The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Being Green Doesn't Mean Sacrificing Fun... or Cutting Out Meat

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

We often think of fighting climate change as a drain on our happiness - it'll mean sacrificing the things we love, like air travel or eating hamburgers. But researchers Jiaying Zhao and Liz Dunn have pioneered the idea of "Happy Climate" that shows us ways in which doing good for the planet can make us feel great.    Changing how we fly, drive, shop and eat in very small ways can make us enjoy our travel, our friends, our wardrobes and, yes, even our steaks, more than ever before.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I would just kind of get this glare of like, why are you killing the earth? And that wasn't a good feeling. Psychologist Liz Dunn once had a boyfriend who liked to remind her to turn off the lights a lot. That actually made me almost take an opposing stance. I certainly wasn't like a climate change denier, but I was like, oh, you know, technology is going to figure this out. Liz is no longer with that guy. Getting scolded and shamed, it turns out, isn't great for romantic relationships. It's not my husband. Did I marry him? But these harsh practices aren't great for motivating sustainable behaviors either.

So what's another tactic for slowing global warming? Maybe we should scare folks into taking action. One of my friends, she just sort of imagines like her daughters floating alone in a raft, you know, and this is like the image that she has when she thinks about climate change. And therefore she doesn't think so much about climate change because that's terrible, right? So haranguing people doesn't work, neither does terrifying them. What strategies can we use to get people to reduce their carbon footprint? Maybe we need to give everyone a little bit more hope. 2023 was the hottest year on record, and that increased heat intensified droughts,

storms, and fires to devastating effect. These scary consequences may make you want to turn away from the problem, or just cross your fingers and hope that someone will come up with some technological fix. But what if I told you that facing up to the crisis and doing your bit to make things better in 2024 could actually make you feel surprisingly better? This is The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. If you want to get drunk quickly at a climate change conference, you should drink when you hear the words doom, catastrophe, disaster. Behavioral scientist Liz Dunn is a happiness expert who's taken a special interest in how people react to the climate crisis.

Spoiler alert, we're not handling it well. 75% of young people say that they are frightened of the future, right? You know, fear is great for getting people to act quickly in an emergency, right? So if you need to get people to leave a burning building, yeah, like make them scared. That's great. And I think that's been the approach, you know, folks likening Earth to a burning building. And to some extent, that's true. But the problem is we can't just all run out of the building and then we're extent, that's true. But the problem is,

we can't just all run out of the building and then we're good, you know, wait for the fire department to come. It's like, we are the fire department, and we're going to have to get up day after day and work on this problem. And so just having that state of emergency all the time, I just don't think is a emotionally sustainable state to be in. Negative emotions have their place in our life stories, but when they're the only ones on stage, they can be pretty exhausting. Even in a tragedy, right, you have those moments of joy and uplift and humor, and you need that. It's hard to laugh about climate change, but one scientist is trying out that strategy. Hey everyone, I'm Jay-Z,

not the cool rapper, but the professor trying to cool the planet through behavior change. Jay Hinshaw, Jay-Z, wants to put a happier spin on tackling global warming, precisely because the situation is so grim. It's getting more common to see these climate disasters. My parents' home was flooded just a couple of weeks ago in Hong Kong. And I worry that people would become actually numb or desensitized because of that. But Jay-Z also worries that the constant pressure to change our lifestyles is wearing us down. It was the subject of her TED Talk entitled, How to Feng Shui Your Fridge and Other Happy Climate Hacks. Drive less, eat less meat, shop less. Less, less, less. Now, I'm a behavior scientist,

so trust me when I say this. This framing doesn't make us feel great. If you want people to change their consumer habits, framing it as a sacrifice isn't very effective. Pleasure is one of the main drivers of human behavior, and sacrifice, even for an important cause, just isn't very fun. Who will actually sacrifice their quality of life for the environment? Very few people, and it's not sustainable because you might do it once or twice, but you're not going to keep doing it for a long time. So that narrative needs to really fundamentally change.

