Why our brain can't process climate change ? | SLICE EXPERTS | Full doc

We've all heard what the climatologists say. If we don't reduce CO2 emissions, our planet will become uninhabitable. The massive wildfires, heatwaves and floods we've seen recently are a wake-up call. And yet, in the face of climate change, almost nothing about our lifestyles has changed. Because our inability to grasp the full extent of the situation prevents us from taking action. Our own brain refuses to see what's really going on. In the face of negative events, we tend to bury our heads in the sand. Denial, deforming reality. Research around the world is revealing the psychic mechanisms that blind and paralyze us. Our brain pays attention to information that confirms our worldview, not information that contradicts it. The threat is apparently too vast, too abstract and too intense to shake us from our lack of concern. There's this idea that technological progress will always save us from any predicament we might find ourselves in. How can we shake ourselves from our collective inertia and change our behavior? Psychologists around the world recognize that there is a fundamental role that their discipline plays in tackling climate change. We are going to explore the brain's mechanisms that make us bury our heads in the sand when it comes to climate change. And seek the psychological resources that will allow us to face the threat. In the south of France, 30 kilometers from Rodez, Arvieux is a commune in the Aveyron, known for its ecological engagement. Here, climate change issues are introduced at a very young age. Today, pupils are experiencing an activity that is rare in schools. The Climate Press is a workshop created by a non-profit organization that explores the inner workings of climate change. The session is led by Brunois, who has made ecological transition his personal issue. Who here has heard of global warming? Everyone's heard about it. So, in our workshop this morning, we're all going to take the cards and place them together in a way that lets us understand how global warming works. We know that CO2 has an influence on the greenhouse effect. And that the greenhouse effect makes temperatures go up. Does anyone know how the greenhouse effect works? If there's too much greenhouse effect, the heat stays in the Earth's envelope. And then it lands on our buildings and on us. And that's why it's so hot in the summer and all that. And all that has a certain number of consequences. Both on biodiversity and on climatic events, which are going to become much more extreme than what we're used to. And will drive populations, particularly the world's most vulnerable, to migrate. They'll have to leave their homes because the area where they live becomes uninhabitable. Does that worry you? Yes. Yes? Yes. So let's read the card. I buy things. Where do we put this card? With the first ones. Exactly. I turn on the air conditioning or heat. I take the car or plane. Great. So as you see, these cards describe human activities. These human activities have an impact on CO2 concentration, which increases the natural greenhouse effect. And what you need to understand in all this, what's very, very important, is that this is happening everywhere on the planet. Because we do all these types of things. And the goal is to be able to control our actions as much as possible, so that the temperature of the planet doesn't rise too much, so it can still be inhabitable. Children have a firm understanding of the role our daily behavior plays in climate change. Just like adults, actually. And yet scientists have been sounding the alarm for ages, and still nothing about our lifestyle has really changed. As if the threat weren't real. Most of us know the tale of the frog that is placed in cold water. And then when you heat the water very, very slowly, the frog never jumps out and it boils to death. Well, human beings are on a planet that is heating very, very, very slowly. And the question now is, are our brains capable of detecting that and dealing with the problem? Because unlike the frog, we've got no place to jump to. What is not registering in our brains? Why are we letting the temperature rise without doing anything about it? Global warming triggers a few different biases, actually, that make it difficult for people to act. One is that it is a negative event where most of the negative consequences are way in the future. If I recycle, for instance, a tree isn't going to appear in my yard. And there's no direct punishment either. If I don't recycle, an ice cap isn't going to fall on my head. So there's a time lag between cause and effect. The trouble we have in correctly evaluating distant threats is part of what scientists call cognitive bias. An unconscious distortion of reality that fools our brain in uncertain or stressful situations. In terms of climate change, there is a hurdle in our brain we need to overcome. This hurdle is the feeling, created by our brains, that we are basically invincible. That the bad things the future has in store for us won't actually affect us. A professor of neuroscience at City, University of London, Andreas Gappas, is an expert in cognitive bias. His research pursues the experiments Professor Neil Weinstein carried out on students in the 1980s. Experiments that reveal just how much our brain takes liberties with