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Four reasons to be hopeful this Earth Day

Forty-four years after that first Earth Day, climate change remains profoundly divisive. But the same can no longer be said of climate solutions. People everywhere really do want to use less energy. Now, technology, economics, and behavioral science give us four reasons to be hopeful.

2. Information unlocks behavioral change

In a play that was as brilliant as it was optimistic, the organizers behind Earth Day 1970 made education the core of their campaign – trusting that once Americans knew the issues, motivation would follow. It exploded. In only months, citizens and policymakers secured the strongest environmental protections America had ever seen. 

I believe passionately in that model of change: namely, that information, well timed and thoughtfully delivered, is what helps society make great environmental decisions. And today, we know more about the science and impact of sharing information than ever before.

To take just one example: A few years ago, a clever study revealed that if you want people to save energy at home – whether green-living gurus, penny-pinchers, or otherwise – you won’t get far by simply telling them they’ll save money or help the planet if they use less energy. What does work, and phenomenally well, is showing them data that their neighbors are acting to save energy, too.

Now, creative thinkers are using normative comparison – that “keeping up with the Joneses” effect – to get more people to reduce their emissions, pay their taxes, recycle, you name it. And their success is proving that tough-sell behavioral changes aren’t just possible. They’re relatively easy, and people want to make them.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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