How can we survive the next mass extinction?

How can we survive the next mass extinction?

What comes to mind when you think of the term ‘mass extinction’? An alien invasion? A meteorite charging to Earth? Or some other catastrophic event that threatens our very future existence? Well, what if I was to tell you that a mass extinction is actually happening right now. You’re living through one.

Welcome to LSE iQ, the podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. I’m Anna Bevan from the iQ team. We work with academics and other experts to tell you about their latest research and ideas. Up until now, I’ve been mostly behind the scenes, editing episodes, but this month I’m asking: "How can we survive the next mass extinction?" I’ll be hearing about the dangers of greenwashing, what it’s like to witness an environmental catastrophe and how we can change our behaviour to benefit the planet.

GS: In the past, there have been five mass extinction events, of which the most famous was probably the dinosaur extinction. But now we're actually in the middle of a mass extinction event, or where it's happening, where we're losing plants and animals worldwide at a very rapid rate.

Up to 75% of the diversity of the species of life on earth are on their way to becoming extinct, which has huge implications for how we actually have lived on our planet and how we can live on our planet in the future.

That’s Dr Ganga Shreedhar, Assistant Professor in LSE’s Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. As an applied behavioural and experimental economist, her research focuses on how to change human behaviour in ways that simultaneously benefit people and the planet. I asked her why she framed her research like this.

GS: because if you do look at the evidence, it's quite dire. So I wanted to use the ‘simultaneously benefit people and the planet’ to remind us of the multiple benefits that we do get from actually taking action now, which are actually quite immediate, everything from wellbeing-related benefits from spending time in nature to health benefits, from being outdoors or having a more simplistic lifestyle, by cutting consumption. So there are all these potential benefits that we can have. So that's the idea and that's why I framed it like that.

AB: Talking about framing things in a positive way is really interesting. Is that something that you found to be really effective?

GS: A lot of negative, fear-based, guilt-based communications and conversations around this issue have sometimes the effect of putting off a lot of people. It can overwhelm them and they might feel a sense of despair, and it can even be demotivating. So, although it might help in the short run to make a donation, once you make that donation, you feel you've done your bit. Once you've bought a reusable bottle, you're done. So what we started to look at instead was can we think about sharing stories of people taking action instead? So this is more a question of the psychological drivers behind why ... Or the theory of change behind that sort of storytelling, is not just fear or making sure people know what the effects or the impacts are. It's about actually portraying how we can change our behaviours in order to address those effects.

Ganga and her research team examined what makes a climate story effective, and found that the driving factors behind pro-environmental actions were key. In other words, it’s all about authenticity and values. We’re more likely to behave in an environmentally sustainable way and support pro-climate policies if we see or read stories about other people acting sustainably due to a genuine commitment to the cause - rather than a desire to gain social status or improve their health.

GS: We did an experiment where we looked at the effect of a story about a protagonist taking actions like changing his meat, like signing a petition at work to go to net zero. We also try to make it realistic. So, for instance, when he orders a falafel wrap, his friends make fun of him. So it's kind of like to imitate the pushback you can get from being counternormative and to make the story realistic.

In one story we said George was driven by environmental motivations. In another one, we said he was driven by health, because in many cases, things like reducing your ... If emissions reduction is moving to renewables, then you're also improving things like air pollution. So we said, okay, in that case, he's doing it for his health. Then the third case, we said he's doing it for status. So to post on social media, because there's now a trend towards veganism.

Ganga: We found that actually, compared to a controlled story, it was not actions which drive behaviour, but really people's motivations. So the story where George was a consistent advocate, where his actions matched his values was more persuasive.

So, for Ganga, authenticity and how we frame environmental issues are essential for surviving the next mass extinction. But there are a number of other things we can do too. We’ll come back to her shortly to find out more about exactly what.

Someone else who has devoted much of his career to looking at environmental threats is former BBC Science Editor and now Visiting Professor at LSE, David Shukman. Over the past 20 years, he’s seen the public’s perception of climate change transform as it becomes more of a lived experience with almost every country in the world affected by extreme weather. He told me what it was like to come face to face with the impacts of global warming.