reality. In today's class, we're going to do a little experiment. I'm going to ask you a few questions, and all you have to do is raise your hand if you agree. Who thinks they have a better chance than others for marrying someone rich? For raising a gifted child? For remaining fit in the next ten years? For positive events, most people believe they have a greater chance than others to fare better. But when it comes to life's mishaps, it's exactly the opposite. Who thinks they have a less than average chance of getting cancer? Of being taken to court? Congratulations! It seems you're all better than average. Statistically, that's impossible, but good for you. It's statistically impossible for everyone to do better than everyone else. So this, by definition, is a bias. It's an illusion. It's not something that is actually possible. Scientists call this optimism bias. And they've proven it affects almost everyone. In every walk of life. This shows that whether or not you understand statistics, whether or not you are intellectually gifted, it's true for 80 to 90 percent of the population, regardless of whether they're a teacher, or a student, or construction worker, or employee. When it comes to optimism and climate change, I think optimism comes in that we believe that we as individuals will be less negatively impacted by global warming than other people around us. So we underestimate our own negative consequences. Not that long ago, when the coronavirus first swept the planet, this unrealistic optimism likely played a role in how the danger was perceived, including amongst decision-makers. The risk of introduction in France of cases related to this episode is low. There is also the issue of the coronavirus, which, in my understanding, is being super-dimensionalized, the destructive power of this virus. In the beginning, uncertainty was very, very, very high. And when uncertainty is high, that's another kick for the optimism bias. There's some negative evidence coming in. However, you can decide to focus on the positive evidence. And it is highly likely that people were underestimating the risk of COVID and, as a result, taking action a little bit too late and maybe not enough. With a brain so disinclined to believe in disaster, it's no surprise that the alarm climatologists have been sounding for 30 years has had such little effect, especially as our difficulty to face up to reality is reinforced by another cultural bias, our cognitive frameworks. What are our cognitive frameworks? They're all the representations, all the worldviews that we've lived with for a very long time. For instance, the idea that humans are superior to nature and that nature needs to change to suit us. And none of that matters because it's good for us. In her class on climate issues in the 21st century at the University of Paris-Dauphine, Dominique Méda traces our relationship with nature back to the beginnings of Judeo-Christian civilization. In Genesis, notably Genesis 1, it's written that God asked mankind, Adam and Eve, to rule over nature and subdue it, to rule over other species, and finally, to transform the earth they live on into a Garden of Eden. The incredible scientific and technological progress of the past two centuries have since given mankind the actual power to transform the planet, boosting our sense of absolute power that allows us to bury our heads in the sand in the face of the climate threat. Until now, technological progress has always gotten us out of every tight spot. It's allowed us to treat major diseases, pandemics, including this one, by developing vaccines. So I think that behind all that lies the belief in the power of the human genius. Yet today, this feeling of impunity has begun to waver. And more than any scientific graph or chart, actual disasters are rekindling the threat. Since 2018, there's been one extreme weather event after another. Massive wildfires, extreme temperatures, monster floods. Not a single continent has been spared. The effects of climate change are sweeping through our daily lives. Lorraine Whitmarsh is one of the researchers in social psychology who works with the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Her lab studies the perception of climate change throughout the world. Concern about climate change has been rising a lot in recent years. And so we actually saw that up until about 2019, there was a very high peak in concern in many countries around climate change that matched people taking to the street, protests, and Greta Thunberg receiving a lot of media attention. And interestingly, our surveys over the last couple of years show that actually it has continued to be a very high concern for people even during the pandemic. Ten years ago, fewer than one out of two people said they'd heard about global warming. Today, two-thirds of the world population consider it a threat. In Great Britain, France and Germany, three-quarters of the population say they feel concerned. Climate has become a major preoccupation. But the latest surveys reveal that one out of three people on Earth remain skeptical about the man-made origins of climate change. Among them are some highly influential political figures. Global warming, a lot of it's a hoax, it's a hoax. I don't believe it. No, no, I don't believe it. These official declarations are undeniably dictated by financial