Human behaviour and climate change

Phil Downing, Head of Environmental Research at Ipsos Mori, gave a seminar yesterday at the OU which I attended. It was part of a short series we've held over the past couple of months to explore what systems ideas have contributed to the discourse on climate change. Phil and his colleagues' work on public attitudes to climate change was of interest to us in terms of trying to understand multiple perspectives on our various systems of interest in the context of climate change. Two points he made that I found interesting from a systems point of view. One was 'rebound effect' - where people save money on say saving energy and then spend it on a flight to New York or a high energy using plasma TV. This is an example of an unintended consequence of an intervention. Reinforces for me that human behaviour isn't straight forward and can't be simply 'controlled'. The other point of interest was his mention of 'cognitive polyphasia' - where we can hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time. There's something illustrated there about ideas not being independent of contexts and the dynamics of our thinking and beliefs. Does make me wonder about interviews that aim to find out what people think though.