DS: I've been to a few locations where it's like being frankly slapped in the face. Like if you didn't get it, get it now. I've been to the Arctic many times because the Arctic was always predicted to warm faster than the global average. And the changes there are so important for the rest of the world, affecting weather patterns and sea levels, and so forth. And one of my first trips to Greenland, to the Greenland ice sheet, to see the scientists doing their research there, was in 2004. And we got to an edge of the ice sheet where, as far as I was concerned, it was a landscape that was of stunning beauty, an absolutely enormous great cliffs of ice. I mean, it was an ice world. Now, the scientists I was with then were almost in tears because their instruments were showing them how rapidly the ice was melting back then. I mean, to my untrained eye, I couldn't see the problem. I mean, there were walls of ice everywhere. I went back to the same spot 15 years later, the great cliffs of ice had vanished.

And the rate of melting had just gone off the scale. And the scientist I was with said he couldn't sleep at night for thinking how much ice was melting into the oceans and raising sea levels, and threatening, particularly poor coastal communities in Asia and Africa. And it was like stepping into a scene from the apocalypse. It was like witnessing the kind of end of the world bluntly.

It’s easy to distance yourself from the chilling headlines of environmental disasters. But David’s firsthand account of seeing retreating ice caps and increasing sea levels in Greenland really brings it home - just like London hitting more than 40 degrees for consecutive days this summer did to me. So, can anything be done, or is it all too late? Here’s Ganga again.

GS: From the perspective of both climate, as well as biodiversity, probably the single most important thing that one could do at the moment is, for instance, think about carefully changing our diets, so reducing meat because the impacts of meat are not just in the question of how much land is used for agriculture but also how much agricultural land goes into feed for livestock. So that's one thing.

The second thing that maybe might be really worth considering is how you move yourself. So questions of transport. So taking fewer flights is potentially a very important outcome, as well as, for instance, maybe choosing to think about whether you can live your life without an SUV, which essentially means things like making sure we've got good public infrastructure like rail networks which can transport us. But those rail networks also have to be fueled through low-carbon technologies and fuel.

I think those big impact sectors, things like travel, food, et cetera, really matter. But also hugely in terms of education. So, climate change needs to be ... And not just climate change, planetary change education needs to be on the curriculum in all schools and also all universities. That has to be a part of it, because if you don't have a common, shared understanding of the issues that we're facing, it's going to be difficult for us to come together and cooperate and arrive at a solution.

Also retraining people to get green jobs in particular sectors, which could be high potential sectors.

I asked Ganga about the most effective ways of influencing people’s actions. Heads up: she’s about to mention the idea of a ‘nudge’. In Behavioural Science, a ‘nudge’ is something that aims to influence consumer behaviour through small suggestions and positive reinforcements.

In many cases, we find that one of the most effective sort of nudges, which is basically where you change the environment but you don't really change the monetary cost of doing something, or restrict people's freedoms through things like a ban.

So in those cases, we find potentially physical nudges have been the most effective. So that includes things like if you put more vege options in a cafeteria right in the beginning when you go to serve yourself in a buffet, and keep a couple of meat dishes right at the end, versus if you put the meat in front, people tend to load up on the vege and take less meat, because they tend to go with what order was suggested. So that's an example of a nudge, which is low cost, but quite effective at basically helping people to take a low-carbon decision without restricting their choices.

Alongside behavioural nudges, Ganga also stresses the importance of infrastructure investments and renewable energy – something that gives David hope too.

DS: The way technologies have emerged that felt really outlandish not long ago now feel, I mean, look at heat pumps. In really a short space of time, heat pumps have come from being a bit flaky. No one's quite sure if they're going to work, really expensive. To becoming really something that more and more people know about, more and more people can afford.And that’s all to the good because the more heat pumps that are installed the less gas we need to buy from Putin or whoever.