and economic interests. But despite scientific evidence, 100 million Americans and 70 million Europeans today sincerely doubt the element of human responsibility in global warming. How can we explain this reluctance to acknowledge what is so obvious? For Tali Sharit, a researcher in neuroscience, it has to do with the way our brain processes information. In fact, without realising it, we're used to ignoring messages that go against our beliefs. Psychologists call this confirmation bias. If I think that vaccines are very effective and I read an article suggesting that it is, that will make me more confident. But if I read an article saying that it's not very effective, I dismiss it as, you know, not good science. We have 40 to 50 years of research that show that this confirmation bias plays a role in almost every important realm of our lives. In an online study involving hundreds of people, Tali Sharit showed that for someone who doesn't believe in climate change, a warning message does not have the same effect on their brain as it does on the brain of someone who does. We asked people, first of all, about their views about climate change. So we asked them different questions about, do you support the Paris Agreement and so on. Based on those questions, we divided them into those that were believers that climate change is real and is man-made and those that are a bit sceptical. Participants were then asked to give their own personal evaluation of global warming. Unsurprisingly, those who believe in climate change predict a greater rise in temperature than climate change sceptics. But then Tali Sharit announced something to participants. Scientists have re-evaluated the data and concluded that the situation is much, much worse than they thought before and the temperature would rise up to 11 degrees in the next 100 years. The goal of the experiment was to evaluate how the two groups process this new bit of information. What we found was that those individuals that already believed that climate change was happening, they really took that information into account and they upped their temperature estimates, right? So now they believe things are worse than they did before. On the other hand, those that were sceptical to begin with disregarded this information and didn't change their estimate much. Without realising it, we all practised this selective thinking. Information that reinforces our convictions is treated with utmost attention. Information that goes against our beliefs goes straight into the bin. But what really happens in our brain to make us so disinclined to change our minds? To understand this unconscious process, Andreas Kappes at City, University of London, went about trying to catch our neurons in the act of confirmation bias. To do so, Andreas carried out an experiment on pairs of volunteers. You're going to see pictures of houses. It's up to you to decide whether their actual value is more or less than the price you see. For each estimation, you can bet an amount of money, a large sum if you're sure of yourself, and if you aren't, you can lower the bet. The amount of the bet is a way of measuring the subject's conviction, how confident they feel about their choice. That's worth more. I'm sure of it. I'll bet everything. That's less. But I'm not sure. I'll lower my bet. The next stage of the experiment takes place in a brain scan room, equipped with two scanners. Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to reassess your evaluations. But this time, you can compare them with those of your partner and change your own, should you so wish. The result? When the assessments correspond, the participants gain confidence and generally increase their bet. On the other hand, when the assessments differ, they each ignore the other's choice and maintain their own bet. Confirmation bias in action. Here we see confirmation bias at work. We see what happens in the brain after a test subject learns that their partner shares their opinion. The brain specifically treats the information offered by their partner. This part of the cortex is known for its involvement in complex decision-making. On this side, we have an entirely different image. We see what happens in the brain when my partner contradicts me, when his opinion differs from mine, and what we notice is that we see practically nothing. Not much happens in the brain. It doesn't treat the information the partner offers, and therefore opinion does not change. Metaphorically speaking, it looked like the brain was shutting down, and it wasn't encoding the information coming from the disagreeing partner. So, what this shows is that people are more likely to take information, evidence, whether it's true or false, that confirms to what they're believed. And that makes them a little bit more extreme, right? They become more and more extreme, more and more confident, and it causes polarization. This functioning that is deeply anchored in our brain explains how hard it is for all of us to change our minds, and obviously raises questions about the best way to communicate about the climate. When you try to convince someone that climate change is something we need to take seriously, it's important to remember that if you offend them by saying, you're wrong, I'm right, now listen to me, at that point you've already lost them. What you need to do is find