted by humans, in which nature thrives and is not toxically contaminated by human activity. Many may say that personal responsibility in the face of large problems can be deflating. Trash continues to pour into the streets and into the oceans, and greenhouse gases and toxins continue to pour into the air. Yet action begins with me, action begins with you, and action begins with us. I have been thinking of ways to adequately communicate responsibility to different people - indeed, there is no common language for the problems of sustainability we face. (Hopefully Sam and I will be starting a project on this soon.) What I am proposing, which is just a thought that passed through my mind today, is that maybe it is easier to motivate action around sustainability by thinking about goodness.

Our schools and colleges, it seems to me, are woefully inadequate in creating good citizens and stewards. Most of us can pass through college without engaging ourselves outside of our major, and it is obvious that the goal of many universities is to create workers to feed a natural resource-based economy. But goodness is something that is more basic and fundamental than a college-level education - it is something moral. Goodness is a moral trait that we all can relate to, understand, and apply to each and every aspect of our lives. Goodness is something that is lacking in our societies, but if adequately incorporated into our thoughts, can have large impacts on everything from our families to mystical ecosystems. When adequately thought about and acted upon, goodness can lead us to ask and answer questions about people's feelings when we disagree with them, the impacts of our choices on people we've never seen, and the fish in deep waters unexplored. Goodness is extremely personal, and works in magical ways - goodness begets goodness. Goodness is a positive energy that can make us feel good, while actually doing good. I know that this concept is incredibly vague and I am definitely just starting to think about it related to the environment. I recognise that many times, we are faced with choices in which just being good may not lead to easy answers. However, that does not take away from the need to be good, for our sake, as well as the environment's. 

Please send me your thoughts.

Social interactions without trash

Trash is borne out of, and is a byproduct of, our desire to control what we experience. This has led to the development of social interactions which necessarily involve the production of trash, especially because of sentiments like complacency, ignorance and carelessness, as well as notions of time. There are many simple and fundamental acts that we perform in which we allow trash to be generated. Take for example going to eat at a fast food restaurant. In that light, I am trying to envision a world, a region, a community, or an interaction without trash. I want your suggestions on situations in which you would think trash could not possibly be generated, but ends up being so. Then I want to take trash out of the picture. Say it wasn't even possible to generate trash - what would that interaction morph into? What changes in behaviour would be required to have that interaction? How is this then a critique of our social constructs? Please send in your thoughts. My wheels are turning, too.