The pandemic has shown us how we can clean up the planet. Many climate activists and governmental bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that we must reduce emissions so that global warming is limited to 1.5°C.
But actions to limit warming have fallen short of this goal. However, there is hope. In the first half of 2020, global CO2 emissions actually dropped enough to put us on this path, declining by 17 per cent in April 2020.
Unfortunately, experts are expecting that we will reach pre-pandemic levels of emissions once again, putting us back on the path of three or more degrees of warming.
Here’s one example that awaits us in the post-pandemic world, revenge travel, sparked by the pent-up demand of many to finally board a plane again. With the first lockdowns, air travel dropped by around 40 per cent, preventing 915 million tonnes of carbon from being emitted.
As borders reopen, spending on tourism and quick-fire flight bookings surge as people try to make up for the perceived lost time. Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority is receiving about 6,000 passport applications daily, triple the daily average of 2,000 from just two years ago.
At Amasia, the venture capital firm where I am a partner, we strongly believe that we don’t have to bound back to our old behaviours. There is immense, under-recognised potential for bottom-up behaviour change that will help us fight this climate crisis.
How we got here
Lockdowns due to the pandemic have led to an unprecedented “digital migration” in every aspect of life, work, entertainment, learning, and shopping. When people stayed home and bought less, our seemingly unachievable climate goals were suddenly not so remote.
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Research supports this seemingly simple observation. But as we proceed into the new normal, how can we ensure that we are not bringing our most destructive habits back from the dead, too?
First, we need to know what spurs these bad habits in the first place.
“Mimetic desire,” or making decisions based on the desires of the people around us, has led to runaway overconsumption and the ravaging of the planet. We want more not because we need more, but rather because we are heavily influenced by our social environment.
This is fuelling an unfulfilling and damaging behavioural cycle of wanting to own, yet being less satisfied while owning more things.
The rise of new digital media and hyper-targeted advertising techniques further reinforce the idea that well-being comes from material wealth and from owning the latest products. This mindset has to change and that needs to happen now.
At the onset of the pandemic, we saw that dramatic behaviour change with a positive impact on the environment is, in fact, possible. So what if we strive to not return to pre-COVID-19 habits and instead retain some of that more environmentally-friendly life of the past two years?
Take the revenge travel example. Instead of immediately taking the next travel opportunity, consumers can be more aware of their impulses and try to moderate them to avoid further damage to the environment. The potential impact is massive.
Mass consumer behaviour change has accomplished far more in less time than international agreements, corporate pledges, or political legislation alone could ever hope to achieve. One could argue that the behaviour during the pandemic was the result of mandatory policies that confined people at home and closed businesses.
Then, how can we now encourage people to voluntarily adopt more sustainable consumer behaviours to get closer to the 1.5°C targets?
What this means for us
There are a few solutions here. NGOs and governments need to meet consumers where they currently are and help make sustainable living an easier, “no-brainer” choice.
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Brands must be held accountable for leading customers astray and for pursuing practices that run against a healthy amount of consumption. For politicians and decision-makers, now is the opportunity to implement bipartisan measures which will more organically encourage more sustainable behaviours, even if these imply higher costs.
For example, Singapore has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by or around mid-century, and it is currently on track to reach its 2030 targets, promoting green technologies and alternative low-carbon solutions.
Change is predominantly needed in affluent nations, with the top 10 per cent accounting for 52 per cent of carbon emissions. The rich serve as role models, so it is essential for them to moderate their consumption first. We’re not asking people to live in huts, but rather to eliminate the more astounding aspects of their exorbitant lifestyles.
Policy interventions such as raising carbon taxes can deter businesses and individuals from overconsumption, encouraging them to take actions to moderate their emissions. With Singapore toughening on its carbon tax, with a view to reaching SG$50 (US$36.35) to SG$80 (US$58.17) per tonne by 2030, those with the highest carbon usage will be taxed commensurately to their output.
We need a dramatically different vision for this world and our society if we are to save our planet. The world we are aiming for is one in which we engage in much less business travel and have fewer things that last a long time.
It’s a world in which our homes and cars have been “right-sized” and where we eat less and waste less food. In this world, most things that can be digitised are digitised, and we realise that physical proximity is no longer the key requirement to getting to know people in faraway lands. It’s a world in which we spend more time in our own locality, neighbourhood, or city.
Our role models are folks who want to build this kind of world. We need to get there if we are to avoid climate catastrophe.
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