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Imagine ordering lunch at a restaurant and choosing the protein to add to your salad. What is the best option when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions? How do you judge it?
Or you are about to go on a holiday and you have to decide how to get there. What travel methods contribute most to greenhouse gas emissions?
If you don’t know, you are not alone.
Researchers at the Columbia Business School say that many ordinary Americans can’t accurately estimate the carbon footprint of everyday options, whether they book a hotel room or buy a burger.
The ubiquity of carbon incompetence is at the heart of recent research.
As you can imagine, experts have a better grasp of the subject, but for everyone else, political ideology, climate change concerns, or trust in carbon knowledge didn’t help.
That’s a problem for those who want to live sustainably. Consumers are willing to pay a premium for greener choices. But if you make a difference, you need to make the right choice when purchasing, boycotting, and investing. Otherwise, they fall victim to greenwashing when companies and others are selling their products or services as more environmentally friendly than they actually are.
Humans are responsible for almost every increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the past 150 years, researchers have written, so it is reasonable to think of emissions as a product of group consumer decisions.
Additionally, policy interventions are needed to reduce emissions that cause climate change, but individuals can have an impact. For example, you can reduce the amount of waste you produce or reduce your electricity usage.
To make changes effective, consumers must be able to measure what they are doing and seek better alternatives if they are not satisfied with the outcome.
What do you think you’ll do?
Here’s a question from the Colombian team.
Consider the following five actions and rank them as effective in reducing your annual carbon emissions: To rank them, click and drag each action into the most effective (top) order, and it is the least effective (bottom).
Remember that the “most effective” action is one that appears to have the biggest impact on climate change mitigation in the year. I don’t know? Make your best guess.
The researchers have conducted five studies on all. Participants were asked to rank their actions both in terms of emissions, then seven industries, and ultimately 27 companies within these industries, and in relation to the $100 order. The industry was airlines, apparel and footwear, accommodation, non-alcoholic beverages, personal care and home products, restaurants, wireless communications.
The results reveal that it is unclear whether people know which companies are the best or worst emitters, and which industries are emitting more than others, the researchers write. Their answer is not too far from what you expect if they choose randomly.
“Everyone who isn’t an expert essentially does this randomly,” says Eric J. Johnson, professor at the Columbia Business School and lead author of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Research.
An example of a miscalculation is: Participants correctly evaluated the airlines being able to emit very high levels of emissions, but the fast fashion industry judged it to be worse than that.
“There’s a broad belief that fast fashion is bad and that it’s not good, but I think people are concerned about it as an important industry.” “That’s true, but it’s far less important than saying something like an airline.”
Another phenomenon may be at work. Faced with difficult questions they can’t answer, people sometimes answer another thing they know, Johnson said.
For example, those who decide to minimize emissions may rely on the emphasis on Chipotle’s health, although lunches from Chipotle or MacDonald’s may not correlate with health benefits correlating with emissions.
Future research will ask the same questions in India, the UK, France, Germany and Australia to examine whether lack of knowledge is global.
Johnson pointed out how difficult it is to decipher carbon emissions. That’s what he wants to change and thinks a label similar to what’s in the food could be the solution.
“There are no labels when it comes to carbon emissions,” Johnson said.
Test your knowledge
It helps reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. Test your knowledge with this quiz.
Eli Rosen Sugerman of Columbia Business School helped put together the questions from the above quiz. Sugerman, co-author of the study, “is widely misunderstood that greenhouse gas emissions suggest a low carbon capacity.”
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