Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
One morning not long ago, I came to my desk in the office and announced to anyone within earshot that I had just done something unexpected and depressing.
My 19-year-old Toyota had died abruptly, and in the rush to replace it, I ended up buying another gas-electric hybrid instead of the all-electric plug-in car my partner and I had always thought would be next.
Most of my colleagues listened politely as I talked about how my partner needed another car soon because he was in the middle of a project that required him to make 340-mile round trips to a remote part of Wales at short notice.
They complained sympathetically about these trips and my unhappy visions of said partner stuck in a Tesco car park looking at a bank of broken electric car chargers on a wintery Welsh night.
They agreed that, even at home in London, finding an empty, working charger could be overwhelming. Or rather, the majority agreed. One colleague was neither sympathetic nor understanding. He was visibly dismayed.
What he had done, he said, was incredible. There were now many chargers on all the main roads. Whoever said otherwise was wrong. He had been crossing half of Europe in his electric car for years without any problems.
When I started stammering that cost had also been a factor, and even the cheapest decent used EVs were beyond my ideal budget, he went online and started searching on Auto Trader to prove that I hadn’t looked hard enough .
I prayed that he would find a Tesla, so that I could haughtily remind him that he had just written about how Elon Musk’s antics had discouraged me from buying his cars. But work duties intervened and the conversation ended, a relief considering we sat just a few feet away.
The incident has stayed with me for a number of reasons, the main one being the realization that my colleague, who is one of my favorite people at the FT and an early adopter of green technology, was almost certainly right. I probably would have found a satisfactory EV with more effort.
At the same time, being on the receiving end of a strong attack of climate shaming was a shocking reminder of how carefully peer pressure must be applied to encourage greener behavior, whether at work or at home.
There is no doubt that the influence of others can be a powerful climate policy tool. Research has long shown that one of the main reasons people put solar panels on their roofs is not because they are well-off or green-minded. It’s because your neighbors have done it first.
Living within 500 meters of a visible rooftop solar system makes you more likely to install one yourself, and analysis of Connecticut homes, where each visible panel increases the chance that you will do the same by 6.5 percent.
Other solar adoption studies found similar evidence of this so-called social contagion effect, which may also influence companies and farms.
Then there’s the classic green push. case of Opower, an American home energy management software group. Its products allow utility companies to offer people personalized reports that show how their energy use compares to that of neighbors.
Early studies showed that such reporting led to an average 2 percent drop in home energy use which has since been reduced billions of dollars of customer invoices.
But there’s a problem, says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.
A longer-term analysis showed that conservative politicians who use more power than average and do not support green charities actually increase your electricity consumption after obtaining this type of information.
“If we think we are being shamed into doing something, it makes us feel – or sometimes even sense – exactly the opposite,” Hayhoe writes in her book on climate communication. Saving us.
She believes people are more willing to be persuaded if they are simply shown the benefits of green behavior or products, whether it’s taking the train instead of flying, or buying an electric car.
I’m sure you’re right, but I don’t blame anyone who suffers the frustration my colleague felt over my lousy EV effort.
At a time when the growing climate threat is visibly worsening and fears about the problem are growing growingThere should be no need to poke, shame or show. System-wide policies should make green behavior the obvious, easier and financially preferable option. Unfortunately, this remains more of an exception than a rule.