Psychologist Liz Dunn had been having exactly that same thought. I was biking to work one day and thinking about climate change, as you do, and kind of thinking about how, oh, it's sort of too bad that my life's work on happiness has no bearing whatsoever on the most important existential challenge of our time. That's when I sort of started thinking about biking and realizing, oh, I'd bike to work that day

because it put me in a good mood. Oh, actually, like tons of the things that we should be doing to help the climate are actually good for individual happiness as well. And so that was sort of the moment when I realized that by focusing on climate change just as the sort of harbinger of doom and gloom, that we were actually missing out on a way of tackling it that might be more helpful for some people. As luck would have it, Liz and Jay-Z happened to work together at the University of British Columbia. So Liz decided to bring a new idea to her colleague. She said, hey, Jay-Z, can we do something

that's not only good for the climate, but also good for our own happiness? And that's when the light bulb went off in my head. That's my aha moment, thinking, wow, I have never heard climate and happiness mentioned in the same sentence. And this is an excellent idea. We should do it. Jay-Z and Liz have now identified a whole series of these so-called sweet spots, actions that increase our happiness and joy, while at the same time decreasing our carbon consumption. It's a concept they've christened Happy Climate.

The core idea is that we can give people a new way of thinking about climate change, not just as this dark cloud on the horizon that's coming for us no matter what we do, but rather as an opportunity to kind of rethink the way we live our lives. I think one misconception here is this idea that if we're happy about what's going on in the climate or we find joy or we're optimistic, then we won't take the necessary action that we need. That's right. I mean, it's not that you feel content and satisfied so you don't do anything. I think that's not the happiness that I'm describing here. I think the happiness I'm talking about is this uplifting, kicking you into action type of positive emotions, the dopamine-driven kind of actions, that you want to do something that will continue to make you feel good. So what are these sweet spots that can kick us into action? Liz and Jay-Z group them into three main areas, diet, transport, and shopping. First off, diet. Yeah, so I think this

is such an interesting example because when people think about food, their assumption is, okay, I have to give up meat or maybe I even have to give up all dairy products. Again, I just don't think that's going to be a sustainable choice behaviorally for many people. And so there's really good news here, which is that when you dig into the science, it isn't the case that you actually have to give up all meat in order to have an impact. So in particular, beef is really like the bad boy of the meat world, along with lamb. It has a really outsized impact on carbon emissions. But chicken, for example, actually has a pretty low carbon impact. You don't necessarily have to go cold turkey, right?

You can kind of keep some of those foods that you especially appreciate and enjoy. And it's about like, okay, let's reevaluate our diet. And so, you know, in my own experience recently with my husband, you know, my husband for a while had again decided he was completely vegetarian. So for example, one night I was making a salad topped with chicken for my son and I, and then I made this separate dinner of salad with halloumi for him. But then Jay-Z actually helpfully calculated the carbon impact of each of our dinners. This is the fun thing about hanging out with like a human carbon calculator all the time is you can be like, here's what I had for dinner. Can you tell me if

my husband was right or I was right? Anyway, so she's like, yeah, Michael, my husband, I'm going to just go ahead and say his name, throw him under the bus. His carbon impact was actually higher with his halloumi dinner than ours was with the chicken dinner. And so again, I think it's about going, oh, we don't just need to act out of these assumptions. We can instead look at it a little more carefully and think through what food choices we're going to make. And so for me, I also just struggle with the notion of completely giving up meat. But I do like this idea that when I have it, I should notice it and be like, I am going to appreciate this. And especially, you know, I have not even completely given up steak. I will still, we don't have it at home anymore. So it's something that I'll have like out at a restaurant. And I'm

