Unthinkable lifestyle changes for sustainability

We know we can make huge lifestyle changes when we need to - COVID-19 proved that. So how can we explore different ways of reducing our planetary footprint? Stefan Kaufman has a few suggestions for working towards wins, by groups of people actively experimenting with solutions to the many wicked problems facing humanity right now.

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Transcript:

GEOFF
We're here to talk about unthinkable life style changes for sustainability. So tell us, why are these unthinkable and why do we have to start thinking about them?

STEFAN
Well, there's a sort of bad news story there and a good news story. The bad news is that, you know, for at least the last 50 odd years, we've been thinking that sustainable development might possibly mean that we can have economic growth, but we just need to make sure it doesn't harm the environment and people, and in particular, that it's not greenhouse gas intensive.

And 50 years of efforts in this space we're only seeing a partial separation of economic growth and, greenhouse gas emissions, the short of it is, is that the idea that we can simply decouple the environmental impact of economic growth and all the good things we associate with that in terms of human flourishing and development doesn't appear to be possible.

The better news part of it, I guess, is that governments are taking more action on this, as are some businesses and NGOs. And the upshot of all this is essentially that we don't just need to change the production and supply side of this problem, but we also need to start thinking about the demand side and the consumption side of the problem.

And that essentially means that there are changes we need to see in everyday life that might seem, at least at the fringes of what we consider to be normal or considerable or comfortable, if not unthinkable, some of them, depends where you sitting, but, yeah, that might mean big changes in the kind of things I'm talking about here are you know, significantly less red meat in our diets, and a lot more plant based foods and less ultra processed foods and food waste. It might mean, forgoing a private vehicle and having more active, shared and public transport. It might mean avoiding long flights for holidays, and only maybe every eight years or so, going for a much longer stay somewhere or favouring local holidays.

So yeah, things that actually mean quite big changes in day to day life. And that's why I call them unthinkable. If not, maybe uncomfortable might be more accurate.

GEOFF
Yeah, they're not, impossible. It is. All these things are about reducing impact.

STEFAN
That's right. And the other half of that is they're a little bit unthinkable because there are industries and government actors and others who are actually quite happy with the current status quo in those different areas. And it's relatively easy for them to, promote negative reactions to these lifestyle changes, too. So the idea of, 'the Labor Party; You're trying to take away the weekend' or some of the linking of eating meat with being a man or Australian by the meat industry, and so there is that element of, I guess, the risk or vulnerability of these changes being picked up and amplified as resistance by vested interests as well. And of course, you know, these are genuinely big changes in every everyday life.

GEOFF
Change often happens with tipping points. Tell us about social tipping points and how important they are.

STEFAN
There's some reason to think that there's a magic number, somewhere around 25 to 40% of adoption of a new technology or lifestyle practice where, it becomes a positive, virtuous cycle and more and more people see it and think it's normal. The economies of scale are better, the technologies are improved and are cheaper, all that kind of stuff. And it takes off and mainstreams. But what also seems to be the case, and we're seeing this across, developed countries all around the world right now, is that this is also a phase where, the winners and losers of these changes become a bit clearer and concerns, legitimate concerns of just and equitable transitions, you know, are we looking after the coal workers or the farmers affected by some of these changes, and also the protection of vested interests of their profits and their preferred business models?

That all comes into the play as well. And so there's this sort of risky but important phase where a social tipping point could go to the good, but it could also be pushed back and suppressed. And, these important changes don't happen.

GEOFF
Talk about frames and meta frames and the way we see problems and issues as they arise.

STEFAN
At core, it's this idea of; there's a problem, there's an analysis of what are the causes of the problem, there's a moral evaluation of who's responsible to do something about it, and then there's a solution. And so one way to think about the ways that both proponents of these unthinkable lifestyle changes and opponents of them, can try and influence what happens is by putting out frames out there, you know, thinking about things like they're trying to take away the weekend. You know, the problem here is that you should be free to do what you want on the weekend, and people shouldn't tell you how to live. And so, you know, you should be outraged and vote for the other party, that kind of thing. So that's an example of a negative frame. But equally, I've been working with entrepreneurs and changemakers who are putting forward some of these, some goods and services or ideas around these lifestyle changes and they're coming up with some really great accessible ideas around this, like that if you jump on a Dutch style e-bike, in which you can do in your normal clothes and ride comfortably without getting sweaty, it's as convenient as a car and, you know, essentially substituting the private automobile for a private bike ride, which given that so many trips, 50 to 60% of our trips are under five kilometres with all the emissions.

