How can people be encouraged to not only be aware of environmental issues but also to act accordingly in their every-day-life is one of the central questions when developing sustainable policy.
I think that information and also accurate pricing or other economic incentives do form a crucial part of this, they could maybe be described most accurately as necessary prerequisites for sustainable acting. For if I don't know how I can improve my impact on the planet, there is no way of changing habits etc and if I do know but the prices are just not accurate I will probably still be inclined to act unsustainably as the incentives point into this direction.
But this is not the entire story. How can those more obscure factors like habits, convenience, peer influence etc. be twisted towards more sustainable action? One idea could be - although this goes into the direction of consuming differently not less - to make green consumerism "cool". I think this is actually happening - at least it is in Germany - as it's "in" to buy organic and fair trade and vote Green among young people (although I have to admit that this is only my personal perception and thus limited to mostly students). However, a problem with this advertising biased approach is that action taken by people will be very limited and not be extended to areas where it actually might hurt, like boycotting cheap flights with Ryanair or stopping consuming products that are not readily available in organic/ fair trade quality.
To be honest I cannot really think of good mechanisms to make people act more sustainably other than those relying on the rational-choice approach, at the moment, thus hoping to get some ideas in the next lectures on these...
Abonnieren
Kommentare zum Post (Atom)
I totally agree with you about making sustainable consumption "cool" or fashionable,(pretty similar really), but I think the problem with this great idea is that it tends to produce another mainstream policy in manifestation. i.e. people do try to do what is seen to be the "in" thing but then this becomes just another type of unsustainable consumerism with a greener flavour. Due to the fact that we have not had radical enough changes made to our lifestyle structure over the past 20 or 30 years (only mainstream attempts) I think only such stringent methods as carbon emissions taxation, (its going to be uncomfortable!) will be effective. This will force a drop in what people currently call our "standard of living" (by which they currently mean the amount of financial liquidity they have to spend beyond their actual needs). The longer the government takes to implement the necessary structures the more extreme they will have to be to have a chance of success and the more likely it is that such issues as civil unrest may need to be addressed. The information about the global situation is there but no one in government wants to actually tackle the looming crisis because its going to be difficult and unpopular!
AntwortenLöschen