Climate change: Adapting consumer behaviour will be no easy task

During the second World War households across Europe were subject to rationing. As a result, there was a dramatic change in what they spent their money on, even in neutral countries like Ireland and Sweden. Rationing lasted a few years after the war in Ireland, and even longer in the UK. Ireland experienced a dramatic shortage in the supply of coal and other fuels, leading to hardship especially in the bitter winter of 1947. However, people did not find ways to live with lower energy long term and, as soon as supplies became available, people went back to heating their homes and travelling as before the war. Other spending patterns also returned to the pre-war normal.

The cost of disruption to household spending during rationing was greater than the actual expenditure savings: people would have paid a lot more for energy, had it been available. However, people accepted the inevitability of the restrictions, due to war-time conditions.

Likewise, during the Covid lockdowns, household consumption was effectively rationed – people could not go to restaurants or cinemas, or holiday abroad. We have since seen a bounce back to more normal patterns. Most of us accepted the need for restrictions on socialising – Boris Johnson’s Number 10 being an exception. But acceptance that restrictions were necessary did not mean it was easy for many people to live with prolonged absence of normal social outlets.

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It’s hard for people to change their behaviour and accustomed way of life. This has lessons for how we address climate change. Some suggest we should simply reduce our demand for energy, in order to lower emissions. It seems a cheap way to tackle the problem. But the experience of the past suggests that it is very difficult to get households to change their behaviour, unless there are good alternatives and appropriate signals. Major reductions in energy use, if it means going back to the chilly homes of yesteryear, are difficult, even if they save families money.

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A 2009 Economic and Social Research Institute study showed that an advertising campaign trying to persuade consumers to reduce gas consumption had no effect on behaviour. On its own, telling people to “be good” is ineffective. To achieve real change, households need to be motivated. They must have an alternative way of satisfying their needs for heat and transportation, as well as financial carrots and sticks to make the changes worth their while.

Much more rapid development of suitable aviation technologies must be incentivised

The dramatic reduction in tobacco consumption since the smoking ban in 2004 offers a good example of delivering major behavioural change. Micheál Martin’s move looked quite risky politically at the time, as it could have resulted in serious push-back from smokers. However, most smokers actually bought into the ban. Although sales of cigarettes were already slowly falling, they have plummeted by more than 60 per cent per head since the ban was introduced. Air quality in bars and cafes has also improved dramatically.

However, this example may not easily be generalised to those of our behaviours that impact on climate change. All smokers knew that tobacco was seriously bad for their health so giving up was seen as desirable if difficult. Steadily increasing taxes on cigarettes, making it a more expensive habit also helped. Controlling for underlying inflation, the real cost of cigarettes today is three times their 2004 price.

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If we want to get serious change in households’ greenhouse gas emissions, people will need alternatives that will allow them to continue leading a normal life. Adopting carbon-neutral technologies must be made easy for those willing to do so. To reduce car use in urban areas, we need a much more rapid deployment of high-quality public transport services.

As with tobacco, price signals are important in nudging people to make the change. Making carbon emissions more expensive, via the carbon tax, and making climate-friendly decisions cheaper, through subsidies for home retrofits, are important in effecting behaviour change.

Persuading people to take fewer flights is the most problematic challenge. People value very highly the ability to travel – we saw how crowded the airports became once people were able to head abroad again after the pandemic. While high-speed rail can offer a viable alternative to air travel in some parts of Europe, for our island nation, and across much of the world, travel by rail is not a substitute.

Instead, much more rapid development of suitable aviation technologies must be incentivised. If heavily polluting aircraft faced stiff taxes, that would encourage the necessary research into clean aviation, as well as resulting in a limited reduction in flights.