like, oh, this is, you know, a special night. I'm having steak. I am definitely going to order a glass of wine. I'm going to max out my pleasure here. And so recognizing that when we're, you know, indulging in some carbon, instead of feeling guilty about that, we could go, okay, you know what? This is a special treat. And then, you know, in our daily lives, try to be having more of these low-carbon meals. And the science really supports the idea that when we do these things like less often and we do them with more savoring, they can increase more pleasure, right? Yeah. So one of the problems with having good things all the time is that we tend to lose our capacity to really appreciate them. And this is a fundamental principle of happiness science. But let me illustrate it with

just one very small little lab study that we did way back in the day. So in the study, we brought students into the lab and we asked them to eat some chocolate. Then we politely asked one group of these students to please refrain from eating any chocolate for one whole week. And then we told other students, guess what? We have a little gift bag for you. Here's a giant bag of chocolate. Please eat as much as you comfortably can over the next week. And finally, we had a control group of people who we didn't give any chocolate-related instructions. So then we bring everybody back into the lab a week later. We have them eat some more chocolate. We measure their savoring using both self-report and behavioral measures. And the first thing that pops out of the data is that people just enjoy eating the

chocolate less the second time than they did the first time. And this is like the sad reality of the human experience encapsulated in a single study. So people just enjoy a pleasurable thing less when they repeat it than they did originally. But there was this exception. So people who had given up the chocolate for a week enjoyed it just as much the second time as they had the first. So they showed this preserved capacity to savor. And so that's what I think about when I think about, you know, having some high carbon foods occasionally is like, oh yeah, I really do notice them and appreciate them in a way that I didn't when I was just having them on the regular without even thinking about it. And I love this idea because again, it fights against this sacrifice

notion by actually doing something that's sustainable for the environment, maybe eating less beef, maybe eating less dairy. You enjoy it more. So you're actually, you're not changing the pleasure impact that you would have gotten over time, but you're still doing something that's helping the planet. That's right. You can get more pleasure out of less frequent episodes. So maybe like your total pleasure is the same or even higher than it would have been, but your carbon's lower. But there's another way we can bring a happy climate hack to our diet. One that's not so much about the food we actually consume, but about the stuff we never really get around to eating. I don't think the fridge is designed

with human behavior. It's funny, I wish that there were more behavioral scientists working for fridge companies. We're told to put perishables in the drawers or at the back of the fridge where it's coldest. But what happens then is that we don't see those foods and we don't remember those foods. So I often waste things that rot in the drawers. And I really hate that. To solve this problem, Jay-Z adopted a practice that she calls Feng Shui-ing the fridge. What this means is literally do the opposite. We put produce perishables at the door of the fridge and move condiments, those things that last, into the drawers. And after Feng Shui-ing our fridge, we have not wasted a single piece of food.

And this is because, because you know when we open the door we see right away what's at the door what's rotting i literally caught a piece of lettuce about to rot last night and i ate it i was like oh i saved it one critique i've heard from people is oh but if you put produce at the door don't they wilt faster? They become soft and soggy. And my response is, yeah, they do, but you eat them faster too. So there we have it. A quick trick that can save you money, stave off depressing food waste, and reduce your carbon emissions all at the same time.

After the break, we'll hear about another happy climate hack that can turn the worst part of your day into the best. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Commuting. We sit in traffic, alone, bored, usually stressed, stewing as the seconds tick down until we have to clock into work. Not that you needed science to tell you this, but many studies show that commuting is one of the least happy activities in most people's lives. Moments where we get to socialize, on the other hand, are among the happiest.

So the sort of sweet spot here, I would say, is if you have to drive, like drive to work, drive other people. Right. And especially it's got to be people you like. And so thinking about, oh, are there some of them that live in your neighborhood, for example, that you could drive and you would like get to know these interesting people and maybe have possibly what might turn out to be the best conversation of the day during that car ride. And this is valuable because driving just two other people is equivalent to taking the commuter rail in terms of your carbon impacts. And at the same time, again, you're actually improving your life. The thing is, though, it does take a second, right? It's like easier to just jump in your car and drive to work and not be coordinating anything with anybody, right? So it's legit that we need to recognize that that is a little bit of a barrier. And so

