Clearing the Air

I believe it’s too late.

I’m a pessimist by nature, and a year of pandemic living hasn’t improved my disposition, but even taking those factors into account, I don’t feel I’m overestimating the threat. I think we’re all but doomed, effectively exterminating ourselves and countless other species by making Earth’s climate — our climate — increasingly unlivable.

I’ve held this view since long before Jonathan Franzen penned his provocative, fatalistic New Yorker essay in 2019 — and for many of the same basic reasons. Human beings don’t change until the pain of not doing so becomes too great to remain complacent. Instead, we plug along, blinders firmly affixed, ignoring the ruin we leave in our wake. By the time we react strongly enough to curtail climate change, the snowball (ironic metaphor, I know) will have gained too much momentum to be stopped. And in fact, it may already be unstoppable.

But Franzen had plenty of detractors arguing against his assertions — and so do I. People I work with at USC Dornsife, in fact. Scholars who, while willing to listen to us cynics and acknowledge some validity to our despair, aren’t about to succumb to hopelessness.

Instead, they’re looking for practical solutions — ways of working with human nature rather than bucking it, so politicians, business leaders, policymakers and everyday people find it easier to act in ways that will save us from ourselves.

TO DECIDE OR NOT TO DECIDE

Joe Árvai came to USC Dornsife in late 2020 to lead the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies as its director — with an academic appointment as Dana and David Dornsife Chair and professor of psychology.

Árvai specializes in risk analysis and decision-making, studying why people make the decisions they do and how they can make better ones. He also has an oceanography background and a passion for seeking solutions to the mounting climate crisis.

Hiring a Wrigley Institute director with a strong background in a social science like psychology rather than one steeped solely in the natural sciences, like biology or environmental sciences, is strategic. It’s part of USC Dornsife Dean Amber D. Miller’s vision of expanding research that addresses the human side of the climate crisis to find ways to incentivize us to speed the development and adoption of beneficial policies and solutions.

Árvai and I meet for the first time through the magic of Zoom, and as I confess to him my cynical resignation to the horrors that await us all, Árvai sighs, head in hand. He’s heard it all before.

Then he begins to show me the error of my ways.

“I think there are a few things that we need to realize. One is the fact that not doing something is a decision; we’ve made a decision to not act,” he says. “So, to just bury our heads in the sand and proceed by not taking action, that’s not passive in any way, shape or form. We are actually making choices to not do those things.”

Ouch.

Not only is my cynicism not helping, it’s poor decision-making that actually may be making things worse.

But then he generously lets me off the hook, at least a little. Making thoughtful, evidence-based decisions is hard, he says. After working for the past couple of decades with everyone from individual consumers to policymakers and from local government to the White House, he knows that decision-making doesn’t come naturally.

And one important decision-making skill is the ability to put options in context, and to see each decision as part of a continuum. Each decision leads to changes that, in turn, make future new decisions necessary. These future decisions also lead to changes that call for more decisions, and so on.

Choosing to install solar panels on your roof may help reduce your carbon footprint and lower your electric bill, but that means less traditional revenue for the utility company, which may then need to make decisions about their investments in future technologies such as advanced renewables or carbon capture. These decisions by utilities then create feedbacks that affect consumers of the future.

Making good decisions means trying to predict the potential consequences of options down the road, learning from what actually happens, and then teeing up the next round of decisions, says Árvai.

Now that he’s at USC Dornsife, it’s these expanded decision-making skills and how they affect approaches to the climate crisis that Árvai is working to understand and improve, particularly among students.

“At the Wrigley Institute, we want to help educate the next generation of change agents working on the environment and sustainability. We need to start imparting new kinds of analytic skills so that when these students eventually become the CEO of Microsoft or Ford Motors or governor or mayor, they’re working from a more modernized curriculum that teaches what it means to be effective.”

TELL ME A TALE

But making smart, defensible decisions isn’t just about analysing data. Part of the challenge in implementing lifesaving decisions is in how we think, Árvai says. It’s in the balance — or lack thereof — between analysis and emotion. Often discussions of climate change deteriorate when emotions run too high, but sliding too deep into analysis may be just as big a problem.

“I think a lot of our communications about climate change — communications that are meant to motivate people — fail because they’re too rich in statistics,” he says. “They’re too much of a numbers game.”

This is where a healthy dose of insight from the humanities and fine arts can help. By putting decisions in context and presenting information that balances decision-makers’ emotional and analytical needs, artists, filmmakers, writers and other storytellers can help them more effectively evaluate the potential risks and benefits of their choices.

“At the end of the day, we’re trying to get people to think in a more comprehensive way about alternatives, alternative pathways, alternative policies, different things you could do as an individual, as a consumer, as a policymaker or leader,” Árvai says. “We need chemists and physicists and ecologists and psychologists and sociologists to work with artists and painters and writers to create that context.

“It’s about building a system in which we recognize that we are all contributing to decisions we make as a society,” he adds — and ultimately working together to avoid disaster.

