The Future of Climate Action: From Systems Change to Behavior Change

Abstract

Action on climate change is becoming increasingly personal. It is no longer the purview of primarily national policymakers, as presidents and prime ministers back out of the Paris Climate Agreement—a pact that intended to locate emissions reduction responsibilities in the hands of national governments. Now, sub-national actors—cities, states, businesses, universities, hospitals, religious organizations, and nonprofit sectors in the global North and South—are filling the void. As part of this shift, personal behavior change is increasingly discussed among sub-national actors and, as a result, social norms encouraging sustainable consumption are becoming more mainstream in the climate space, complementing more traditional environmental choices. This chapter explores the systems-level transformations within one particular sector of sub-national society—cities that are taking aggressive action on climate change—since the majority of the world’s population resides in cities and since cities are responsible for the majority of the world’s energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The article explores the potential shift within these cities toward behavior change approaches and how social psychologies may be useful in motivating residents to reduce sub-national sector emissions further.