this is why I think people have to kind of step back and go, all right, I want to make some changes in my life. I'm going to reckon with the fact that we've got this climate crisis. What are the changes that I am able and willing to make? And then like putting a little bit of time, like you got to put it in your calendar that you're going to figure out some time to do this. And like, it really helps if there's other people around you who are also motivated to care about these things and maybe could sort of team up with you to work on them. But honestly, you know, I talk even to my students about the fact that they're not meeting with their friends as much and like, oh, well, I'm so busy. It takes some time, right? This is a way that you can put that time in. You're going

to have to put in any way for socializing, but also help the planet at the same time. You know, a great way to think of this too is, is there somebody in your life that you really enjoy spending time with, but that you just don't end up getting to see that often? And like, if they live kind of on your way and you maybe work at the same place or work in the same area, or you live in the same suburb and work in the same city or something like that, I mean, this is a great opportunity to make a bit of a difference for the planet and also really build some socializing back into your day. I think this is probably one of the best ways, you know, if it's something that fits into your life to take advantage of a sweet spot.

And so this is our day-to-day transportation, but you've also talked about kind of the big moments of transportation, like when we fly somewhere for a conference, which is salient for you right now because we're having this conversation in New Haven at Yale and you've come over from the West Coast to do this. What are ways that we can boost our happiness, but also kind of make good on that climate moment as well? Yeah. So flying is the one that like gets me and gets a lot of my close friends because, you know, we're just at a stage of our careers where we get these exciting opportunities or there's people we want to see. And it's really challenging. I mean, flying is like the worst for climate. But on the flip side, if you're somebody who flies frequently and you can cut even

one cross-country flight, I mean, it makes a huge difference. It's equivalent to months and months and months of driving. You know, one thing that I try to think about is just being pretty choosy about what flights to be willing to take, right? Is it necessary that I go? Is there somebody else that could do this instead of me? Maybe somebody for whom, you know, it would be a great opportunity and they're closer by, even if they have to fly too, if it's a shorter flight for them, that even makes a big difference.

And then the other piece that I think about is, okay, if this is something I want to do, can I bundle it? So for this trip, for example, instead of just flying right back to Vancouver, cross-country flight after this two-day conference. I am hopping on the train to Boston tomorrow. I'm gonna see some of the people that I care about most and that I haven't seen in a long time.

And so that's creating this opportunity for happiness, really increasing the value, like the happiness per carbon. If you're gonna use up a ton of carbon, you wanna get a ton of happiness out of that and do it really consciously rather than just sort of burning carbon willy-nilly without even thinking about it. Really maxing out that value and then I'm going to not go anywhere for like a while because I will have fully scratched the itch to go, you know, talk and

meet people and everything. And I think that's the important flip side of this though. When you do that calculation, you're like, this is worth it. Let me make it more worth it. Let me make this kind of carbon impact even boost my happiness more. But the flip side, if you're secretly like, oh, I don't know if this is worth it, it kind of gives you an excuse to protect the thing that we know is so important for happiness, which is our free time. Exactly. And so I think time affluence, this feeling of having enough time to do the things that are important to us is really critical. And I have been known to get myself into situations where I have very little time affluence. And I say this as somebody who studies the importance of time affluence for happiness. I'm glad it's not just me, by the way. It's really hard because each thing in isolation

sounds like a good idea and then you end up with no time. And so even just making yourself pause to consider the carbon costs is a good way to cut back on travel. And people also are actually pretty understanding. And I'm not saying it as a excuse. I really mean it, that this is something that is important to me. And so I frequently say no to invitations for the genuine reason of like, I just don't think it's worth the carbon. I say it in a nicer way in the email. But, you know, often it wouldn't necessarily provide the value that it needs to provide in order for it to be worth the ton of carbon that the flight's going to require. But in some ways, I think for those of us, especially who don't want to disappoint