Or another example is, closing streets around schools. And while it's part of the sustainability program, the way they get people excited and involved in it is that it presented as a chance for children to play on the street again, like they did when you were kids. It's about safety. It's about fun and enjoyment of the local neighbourhood. The hope is that by doing that kind of activity, and people seeing those benefits and actually seeing happy children play in the streets around the school again, that might then crystallise into support for longer term infrastructure changes and permanent street closures and so on.

And so so that effort to find those, win wins that lots of people can value.

GEOFF
Talk about wicked problems. What are they and what makes them so wicked.

STEFAN
Right. Well, we could problem is, an idea that comes out of system thinking, and it's very much where you have a complex, interdependent set of causes of a problem. That means that it's relatively difficult to unpick any one of them as a simple solution. Wicked Problems are these systemic, interdependent problems where it's there's no one solution that can solve it in one fell swoop.

And they usually take, careful analysis of what are the relationships in the problem that hold it in place and what might be some of the leverage points that could change it. And my contention or thought is that, in these transformative lifestyle changes, if we can work our way back from what would it take for this to be normal and easy for these big changes to take place, we can identify some of these leverage points in the wicked problem and and fix them instead of being in a situation where you have, politicians saying, well, I'd like to do something about it, but I don't think the voters will accept it or industry saying, well, we'd like to offer this service, but we don't think the consumers want it. Yeah. Or citizens saying, well, we'd like to do these things, but no one's providing us the services or the goods to do it. And so I think if we can, strategically intervene into some of these changes, we can turn those excuses into actions.

GEOFF
Speaking of actions, what about robust actions? What does that mean in terms of bringing about these changes?

STEFAN
You know, rather than going for a single big fix that might be a little bit ideological and, might be very set and determined where we, you know, maybe do some kind of scientific and technical analysis and say, this is the solution and everyone should do it. You should instead do, an experimental, exploratory, flexible response to problems in this kind of framework.

The ideal situation is that coalitions of people across different sectors of government, business, community get together, who want to work on a problem. And then they go through an open ended bottom up exploration of possible solutions with the idea of finding these sort of win win wins across the problem.

GEOFF
Tell me about a Skeuomorph and why will technology not save us?

STEFAN
Okay. Well so a Skeuomorph is one way of describing, I guess, what some of those win win wins look like in robust action. The classic example that George introduced to us was your desktop on the computer, which is the traditional desktop with a, you know, filing cabinets underneath and, trash bin in the corner, that you could then conceptually engage with and engage with what is fundamentally a very different reality through a familiar object.

Possibly, providing someone with a burger that just happens to look and taste and smell a lot like a meat burger that is actually plant based. It's an example too and I guess that raises also that, you know, I think the second part of your question was, is there a technological fix? I suppose the risk and the opportunity they skeuomorphs is that, they end up being a superficial substitution, but the underlying wicked problem remain.

There's nothing, natural or inevitable about any of this. And if we sort of muddled our way into these unsustainable arrangements, can we not then intentionally, guide ourselves out of it by looking at how do we mainstream some of these changes in the surrounding system, changes that are needed to, make those behaviours easy, normal and common. To me, this question of, you know, how do we make these broader shifts in lifestyles is as much a behavioural science question as it is anything else.

And I think it's really important that we apply this what is a very powerful and effective toolkit to these harder behaviour change problems.

GEOFF
And the different actors in any systemic problem have to reach out to each other and work together.  It's a collaboration.

STEFAN
Yeah, I think that's fair. Like like if you frame it as a wicked problem, then what you're basically saying is that, this is a situation that emerges from the interactions of the different players involved and their relationships with each other. And so if we want to change it, we need to find a way for that system to, to evolve into a better configuration.

And, what I particularly like about that is that it means that there isn't so much goodies and baddies. There's just folks they have to find a way to better coexist into the future. That takes into account what the science is telling us about natural limits to what we can do.

GEOFF
Stefan Kellerman, thank you very much.

STEFAN
Thank you Geoff.