some common ground, something you both agree on, so that their brain stays engaged, and they can actually listen to you. The polarization of opinions on global warming is at the heart of psychology professor Stefan Lowendowski's studies. In Brussels, Stefan works with the research center of the European Commission to understand how digital technologies maintain and increase doubt on climate change. A hundred years ago, if you were living in a village in France somewhere and you thought the earth was flat, everybody would look at you, around you, and say, what's wrong with that guy? Ha, ha, ha. Now, today, you go on Facebook and you say, the earth is flat, and guess what? From somewhere around the world, there'll be another whole bunch of people who believe this. None of these people would ever find anybody else in their neighborhood who shares their belief, but online they can meet. So, what is the role of the internet in climate change denial? How does it influence people's opinions? We know from a lot of research in psychology that people hold on to a belief to the extent that they think it's shared by others. If I think everybody else thinks the earth is flat, then you're not going to talk me out of that belief. Because I can say, hey, what are you talking about? All my friends agree with me. And that is one thing that the internet has enabled. Stefan carried out a study on the comments posted on serious official science websites. That discuss climate change. Comments that are often negative and far-fetched. The planet hasn't warmed in 15 years. Sorry, mate. Most of the warmest years on record have occurred in the last decade. The climate has changed before, yet we're still here. Everything will be just fine in the fullness of time. Yes, except Miami will be underwater. We call them zombie arguments because they're like the zombies in horror movies. You keep killing them, but they keep coming back. These easily disproven comments nevertheless present a fundamental problem. They have a psychological impact. A questionnaire submitted to 400 participants revealed that they discredit the information published. When people are exposed to comments like that, they get the mistaken perception that everybody is denying climate change. That then shifts their attitude. So the fact that these comments are out there has a measurable effect. By the way it functions, the internet influences opinions. The web has thus become the object of special attention, notably after important announcements concerning climate change, like Donald Trump's in 2017. In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. His announcement generated 6 million tweets. A quarter of those turned out to be produced by automated bots, for the most part favorable to Donald Trump. In the digital world, your opinion isn't only easily influenced, it's easily manipulated. Human beings are susceptible to the perception of the prevalence of other people's opinions. And for that reason, it must be very concerning that there is a huge amount of disinformation about climate change out there. In his report to the European Commission, to fight against organized manipulation, Stefan Lewandowski recommends forcing online platforms to identify and block fake personal profiles that bias opinion in the climate debate. For those who are aware of the climate emergency, the never-ending debate without things ever really changing is hard to accept. But it's also a source of anxiety. In our view, where non-profits are highly active in the ecological transition, overall inertia, as well as the difficulty of upholding one's own commitments, are topics that often arise in discussions. Two years ago, two of my friends were getting married, our group of friends finally decided all together, OK, let's do one in Lisbon and the other in Glasgow. In reality, you go for two or three days, so you take a plane. Obviously, that goes completely against what I know and what I do, my job, my commitment and all. But in the end, it didn't take me long to decide, thinking, well, no, I'm going with them. I set up my vermicompost and all, so I find positive good things. But I know that I do shitty things alongside that, and if we do it like that, I go, you're five and you're saying that? There are kids who, for example, start crying at home because they see their mum come home with a, I don't know, let's say some groceries in plastic bags and plastic bottles. There's a dissonance between what I've just learned and the lifestyle I'm involved in. Among young children, these contradictions provoke a blend of distress and anger. A 14-year-old teenager I was talking to started crying aggressively. At any rate, you wrecked the planet. I can see that kids are completely lost faced with what they can have to do things, what they have to give up. I have four kids, and I honestly ask myself how we're going to be able to educate them in a way that they can collectively face the difficulties of the degradation of collective living conditions, conditions of accessing resources. Psychologists now talk about eco-anxiety. I am here to say our house is on fire. Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish ecologist engaged in the fight against climate change, embodies the disarray of this generation. Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope, but I don't want your hope. I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. A fear that sometimes borders on pathological anxiety. Therapists like Albert Muchaber have reported an increase in consultations linked to the environment. From a clinical perspective, we treat it as if someone was in mourning. We don't say, come on, feel better. We explain that it's something that needs to be dealt with, but it can't become paralyzing because you can't be in a constant state of emergency. You're just going to be tired. Waking up every morning and thinking only about that isn't going to help solve the problem. And whatever you do, you can't reassure them. You tell them they're right. But in a way, this dissonance is good because it's going to allow us to return to a balance. Not by saying, well then, no, climate change doesn't exist, which some people could do in an optimism bias, but by finding our balance by saying, yes, climate change exists. The reality check has happened. But the daily behavior of the vast majority hasn't changed. Why do so many people convinced of the threat continue with their same habits? We're trapped by the way we interact with each other. Our decisions in the face of climate problems are influenced by other people's reactions and the expectations we have in terms of the others around us. Peggy Chacroon, professor at the University of Paris-Nanterre, studies the way our decisions and behavior are influenced by others. She continues the research done after a tragic story that made the front page headlines in the 1960s. Two psychology researchers, Latané and Dalé, examine the case of Kitty Genovese. A young lady got stabbed to death by a random killer, and her neighbors watched. Well, this went on for 40 minutes, and nobody helped, and the police were not called until much, much later, and so finally she died. At the time, the papers reported that dozens of people had seen or heard the attack, but not one of them intervened or called the police. They wanted to understand the psychological mechanisms that would explain why people in this situation would normally react, but they chose not to react and not to intervene. So they decided to set up an experiment that would reproduce on a much smaller and highly controlled scale the situation of the murder. Obviously, there was no question of committing a crime. The scientists imagined a scenario where the people tested were put in a situation where they could help someone else. The participant was placed in an individual cubicle. In the cubicle, they were given headphones, like these, and told that they were in communication with another participant who was in a cubicle next door, who was actually an actor in on the experiment, who, after a moment, was going to pretend to have a medical emergency that the participant would hear in their headphones. I'm having a real problem right now. Somebody's getting a little help here. The result, in 80% of cases, the test subject, thinking they were alone, came out of the cubicle to call for help. The researchers then increased the number of participants in the experiment, which profoundly changed the reactions they observed. When three participants witnessed the problem, they intervened less frequently than the participants who were alone. And those amongst them who did react, reacted less quickly than the participants who were alone. The more people there are who can potentially react, the more we feel allowed to do nothing. Because someone else can take action instead of us. The phenomenon was dubbed diffusion of responsibility, or the bystander effect. Peggy Chacroon has shown that it also applies to environmental issues. We recreated Latane and Dali's experiment in a green space, where we asked someone to drop some litter, a water bottle or a paper wrapper, while monitoring the number of people to witness the scene. The experiment yielded the same results as the fake medical emergency. The more witnesses there were, the more likely the litterer got off free. And the more likely the bottle was to remain where it landed. When you're in a situation that isn't really clear, when you're not exactly sure if it's your responsibility to step in, the first thing we do is look at other people's reactions. Everyone interprets a situation the same way by looking at others. But no one does anything, which explains why it takes longer to act when there are more people, for instance. Encumbered by the bystander effect, our brain has trouble taking the initiative for better environmental behaviour. Other people's inaction inhibits our own desire to change. But although some of our bad habits persist, it's also for a more trivial reason. Do you really know what things in your lifestyle truly impact the climate? The research carried out by Bernadette Suterland at the Institute for Environmental Decisions in Zurich has shown that when it comes to food, most people ignore the basic rules. For her experiment, she used a fake buffet. Everything on this table is artificial, but looks exactly like real food, which participants will select to make a meal. Take one plate. Now, look at the buffet with the different dishes. I'm going to ask you to fix yourself a meal as you normally would in your daily life. Free to choose. What will this first participant take? Rice, carrots, and meat, of course. A steak and a beef ricondelle. The things