colleagues or disappoint family members who ask us to come visit, there's this moment where by trying to protect the planet, we can kind of protect ourselves too. You know, sometimes we don't want to make the decision that helps our happiness, but if it helps someone else's happiness, if it helps the planet's happiness, that actually makes it a little bit easier. I think that's right. And, you know, I love that on Google flights, for example, you can see exactly how much carbon you're going to burn. And so it's really easy to quantify, you know, just how much this flight is kind of costing the planet. And in contrast, I think sometimes it's easy to lose track of how much these trips are costing us in

terms of our time, especially because we're often making these plans way in advance. And so it doesn't really seem like a big deal. You don't know how crazy everything's going to be when it actually comes time to be like rushing to the airport. And so for me, you know, I think this has led me to take long swaths of time where I'm just not going anywhere. And that's kind of magical when you actually have a big stretch of time where you're at home and you are, you know, people say, oh, you want to come for dinner or whatever.

And you're like, why, yes, I will be in town and I do have time, you know, and that's actually a pretty great feeling. Another sweet spot where being friendly to the environment can boost our happiness involves shopping for clothes, but not for any clothes. It turns out that fast fashion, those garments we're encouraged to buy one season

and replace the next, is bad both for the planet and for feeling content. Fast fashion is really detrimental to the environment. It actually emits more greenhouse gases than flying and shipping combined every year. So instead of shopping often, like shopping every week and throwing clothes away, what we should do is more mindful fashion. Buy a few pairs of high-quality clothes, jackets, jeans, or shoes that you love, that you can sort of splurge on, but wear them,

use them for a long time, making things last that can cut emissions and waste, but also increase your own appreciation of the items that you own. The other idea is thrifting. My students do this a lot. This is actually their number one favorite action that they will do with clothing, with shopping, is they love going thrifting because it's like a treasure hunt. They will go through the thrift stores and then find treasures at incredibly low prices and that brings them so much joy. Liz and Jay-Z's happy climate approach

is all about the power of the individual and the difference that one person can make by behaving differently. That impact is something that people tend to underestimate, which is understandable given the scale of the problem we're facing. We started this special season on Climate Hope by interviewing Harvard's Dan Gilbert, who argued that the only meaningful contribution any of us can make to slow global heating is at the ballot box. I think it was Al Gore who said if you really care about the climate, instead of changing your light bulbs or worrying about carbon offsets, you should vote.

Because that's how we in a democracy can create mass action. That's how we can create a response that actually is the size of the problem. Voting is very important, but Jay-Z thinks we shouldn't discount our own small actions. Our actions are conspicuous. We, let's say, driving an electric vehicle is a public act. People see Tesla's EVs more and more now these days, which is great. And that sends a signal that, oh, market's changing. People are driving these cool cars.

Look, and they're paying very little on their electricity bill as opposed to my gas bill. So I think that helps to get more people on board. That diffusion process, I think, is already happening. Also using, you know, reusable bags or bottles, eating a plant-based meal, that also has a ripple effect because you're showing to other people you're not using, you know, simply used plastics or containers and you're showing to other people, you're not using, you know, simply used plastics or containers. You are an environmental person. And that can help get more people on board, especially if you're enjoying it at the same time. I would say it's really changed the way that I think about climate change. Liz says she's come a long way from those days when her ex-boyfriend's nagging drove her to totally ignore climate change and just hope someone else would sort it out. First off, like, let's just focus on the stuff that

actually matters as opposed to some more symbolic actions. So, like, turns out you can leave your lights on. It doesn't really make that big a difference. I think one of the things this reminds me is that, you know, as I'm trying to be sustainable, I'm probably not going to be perfect because nobody's perfect, right? Like, we're not like these perfect, you know, sustainability robots. We're all going to mess up. And so is that really part of it too, where the idea is to really give ourselves grace when we're sort of putting our happiness into the climate equation? Yeah, I mean, I would say perfection is basically impossible. But when we make climate change a purely moral issue, it's really easy to get into that perfection mindset. And I mean, climate change is a moral issue in that like the survival of humanity kind of depends on it. But also we are all kind of doing our best in

