Why Fixing the Environmental Crisis is Impossible

I organized my first environmental action when I was 10, launching a kids petition campaign to stop acid rain (a big topic in 1984 in Canada-US relations). For the better part of the last decade I’ve been at the forefront of designing products that change people’s behavior. What I’ve learned is that saving our ecosystem is going to require some radically different thinking.

Succinctly, I don’t think we are going to get wholesale behavior change for its own sake. Asking people to not travel, consume less meat, reduce packaging waste, etc is an uphill battle that is incredibly hard to accomplish. Just consider that there has only ever been one truly successful public health behavior change in the last 100 years — smoking cessation. And even still, nearly 20% of people smoke, knowing full well how dangerous it is. It is the exception that proves the rule that people will not change entrenched behaviors easily.

Before we get into the solution, let’s take a moment to understand the behavioral barriers that prevent people from making beneficial choices.

Tragedy of the Commons

The tragedy of the commons effect makes people less likely to undertake behavior change unless everyone is doing so. The classic example from environmentalism is eating fish. We all agree that fish…