More reasons for behavior change

I've written quite extensively recently about why I think behavior change is a critical and perilously understudied part of the solution to global climate change. If a miracle technology could be implemented tomorrow which produced clean energy with no ill effects, then all of our problems would be solved. But in the meantime, every ton of carbon we produce today has an effective lifetime of thousands of years and will continue to increase the likelihood of severe weather, drought, and species extinction deemed likely if carbon output trends continue.

Thus far, almost all of the discussion about climate change has focused on implementing economic incentives to both reduce emissions (trading schemes or taxes) and encourage technological innovation (subsidies and research grants). However, I argue that the substantial emissions reductions necessary to mitigate the worst effects of climate change cannot succeed without behavior change - that is, changes in our behavior at any given level of prices and incentives.

Behavior change is important because we already have economic incentives to reduce emissions. Most activities that produce emissions already cost money, and there are already things we could do to increase efficiency. However, a recent study by McKinsey casts doubt that technology and incentives alone can save us - for there are many opportunities for saving money and saving energy using technologies which already exist, but which remain unutilized. As detailed in a recent post in the Economist , two types of economic frictions work to prevent carbon taxes and other incentives from functioning properly: difficulty monitoring energy use by individuals and separation between those who pay for energy and those who pay for energy reduction.

Both of these frictions are apparent at MIT, where I've been working to improve campus energy efficiency. None of us pays for the energy we use in our offices, labs, and classrooms. Indeed, even departments pay only a fixed overhead fee to MIT facilities which is independent of how much energy they actually use. Furthermore, even if we did want to implement incentives for energy reduction, measurement of energy use is coarse in both time and spatial resolution. Because choices which affect carbon emissions are made at an individual level, fully implementing incentives for mitigation would require accurate measurement of every activity we engage in that uses energy. In essence, this would entail full carbon surveillance along with complex calculations to separate out each person's contribution to things like building lighting and public transportation. This level of measurement is neither feasible nor desirable, so as long as we cannot fully measure each person's emissions, incentives cannot be enough.

Even where measurement is possible, the people who could benefit from incentives are often not the people who must invest in emissions reduction. Much of the cost-savings we could achieve using current technology involves investments in things like better insulation and fluorescent light bulbs. These items often cost more than energy-intensive alternatives, and savings are made up in the long run through lower energy costs. But in the case of a landlord and a tenant, for example, the landlord would have no incentive to pay for better insulation because it is the tenants who pay the monthly electricity bill. In a stylized economic model, the parties could just strike a deal whereby the investment is made and they share the gains, but in reality few people go to the trouble.

Undoubtedly, stabilizing carbon emissions will require investment in new technology and implementation of economic incentives. But because incentives for investment will never be perfectly aligned and measurement will never by perfectly accurate, loopholes will always remain. This gap must be filled by something which is too-often ignored by economists and policymakers alike - our collective will to do what's right, even when nobody's watching.