DS: For all his idiosyncrasies, Elon Musk has completely upended the very, very slow fossil fuel-based car industry by producing a, not necessarily affordable, but a very popular, good looking and effective electric car, range of electric cars. Suddenly, the giants, VW, General Motors, Ford, are all having to scramble around to look electric and look green, and develop their own plans to electrify their fleets. I mean, that's one example. I think the fact that brilliant engineering companies have got involved in renewables means, with the help of government regulation providing incentives, we've now got a landscape where the price of solar panels and wind turbines, which was high relatively, has now crashed down. And to a point where it's really quite easy, it's a no brainer for many companies to invest in these things.

DS: I was talking to someone who runs some of Britain's biggest ports and they have huge flat roofed buildings, and they've just plastered them with solar panels. And I said, "Did you do this for climate reasons?" They said, "No, no, no. We did it for business reasons." I said, "Well, normally in a business you expect a quick return. How many years will it be before you get your money back on whatever it cost to put all these solar panels on your roof?"

DS: Expecting the answer, 8, 9, 10 years, he said, "Only two years." Solar panels are so cheap now. And electricity prices are so high that it made business sense, nevermind climate change, business sense to make this investment and cover their roofs in solar panels. And they'll be getting cost free electricity effectively in two years time. Now that's a gobsmacking shift of a kind unimaginable to me 20 years ago when I was setting up to report on this. And I think when you see that kind of change, it's not only exhilarating, it's a source of optimism, because you think this whole thing may not happen fast enough, but at least the right kind of levers are being pulled and the right kind of cogs in the machine are being installed and are operating. And I find it really exciting to think that these kind of organizations are thinking this way.

So, good environmental choices can be good business choices too. But David also warns about the dangers of the corporate sector’s involvement in the fight against climate change:

DS: We are in an era bluntly of climate bullshit, where people are saying they're doing one thing and doing something else in reality.

We are, I think, knee deep or waist deep in a tsunami of greenwash.

You’re listening to LSE iQ with me, Anna Bevan. This month we’re asking: ‘How can we survive the next mass extinction?’

AG: "Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: either we stop it or it stops us and it’s time to say enough. Enough of brutalising biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves."

That’s UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterrez, addressing delegates in 2021 at COP26 in Glasgow. The same event where he announced the creation of a new task force to help combat ‘greenwashing’ - the term given when companies provide misleading information about how green they really are. Something that David is also passionate about exposing.

DS: The wonderful French former diplomat Laurence Tubiana, who was instrumental in the Paris Agreement, at Glasgow, she said, and this is a measure of how important greenwashing is: greenwashing is a new form of climate denial. Because if you are saying, oh yeah, we've signed up to the Paris Agreement. We've got a net zero target. Blah, blah, blah. We're fully engaged. Come to our conference about what we're doing. And in reality, you are not delivering, you may as well be a carbon heavy fossil fuel climate denier because the effect is the same.

DS: I mean, it was astounding recently that a division of the massive German bank, Deutsche Bank, which had been selling some investment opportunities that were marketed as climate friendly, actually involved a lot of money going to fossil fuel activities. And the German authorities clocked this and raided this company. Now, that tells you that thank God in some countries, the authorities are taking greenwashing seriously. The authorities in Holland, when they were alerted to the national airline, KLM, claiming carbon neutral flights. One look at that showed that that was greenwashing. And they forced the airline to pull the ads and rephrase everything. There are examples of this kind of, the authorities jumping vigorously on claims that are unjustified, but it needs to happen comprehensively.

DS: The amount of claims and promises to be green that are just being sprayed out there under liberal doses of green paint is quite extraordinary. And I think what's really key now is to make sure that as many of those promises as possible are kept and delivered. And we don't just get green claims, we get green action.

AB: And how do we do that? How do we get that green action?

