Tools- of Changes

Six Behaviors Policymakers Should Promote to Mitigate Climate Change

This open-access article in Behavioral Science & Policy (7:2) identifies six behaviors with the greatest potential to reduce emissions in the United States. The authors modeled the effects of their uptake and predict that if adopted by 5%-10% of the U.S. population, these actions can collectively lower current national emissions by 7%.

The authors conducted an analysis to identify behaviors that have the greatest practical potential to reduce emissions in the United States and modeled the effects of their uptake. Their analysis identified six behaviors to prioritize and estimate that - if adopted by 5%-10% of the U.S. population - these actions can collectively lower current national emissions by 464 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, or 7% overall annually. The six behaviors are: (a) purchasing an electric vehicle, (b) reducing air travel, (c) eating a plant rich diet, (d) purchasing carbon offsets, (e) reducing food waste, and (f) purchasing green energy. The article starts on page 63.