that have the highest environmental impact. We need to eat as few animal products as possible, and especially consume as little meat as possible. Because of all these products, meat has the highest environmental impact. It's estimated that animal products alone represent half of all greenhouse gas emissions linked to human food production. If you do want to eat meat, you need to pay attention to what kind you choose. In other words, you should opt for chicken rather than beef or veal. But do we really think of this rule when we want to eat more ecologically? Bernadette asked half the participants to compose their meal with the environment in mind. This time, potatoes, a few extra vegetables, and once again, a beefsteak. Ouch! And it was the same story on everyone's plate in the whole group. They did not reduce either the amount of animal products or the amount of meat. And they made no distinction between different types of meat. In other words, they didn't choose chicken over beef. It's clear that many consumers aren't aware of the great impact of animal products and particularly of meat. Another key element in the experiment was the origin of the products listed on the labels. With no instructions, participants felt free to take rice from the US. In the eco-friendly group, they preferred potatoes from Switzerland. And for dessert, local apples rather than bananas from Ecuador. The only difference we observed was that people opted not to select imported food. They evaluated their environmentally friendly choices based solely on the rule of thumb that products which don't come from your own country represent higher energy consumption. The origin of food products obviously also plays a role in the carbon footprint of a meal. But it turns out that the impact of transporting food is much lower than that of meat production. Consumers don't actually know which factors impact the environment most. This means it's really important to give them correct information and also some simple rules of thumb. To effectively reduce our individual carbon footprint on a daily basis, we must first and foremost limit our purchases of manufactured products, eat less meat, opt for public transport, avoid travelling across the world on vacation, and live as much as possible in a well-insulated home. Global warming is a complex phenomenon whose causes are hidden in the details of our daily habits. It is therefore absolutely necessary to inform ourselves as consumers. But that won't be enough to change our habits. Because our consumer reflexes are deeply rooted in our brains. A lot of the things that we do, how we travel, how we eat, the things that we buy in the supermarket, these are driven by more unconscious habits than actually a conscious reflection over the pros and cons and maybe the environmental impacts of different products. Nadej Bo, a researcher in neuroscience at the University of Plymouth, has discovered the unconscious mechanisms that guide our purchases and push us to always consume more. The purchase of a product is not simply motivated by our need for it, but it's also a mark of our social status. Owning brand-name clothes, a nice car, can signal our place in society, our importance in our group. So having as much as, or even more than others, is very important to us. To evaluate the importance social comparison has in our consumer habits, Nadej ran a neuroimaging experiment on subjects who were confronted with what they owned. The participants simultaneously play a sort of wheel of fortune and are able to compare what each of them wins. One of the pair plays with a head in an MRI machine. With each game, the subject must choose and launch one of two lotteries that appear on screen. In the first wheel, you have one out of four chances to win €10, and in the other, one out of two chances to win €5. Is that clear? Let's go! In the first stage, what Nadej is interested in is what happens in the brain at the moment the arrow stops and points to the money won. Not surprisingly, winning money activates the reward system. This is a region in the brain that gives pleasure to different species, like eating or having sex. Now, the goal is to observe what happens when the subject also sees what the other player wins. Now you're going to play at the same time as your partner and on the screen you'll see what each other wins. The result. For the same amount won, the activation of the reward system is systematically more intense when the winning is superior to what the other person won. It's more satisfying to win more than the other person than to win the same thing by yourself. The fact of knowing we have more than others is a source of pleasure. Having nice clothes, a beautiful house, a big television, those are things that are going to directly activate the areas of the brain associated with the reward system. Man is above all a social animal. The pleasure seated deep inside our brains is passed down throughout our evolution. And in the modern world, these comparative reflexes are exacerbated. Recent studies in social psychology have shown that social media increases the effects of social comparison because instead of merely comparing ourselves to our neighbor or coworker, we can compare ourselves to a very large network of people and that creates envy. Social comparison. Optimism bias. Bystander effect. The problems