KEEP IT SIMPLE, SIR

Findings from a study coordinated by USC Dornsife’s Public Exchange in collaboration with the United Nations Foundation jibe with Árvai’s point about leaning too much on the analytical side of the brain.

Led by Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology and Behavioral Science at USC Dornsife and the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, the study examined how well people understood particular words used in public reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Bruine de Bruin is herself a noted expert in the psychology of decision-making. (She and Árvai have known each other for years.) She says that simplifying information can help make decisions easier, which is one reason Public Exchange and the UN Foundation initiated the research.

For the study, climate scientists selected the most important words in their communications. Their list of eight terms includes “mitigation,” “carbon neutral,” “unprecedented transition,” “tipping point,” “sustainable development,” “carbon dioxide removal,” “adaptation” and “abrupt change.” The researchers then asked a group of participants with widely varying views on climate change to interpret the words.

Even among seemingly ordinary terms, study participants struggled to understand what the words meant in the context of climate change, according to Bruine de Bruin.

“Even ‘adaptation’ and ‘mitigation,’ which are among the most commonly used words by climate scientists, are not widely recognized,” she says.

Bruine de Bruin attributes the confusion to the propensity for people to borrow word meanings from more familiar contexts, especially if they aren’t quite sure of the meaning as it relates to climate change.

“So for ‘adaptation,’ people think of adapting a book into a movie,” she explains. “For ‘mitigation,’ people confuse it with ‘mediation,’ like resolving a conflict.”

Add more nuanced terms and the confusion mounts. “‘Abrupt change’ to climate scientists means climate systems changing over the course of centuries,” Bruine de Bruin says. “To a lay person, that’s not abrupt. And so that only makes it more confusing.”

The answer, she says, lies in providing more explanation or choosing words more carefully, so there’s no misunderstanding.

Bruine de Bruin says similar principles apply to visual communication, such as graphs and charts.

First, put less information in them, she says. Avoid trying to say too much at once.

Also, be upfront and clear. “Using the title to communicate the key message can be really helpful,” she adds. Rather than a vague title like “The Effect of Rainfall on Corn,” try something declarative: “More Rain Makes Corn Grow Taller.”

But even if communication is clearer, will it really change behavior? Bruine de Bruin thinks it’s a key part of the mix.

“Information alone does not necessarily change behavior, but having clear information is important,” she says. Policymakers, for instance, need to be able to understand and justify their decisions. “If they don’t understand the explanation, then they’re not going to be willing to change the policies.”

GETTING CHARGED UP

But when they do understand, policymakers may opt to enact vital change. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, faced with the clear evidence that gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles contribute more than half of the state’s carbon pollution, signed an executive order mandating that all new vehicles sold in the state meet zero-emissions standards by 2035. In practical terms, that mostly means turning to electric vehicles (EVs).

But this mandate, as Árvai’s perspective on decision-making suggests, gives rise to other issues, including an important question: As California — and the world — make the transition to EVs, how can they position themselves to get the biggest bang for the buck?

USC Dornsife’s Public Exchange is tackling that question. Public Exchange pairs academic researchers and scholars with public- and private-sector partners to identify, analyze and solve intractable problems. In this case, Public Exchange enlisted USC Dornsife economists to examine industrial policies and regulations to determine how the L.A. region can benefit as much economically as it will environmentally.

“We’re providing the quantitative analysis to say, you can spend your money in a lot of different places, but here’s what’s going to bring the biggest return to [gross domestic product] and regional growth,” explains USC Dornsife’s Kate Weber, executive director of the Academy in the Public Square and director of Public Exchange.

Their work suggests the benefits of moving to EVs may extend beyond cleaner air, that investing in electric vehicles not only won’t ruin the economy, but may actually boost it. After all, someone needs to manufacture the batteries or install and operate charging stations, and there’s plenty of room for innovation in vehicle technology and efficiency, to name just a few opportunities.

California has been an important leader in the transition to electrified mobility. If the nation’s largest economy can not only survive, but thrive in the transition to greener practices, it will send a powerful signal that what is good for the environment is also good for the economy. And that’s a beacon the other 49 states are bound to follow. “As California goes, so goes the nation,” after all.

A NEW DAY DAWNING?

News like this is almost enough to make me drop my pessimism altogether. Indeed, it’s hard to remain completely cynical after speaking with people like Árvai, Bruine de Bruin and Weber.

It’s not that they’re extreme optimists. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s their sensible, reasoned approach to climate crisis issues — an approach blending research and know-how from disparate disciplines — that engenders more than a little confidence that there remains, at the very least, a good possibility of avoiding disaster.

I still ache knowing that the future will be tough, especially for coming generations. But as I watch the sun rise on another beautiful spring morning, I realize my sense of futility has to some degree faded. In its place grows a feeling of accountability. Each of us has a part — a responsibility — to do what we can, no matter how small.

As Wrigley Institute director Árvai says: “We know that we’re not going to solve the problem on our own, or today. But we’re at least contributing to viable, game-changing solutions we can implement tomorrow and the day after. And, importantly, we hope that others will, as well.”