DS: Through a combination of transparency. And that's something that's really on our side. It's easier than ever before to know what companies, countries, governments, organizations are up to. And that's partly through the brilliant work of some amazingly diligent NGOs who go through corporate accounts and they study satellite pictures, and they track, for example, if it's beef from the Amazon, they track the cattle. Which pastures are they on? What was that land before? Was it rainforest that was illegally chopped down? I mean, a whole lot of tools that kind of maybe existed are much more effective now and we can trace and track corporate activity in a far more detailed way than we could before. So that's one thing on our side. I mentioned satellites. We now have fleets of satellites in orbit looking, not out at space, but down at earth, giving us the ability to see where methane is leaking from coal mines or gas pipelines.

DS: I mentioned deforestation, where the trees that we depend on are being hacked down illegally. Where pollution is spilling into the ocean. So a whole lot of stuff is now much more visible. And I think if you put together the transparency of, let's say corporate accounting and all the rest of it, with the technology of satellites and put it together also with the growing either regulation for corporate activity, requirements to be open about what they're doing or sort of investor pressure or public pressure to be more open. I think we've got a better chance of nailing the greenwashing.

So, for David, it’s essential that governments step in to stop greenwashing and hold companies to account. Ganga also agrees that policymakers need to go further.

GS: from the companies' perspective or politicians' perspective, it's been surprising that we've seen some lip service to net zero, but we haven't seen a lot of action recently on the ground to transition in ways that support individuals and communities. So the fact there's still debates over basic things like insulation.

AB: Is changing an individual's behaviour enough when it comes to climate change, or do we need the change to come from governments and big corporations?

GS: if we focus on one or the other, we miss the whole picture. I think you can't have the systemic change without the individual change. But when we think of individual change, it's not just about recycling, it's about being a citizen as well. It's about holding your MP, for instance, accountable. It's about having views and maybe supporting particular sorts of policies which might benefit your neighbourhood.

It's about actually putting in more time to understand what the implications are for your life and maybe changing not just your purchase patterns in terms of buying something with an ecolabel, but also actually saying, "Okay, do I need to buy that? Can I be happy doing that? " So really exploring your options there, and I think that's also a question of time.

We need to be able to put in place long-term strategies. The point of the government is to put in term a long-term strategy. Individuals will live for their lives and they care about their families. It's the government which has the institutional capacity to think in generational terms, which is why you've got large infrastructure investments. If you think about the sewage system in the UK, that is Victorian times. It's hundreds of years old.

GS: So I think the government has the capacity to think long term in theory. Now whether it's able to do that and support people to help them do that I think is really the big question.

AB: We talked a little bit about time scale at the start, just in terms of mass extinction. Do you think that as a society, we can make the changes needed fast enough to avoid a mass extinction?

Ganga: we are going to lose a lot of species, and the response has been on the one hand, maybe we should start protecting genetic diversity through things like gene banks.

Another view is that maybe we should actually accept that we're already losing or have lost. It's about saving what remains. Often the way to do that is through telling more positive stories, "Look, there was a successful case of this conservation for this particular species."

One scientist who I spoke to put it beautifully. She was just like, "I came into this job to really work with animals and see the beauty of the natural world, and I found myself writing obituaries." So I think in a case, there is a bit of an acceptance that it's underway. It's more about limiting the worst effects rather than stopping it.

As a journalist for more than 40 years, David is also a big believer in the power of storytelling – not necessarily just positive stories as Ganga mentions, but stories in general - to encourage people to take action.

DS: People need stories. If you give them some numbers, headline numbers, it might resonate. If you give them images, it might work. Most powerful is a story. I mean, the Amazon rainforest stores as much carbon as 50 years worth of American carbon emissions. So we hack the whole lot down, which we're doing a great job of trying to do, we're just accelerating the process.

Now, those kinds of images and stats might get through to some people, but I find with others, more effective is to describe what it was like. And I've been to the Amazon rainforest four times now, to go out with the absolutely understaffed, under budgeted environmental police force, as they try to halt illegal deforestation. And one day we spent with them and we came to what looked like a war zone, as an enormous great tract of forest had been bulldozed down and set a light. And there were still little flames and smoke rising from these giant charred trees. They'd plucked out the most valuable to sell, but burnt the rest. And in the corner of this vast field, a field that’s bigger than anything we have in the UK, the environmental police guy, who was a civilian, but we had with us an armed policeman, they spotted a truck in the distance, which they thought looked suspicious.