that make it difficult for us to change our behavior are many. But these obstacles are not insurmountable. For Lorraine Whitmarsh who knows the ins and outs of the human brain, we need to seize the opportunity to tackle our habits at a time when they've been weakened. COVID-19 has provided a revealing example. We're here in the historic harborside area of Bristol and there used to be a lot of traffic in this area, so that only cyclists and pedestrians can move in this area. They made these changes primarily because of COVID to enable people to walk with a safe distance between them, but they're now thinking about keeping a lot of these changes because of the other benefits like air quality and greenhouse gas emissions that they bring. One year after the start of the COVID crisis, people are becoming environmentally friendly. Elsewhere, like in France, remote working in particular benefited from the circumstances. According to Lorraine, the smart strategy for public policy is to target people at transitional moments in their lives. For example, you move house or maybe you have a child or you change jobs. This provides an opportunity for habits becoming weaker and then you can reorganize and do something different. They're open to doing something different because their habits have been broken. For example, Lorraine recommends lower rates for public transport for families who've just moved or to talk to them about their energy consumption when they're settling in. To nudge habits in the right direction, researchers in social psychology are developing new approaches and these are starting to pay off. Most of the inhabitants are participating in an experiment organized by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, the ZHAW. The study, involving 70 households, aims at optimizing techniques to encourage energy restraint. The Piero family joined the program in 2019. The ZHAW had a sign-in agreement to participate in recording our consumption habits from the start. I thought it was a very good idea. In this experiment, participants aren't given specific instructions for saving energy, but a subtle system encourages them to reduce their consumption. Scientists call this practice nudging. Nudging is a method to help or encourage the consumer to make positive choices and to steer them in the direction you want. For example, the Amphero device in the shower that gives you real-time feedback on hot water consumption. The ice cap the polar bear stands on melts over time. At a certain point, there's no ice left at all. I didn't realize that at first. My neighbor told me every time she took a shower the polar bear always has ice. That's because we don't use as much water as she does when we take our showers. I look to see if the tip of the ice is already melted and how many liters I've used. It appeals to our emotions. People are concerned about the polar bear and want to save it. It has a motivational effect. When they put it in, the kids would play it who used less. That's why we as parents had to step in and tell them cut it out, you do need to get clean. To reduce energy consumption even more, the scientists also brought social comparison into play. The same reflex that pushes us to overconsumption is used here to favor more virtuous behaviors. Here you've got hot water consumption for the past week. This is what we've consumed this week. We did a good job because we're among the most economical. It's not like that every week. But this week, we did really well. Up top you can even see the smiley face which means we've handled our consumption well. We're proud to get a newsletter like this that says we've done a good job. Bernadette Süterlang who coordinates the study for Zurich University regularly informs participants of the experiment's progress. The Amphiro installation has reduced total hot water consumption by 10 percent and the newsletter has reduced hot water consumption by another 5 percent. In other words, we've obtained a 15 percent reduction in hot water consumption overall. The study is still underway. If the results are confirmed, the program could be implemented on a larger scale. In Britain, there's a behavioral insight team, the BIT, which is also known as a nudge team, and they're growing all around the world, really like kind of mushrooms after the rain and many of them very successfully. The BIT only marginally modifies people's behaviors. It's a really important set of tools that we can use to very easily change people's behavior, but actually you can't nudge people onto a bus service that doesn't exist, so you need the wider structural change, you need infrastructure change, and you need the economic incentives and so on to change. We need to change individual behavior in a society that continues to promote consumption and economic growth incompatible with reducing carbon emissions. We must fit the economy back into human society and human society into the biosphere, and obviously the biosphere has its own laws, and so that little piece in the center there is our public policies and the way our society operates. But it also plays out on an individual scale. Trapped by our habits of thinking, we must learn to know our brains better. We must fight our bad reflexes and dispel the illusions they create so we can finally confront reality and make the personal choices we need to make.