12 MARCH 2020
Dispatches OPENING ARGUMENT
There’s very good reason to
believe that peer effects could
be similarly beneficial in other
areas crucial to our climate
future. Research shows that
our eating habits are shaped by
the habits of those around us.
This effect could be harnessed
to encourage people to eat
healthier diets, but it could just
as easily nudge people toward
more environmentally sustain-
able ones.
Consumers are also highly
sensitive to contagion when
choosing which car to buy. This
has led Americans to choose
ever bulkier SUVs. But with
the right incentives, consumers
could be encouraged to make
a different choice. Many states
already give tax breaks to buy-
ers of electric vehicles, but that’s
hardly the only way to promote
change. The U.S. Department
of Energy has found that when
a workplace installs charging
stations, its employees are 20
times as likely to choose an
electric car. Practicality is surely
the main reason, but the daily
reminder that co-workers have
gone electric could also touch
off a contagion effect.
I have long shared the concern
of climate advocates who warn
that “conscious consumption”—
voluntary individual restraint
in energy usage, such as buy-
ing a Tesla or avoiding plastic
water bottles—is no substitute
for changes in public policy.
One recent study even sug-
gested that encouraging indi-
vidual energy restraint could
diminish support for policies
like carbon taxes—perhaps by
instilling the belief that per-
sonal changes reduce the need
for political action.
But conscious consump-
tion may promote progress in
other ways I had not previ-
ously appreciated. Installing
solar panels, adopting a more
climate-friendly diet, or buy-
ing an electric vehicle is likely to
spur others to take similar steps.
It might also reinforce our iden-
tity as climate advocates; in
many aspects of life, small first
steps can lead to larger ones. As
Will Durant distilled Aristot-
le’s wisdom about the power of
habit: “We are what we repeat-
edly do.”Even when everyone
acknowledges that a behavior
causes harm, as in the smok-
ing example, it can be hard to
reach consensus on whether—
and how—to respond. The dif-
ficulty may stem in part from
the laudable belief that people
should decide for themselves
which behaviors to mimic
and which to avoid. But pub-
lic acknowledgment of climate
change, and the risks it poses,
has become more widespread
among Americans. Perhaps we
will be able to engineer more
benign social environments with
simple, targeted taxes and subsi-
dies, calibrated to amplify con-
tagion effects, rather than with
complex, intrusive regulation.
Taxation is always contro-
versial. But unlike prohibitions
and prescriptive regulation, it
shows respect for individual
freedom by affording flexibil-
ity to those who would find it
hardest to curtail harmful activ-
ities. We didn’t outlaw smok-
ing; we just tried to set its price
closer to its full cost to soci-
ety. We could take the same
approach in the climate con-
text: To diminish the American
appetite for gas-guzzling vehi-
cles, for instance, we should tax
cars by fuel economy.
We could also encourage
climate-friendly behavior by
reducing its cost. Embedded in
the 2009 stimulus bill, designed
to revive the American econ-
omy after the Great Recession,were generous subsidies for the
renewable-energy industry.
Those subsidies helped com-
panies lower costs for consum-
ers, which increased adoption
rates, igniting a contagion pro-
cess: Further adoption led togreater cost reductions, which
has led to still more new cus-
tomers. As the climate advocate
Ramez Naam writes, “Build-
ing new solar, wind, and stor-
age is about to be cheaper than
operating existing coal and gas
power plants.” Once that hap-
pens, adoption could soar.
Even leaving aside taxes
and subsidies, there are ways
to leverage the contagion effect.
Utilities, for example, have
found that customers reduce
their electricity usage signifi-
cantly when told how their
consumption compares with
that of neighbors. Opower, a
home-energy-management
company owned by Oracle, has
helped deliver these customer-
comparison reports to millions
of households served by utili-
ties around the globe; it boasts
that the program has helped
save enough energy to power
San Francisco’s homes for
more than 10 years. Google
Nest, the manufacturer ofsmart thermostats, has incor-
porated the approach into its
product: It rewards customers
who choose energy-efficient
settings with green leaf icons
(gold stars, essentially) in their
monthly usage summaries, and
compares the number of leaves
earned with those of other Nest
users in the area.
Downplaying the sever-
ity of the climate crisis would
be a grave mistake. As the
consensus among climatol-
ogists affirms, the threat it
poses is catastrophic. Individ-
ual choices won’t be enough
to stave off the worst-case
scenarios— significant pub-
lic action is required, in the
United States and across the
globe. But as Gregg Easter-
brook warned in these pages
more than a decade ago, it can
also be dangerous to portray the
threat as in surmountable. Pre-
vious efforts to curtail smog,
acid rain, and the use of ozone-
depleting chlorofluoro carbons
all seemed futile, Easter-
brook noted, until we actually
attacked those problems— at
which point initiatives proved
far more success ful (and less
painful) than all but the most
optimistic reformers could
have hoped.
As Samuel Johnson said, “To
do nothing is in every man’s
power.” But we also have the
power to act, and our actions
have the power to shape those
of people around us. We still
have time to make a difference,
so why choose despair?Robert H. Frank is an econom-
ics professor at Cornell
University. He is the author
of Under the Influence:
Putting Peer Pressure
to Work, from which this
article is adapted.CUSTOMER-
COMPARISON
REPORTS,
ONE COMPANY
BOASTS,
HAVE HELPED
SAVE ENOUGH
ENERGY
TO POWER
SAN
FR ANCISCO’S
HOMES FOR
MORE THAN
10 Y E A R S.