Insights

⚡How impactful will interventions to promote such actions be in reducing emissions in the real world?

⚠️ Priority Gap
Did you know that giving up your car is equivalent to 77 people taking up composting, and installing home solar has the same impact as 41 people composting?

While most people think recycling, composting, and turning off lights are most impactful—and most research focuses on reducing home energy use interventions—these have minimal effect on reducing carbon pollution.

Decreasing car use, reducing air travel, switching from fossil fuel home heating, and eating less meat are high-impact climate actions, according to a new report by World Resources Institute on “effective impact.”

📊 Effectiveness Gap
Choice architecture interventions (redesigning decision environments) and commitments have significantly greater additive impacts than other behavioral tools, such as information campaigns and social norms. Yet, such effective behavioral interventions have been studied the least by researchers.

🔍 Impact Gap
Theoretically, if we follow all climate actions, we can offset our entire individual carbon footprint. But real-world interventions typically achieve only 10% of their potential.

So while our actions could theoretically offset 111% of average global emissions (7.19 tCO2e/cap/yr), real-world interventions typically achieve only 11% (0.72 tCO2e/cap/yr).

This stark gap between promise and practice highlights the urgent need for systemic change to foster individual behavior change. 🔄

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