Comment on ‘The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions’

Basshuysen, Philippe van; Brandstedt, Eric

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aab213

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Wynes and Nicholas (2017) concluded that the following actions can be classified as high-impact: living car-free, avoiding one transatlantic flight, buying green energy, buying a more fuel-efficient car or going car-free, and switching to a plant-based diet. They also included having one fewer child in their list of high-action behaviours, but this has been subject to debate (see Basshuysen & Brandstedt, 2018;Pedersen & Lam, 2018;Wynes & Nicholas, 2018a, 2018b. Similarly, Lacroix (2018) concluded that eating fewer animal products and switching to more fuel-efficient vehicles had the largest mitigation potential.…”

Section: High-impact Climate Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing meat consumption: Identifying group-specific inhibitors using latent profile analysis

Lacroix

Gifford

2019

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Climate change mitigation requires changes in greenhouse gas emitting behaviours. This dissertation aims to provide insights into the influences of behaviour change for two high-impact pro-environmental behaviours: climate policy support and consumption of animal products. It does so by using quasi-and randomized experiments and by monitoring changes in behaviour over time. Study 1 examined changes in climate policy support and climate change risk perception over the course of a naturally occurring event: seasonal forest fires. It employed growth curve modeling techniques in a structural equation modeling framework to analyze longitudinal relations between these two constructs over time, and to examine growth in climate change risk perception while controlling for the effect of exposure to forest fires and other extreme weather. Indirect exposure to forest fires (e.g., media) had a modest effect on climate change risk perception. Climate change risk perception for individuals with above-mean perceptions of scientific agreement tended to increase faster than for those with below-mean perceptions. Individuals whose climate change risk perception grew at a faster-than-average rate tended to also grow at a faster-than-average rate for climate policy support. Study 2 provided insight into the psychological influences on consumption of animal products and on willingness to reduce. Following a comprehensive literature review, known influences were examined using Latent Profile Analysis to identify groups of individuals with similar perceptions of facilitators of meat consumption and obstacles to reducing it. Three groups were identified: stronghindrance meat eaters, moderate-hindrance meat eaters, and reducers. Validation variables confirmed the practicality of the three profiles: groups differed in their current consumption of animal products and in their willingness to reduce. Using these findings, three group-matched interventions were designed in Study 3. Intervention design was informed by four behaviour-iv change frameworks. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: control condition, implementation-intention condition, information-and-healthy-recipe condition, and information-and-substitution condition. Then, they completed up to 28 days of food diaries.Multilevel model analyses were employed to examine changes in the consumption of animal products over time. Participants reduced their consumption by 20 grams of CO2 per day on average. Individuals that were randomly assigned to an intervention condition that matched their meat-eater profile reduced their consumption of animal products by 40 grams CO2 per day on average. Taken together, these studies highlight the importance of considering individual differences (i.e., tailoring) when designing pro-environmental behaviour interventions. v

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Section: High-impact Climate Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing meat consumption: Identifying group-specific inhibitors using latent profile analysis

Lacroix

Gifford

2019

Appetite

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“…The politics of reproduction are increasingly overlapping with environmental politics (Lappé, Hein, and Landecker 2019). Procreation has been demonised as a burden on ever-depleting resources, reproducing one's impact well into the future as a carbon legacy (Murtaugh and Schlax 2009;Wynes and Nicholas 2017;Sasser 2018). At the same time, children are often culturally represented as an optimistic project of hope for changing the trajectory of human impact.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re)configuring moral boundaries of intergenerational justice: the UK parent-led climate movement

2021

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The interests of children in a climate-challenged future are underrepresented within UK policy-making and public discourse. Debates on intergenerational equity have centred on economic logic rather than the moral issue of harms to the next generation, or the responsibilities of today's generation. Civil movements play an important role in changing public and political thinking on this issue; however, research on intergenerational climate justice activism has so far been confined to the youth movement. This study uses an in-depth diary and interview dataset of 20 UK-based activist mothers and fathers to explore the emotional spaces of parenting and campaigning for intergenerational climate justice. Attention was paid to the role of parenthood in the framing and motivation for action, and the way that campaigning was sustained or impeded by activist parents' personal relationships. The study found that the emotional spaces of activist parenting were managed and demarcated through moral boundary work that was used to define, distinguish and legitimise a collective representation. These boundaries were relational and drawn selectively to include similar others and to form bridges with politicians; boundaries also functioned to delegitimise the role of adults without children, and to exclude and excuse younger children and older relatives from playing a part in justice activism. The paper concludes by considering how these processes might impede the movement and have implications for wider social justice.

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“…However, just as a collective's (e.g., a nation's) ecological impact is the product partly of the population factor, an individual's ecological impact is also the product partly of the population factor (in terms of reproduction). Murtaugh and Schlax (2009) and Wynes and Nicholas (2017) argue that by choosing to have fewer children, an individual can -other things being equallessen their ecological footprint compared to what it would be had they chosen to have more children (see Van Basshuysen & Brandstedt, 2018 for criticism). As we shall see below, however, most of our discussion will concern public population measures.…”

Section: Conceptual and Empirical Clarificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review article: the ethics of population policies

Andersson

Brandstedt

Torpman

2021

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosoph

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This is a review of contemporary philosophical discussions of population policies. The focus is on normative justification, and the main question is whether population policies can be ethically justified. Although few analytical philosophers have directly addressed this question -it has been discussed more in other academic fields -many arguments and considerations can be placed in the analytical philosophical discourse. This article offers a comprehensive review and analysis of ethically relevant aspects of population policies evaluated on the basis of the main ethical theories. This analysis is preceded by a brief historical contextualisation of when and how population policies became ethically contentious and how this relates to philosophical debates in environmental ethics, population ethics and political philosophy. The article also includes a conceptual analysis of population policies in which the empirical intricacies around individual fertility decisions are sorted out and the different ways in which they can be affected are categorised in a taxonomy which highlight the most relevant ethical aspects of population policies. The ethical analysis shows that while population policies can be justified on the basis of most ethical theories, it all depends on what prior assumptions are made about what is at stake.

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Comment on ‘The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions’

Cited by 15 publications

References 4 publications

Reducing meat consumption: Identifying group-specific inhibitors using latent profile analysis

Reducing meat consumption: Identifying group-specific inhibitors using latent profile analysis

(Re)configuring moral boundaries of intergenerational justice: the UK parent-led climate movement

Review article: the ethics of population policies

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