So we got into our Jeep and raced round, and got to this truck. And sure enough, on the back of it were four great trunks of trees that had been freshly felled illegally and loaded onto this truck. And we knew they were freshly felled because dripping from the cut ends was the sap and it was like the lifeblood of the Amazon jungle. And when you step into the rainforest and it's vibrant and noisy, and dark, and active, and there are monkeys crying and birds calling, and all kinds of creepy crawls, but it's a fabulous, rich, garden of Eden as it should be. And then you step into a deforested area and there's no bird song, it's sterile, it's monoculture, it's dead. So to see the drip of the sap, to me, it just hit me, it symbolized everything that's wrong about what's happening.

AB: So how can we survive mass extinction? Ganga says it’s about realism and collective action, because focusing on individual behaviour is not enough.

GS: I think the reliance on individuals as being able to solve this problem through taking individualized consumer decisions, I think the focus on that is not just dangerous but it also misrepresents what impacts and what power that we can have as people to change our worlds.

I think that we really need to have a very serious conversation about why the science or why the consensus in the science is not adequately represented in policy. I think that's a failure of science. Because the question of, oh, is global warming happening? Is extinction happening? There's a consensus on all those issues.

But I think we need a lot more social scientists to step up and say, "Okay, how do we translate that? What are ways we can motivate individuals and communities from a policy perspective or advocacy perspective? How can you work across the board with different other groups, whether it's small businesses who want to be more responsible or whether it's social movements or whether it's policy makers,"

So I think we need to figure out because this is ultimately a collective action issue. This is not an individual problem.

AB: For David, most of the pieces of the puzzle are there. But it’s about putting them together in time.

DS:I'm seeing some really positive strands. I mean, the rise of really brilliant technology, the engagement of clever engineers, the slow but certain mobilization of investors and banks, not nearly enough, but it's starting. The rise of the younger generation. I mean, look at Greta. I've spoken to Greta, she knows her science and everything she says is anchored in the science. And she's convinced millions of people, including, interestingly, the children of the chief executives of major corporations who now get nagged, what are you doing?

Their kids want to know. And all of these pressures and others. All of these I see as positive indicators. But time is really short and the window for action is closing. And I think we at some point very soon need to be honest with ourselves that we're not going to limit the rise in the temperature in the way that would be ideal, to 1.5 degrees, that that's no longer going to be achievable. Because you can only do that if you halve global emissions by 2030. And that isn't happening. So I think the argument at some point will need to shift to doing whatever we can to make sure that temperature rise doesn't go too much beyond 1.5. Knowing that every step beyond that is bad and getting worse and do everything we can to prepare for an uglier future. And in particular, to help the poorest countries prepare. For them what will be a really ugly future. If you think if we can build in Britain a bigger Thames barrier if it costs 10 billion, 20 million. We can do it. We're a rich country. Other cities around the UK can be defended as well.

Bangladesh can't do that. Lagos can't do that. Think of these cities, massive communities, in areas where the sea level will rise whatever we do and storms will become more intense. And I think the earlier we really energize those conversations the better. So if people are honest, if governments can bring more energy to this, if the corporates really engage sincerely. Yeah, there's still a chance to head off the worst trouble. We're in better shape than we were 10 years ago, where really nothing like enough was happening. Now, some stuff is happening. Forces of good are mobilizing, but we don't quite know if they'll deliver in time.

AB: This episode of LSE iQ was produced by me, Anna Bevan, with help from Sophie Mallett, Mike Wilkerson and Sue Windebank.

If you’d like to find out more about the research in this episode please head to the shownotes and if you enjoy LSE iQ please leave us a review.

Coming up next month on LSE iQ, Sue Windebank asks: ‘Does class define us’?