It turns out many Americans aren’t great at identifying which personal decisions contribute most to climate change.
According to a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences, people struggle to accurately judge the impact of various actions, like switching from a gasoline car to an electric one, carpooling, or cutting down on food waste, on climate change. This is mainly due to the release of greenhouse gases when fuels such as gasoline, oil, and coal are burned.
“There’s a tendency to exaggerate the effect of low-impact activities like recycling while undervaluing the substantial carbon footprint of actions like flying or consuming meat,” explained Madalina Vlasceanu, who co-authored the report and teaches environmental social sciences at Stanford University.
The actions that individuals most commonly misjudge, yet are most beneficial for the climate, are avoiding air travel, opting not to have a dog, and using renewable energy. Conversely, people overestimate the benefits of using energy-efficient appliances, switching light bulbs, recycling, and cutting down on energy use for laundry, making these the most overestimated actions in the study.
There are many reasons people get it wrong
Vlasceanu mentioned that marketing tends to emphasize the importance of recycling and energy-efficient lighting, rather than the larger impact of avoiding flights or not adopting a pet, leading participants to weigh these actions more heavily.
How the human brain is wired also plays a role.
“Recycling is visible and tangible, but carbon emissions aren’t something we can see,” noted Jiaying Zhao, a professor of psychology and sustainability at the University of British Columbia.
Zhao pointed out that frequent actions are more easily recalled. “Since recycling is nearly a daily habit and flying is rarer, it often goes unnoticed,” she stated. “Therefore, recycling tends to be perceived as more significant.”
Of course, there is also a lot of misleading information. For example, some companies tout the recycling they do while not telling the public about pollution that comes from their overall operations.
“There has been a lot of deliberate confusion out there to support policies that are really out of date,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit.
Why dogs have a big climate impact
Dogs are big meat eaters, and meat is a significant contributor to climate change. That is because many of the farm animals, which will become food, release methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Beef is especially impactful, in part because around the world cattle are often raised on land that was illegally deforested. Since trees absorb carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas, cutting them to then raise cattle is a double whammy.
“People just don’t associate pets with carbon emissions. That link is not clear in people’s minds,” Zhao said.
Not all pets are the same, however. Zhao owns a dog and three rabbits.
“I can adopt 100 bunnies that will not be close to the emissions of a dog, because my dog is a carnivore,” she said.
The owner of a meat-eating pet can lower their impact by looking for food made from sources other than beef. Zhao, for example, tries to minimize her dog’s carbon footprint by feeding her less carbon-intensive protein sources, including seafood and turkey.
Pollution from air travel
Planes emit a lot of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, also greenhouse gases. Additionally, planes emit contrails, or vapor trails that prevent planet-warming gases from escaping into space. A round-trip economy-class flight on a 737 from New York to Los Angeles produces more than 1,300 pounds of emissions per passenger, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency.
Skipping that single flight saves about as much carbon as swearing off eating all types of meat a year, or living without a car for more than three months, according to U.N. estimates.
Other decisions, both impactful and minor
Switching to energy that comes from renewable sources, such as solar and wind, has a large positive impact because such sources don’t emit greenhouse gases. Some of the biggest climate decisions individuals can make include how they heat and cool their homes and the types of transportation they use. Switching to renewable energy minimizes the impact of both.
Recycling is effective at reducing waste headed for landfill, but its climate impact is relatively small because transporting, processing and repurposing recyclables typically relies on fossil fuels. Plus, less than 10% of plastics actually get recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Other decisions with overestimated impact, including washing clothes in cold water and switching to more efficient light bulbs, are relatively less important. That is because those appliances have a relatively small impact compared to other things, such plane flights and dogs, so improving on them, while beneficial, has a much more limited influence.
Experts say the best way to combat the human tendency to miscalculate climate-related decisions is with more readily available information. Zhao said that people are already more accurate in their estimations than they would have been 10 or 20 years ago because it’s easier to learn.
The study backs up that hypothesis. After participants finished ranking actions, the researchers corrected their mistakes, and they changed which actions they said they’d take to help the planet.
“People do learn from these interventions,” Vlasceanu said. “After learning, they are more willing to commit to actually more impactful actions.”
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