addition to like protecting the climate. You're trying to get your kid to volleyball practice and get food on the table and all of that. Right. And so I take more of a sort of mathematical approach rather than a moralizing approach. So like, let's do the math and figure out what are the changes that really would have an impact that I can make that are within my capacity with my current level of bandwidth and the other constraints I have from other things going on in my life. What are the things I can do and expect of myself? And then also just accepting that it's not always going to work out. Like you can set up a carpool and then it falls through. You know, you can plan to eat one thing or one type of, you know, stick to a particular

type of diet. And then as I was last night, you're running through the airport and there's not, you don't have time to do that. It's just like, you're just going to grab what you can grab, right? And that's going to be how it is. And so I think extending some compassion to ourselves is super important in terms of approaching this. And again, you know, I think that's critical in being able to sustain this over the long haul because this is not, it's not about making changes for a week. If it were, then that like perfection approach might actually be pretty cool. We can't do perfection for years and years. So we need that sustainable approach. I really love this because I know that I'm really prone to what psychologists often refer to as the what the hell effect where you're kind of planning something and as soon as you mess up,

you're like, oh, whatever. And I'm just going to rationalize completely screwing up. And I can watch myself sometimes with sustainability do that, where it's like, oh, you know, for whatever reason, I'm forced to take this long international flight.

And then I think, well, oh, well, screw it. Like I was, you know, eating more plant-based before, but now that doesn't matter because I'm taking the flight. And this not perfectionist approach can kind of get us back to, okay, I'm doing my best and it's important that I do my best. It matters that I do my best when I'm going to do it with a little self-compassion and not with

beating myself up over it all the time. That's right. And I think on the flip side too, we could also kind of celebrate our achievements and go, hey, look, you know what? We've eaten 80% plant based foods for the past month. Good for us. Whatever else happens next week, we did it this month. You know, that's something, right? Celebrating those wins and giving ourselves some compassion when we don't win is probably a much more, you know, sustainable approach over the long term. And this also raises a different question, which is not just being compassionate to ourselves, but thinking about compassion to other people. And I think this gets tricky,

right? Because, you know, if you care about the climate, then you don't just care about your own actions. You care about other people's actions. But do you think that the same approach is pretty helpful? Like, you know, not lecturing and pestering people. Is there a kind of kinder, gentler, happier climate approach for other people's climate actions too? Yeah. I mean, I think, for example, flight shaming other people is overrated. You know, people are going to do what they need to do, and you don't necessarily know what kinds of constraints that they're facing. And so rather than telling anybody else what to do, just doing it yourself. Again, relying on this principle that behavior is contagious.

People see what you do. You don't have to be like even preaching about it. You can just do it. And other people will notice it, right? Even if they don't comment on it, even if it's not a subject of conversation, it's there. And then I would say, you know, be that person who organizes the carpool. Be that person who is organizing a dinner party and it's all really delicious plant-based foods. Make it fun. Bring people into the fun. And that's going to be a party

people want to go to. If the very mention of climate change tended to make you switch off in horror, or you assumed that taking action would require painful, annoying, happiness-decreasing sacrifices, I hope Liz and Jay-Z's happy climate approach has changed your mind. Even if you're not worried about global heating, things like carpooling, savoring your food, and cutting back on the kind of air travel that leaves you frazzled can improve your happiness massively in 2024. So why not commit to these mood-boosting practices

in the new year? It's a great way to be nice to yourself at the same time as you do something nice for the planet. In the next episode, we'll hear more about ways to boost our hope and happiness by investing in climate action. We'll meet an overworked scientist who figured out a way to reduce his sense of helplessness and climate anxiety by jumping headfirst into the struggle to reduce global heating. Sometimes I have losses and sometimes I have wins and sometimes I'm encouraged and

sometimes I'm discouraged, but I feel a strong sense of purpose and I feel what I'm doing is very meaningful. We'll hear his tips on how to gain even more unexpected joy from climate action next time on The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.