What’s been tried so far isn’t going to work.
It makes a lot of sense, really, when you think about it. Consider it in terms of whatever makes you happy, whether it’s reciprocal determinism, self-fulfilling prophecy, or Pavlov’s dogs. What’s been tried so far simply hasn’t worked, at least not well enough.
Consumption is a tricky problem to tackle. The majority of energy usage in the US currently goes to staples, such as electricity and water. There have been more campaigns in the time that I’ve been alive than I can remember trying to tackle that. On a more personally meaningful level, conservation is a word that is bandied about by the rich like a holy torch in the area of the country in which I live, but no one seems to care about it beyond local legislation to protect land from development, usually because it would spoil that overly wealthy person’s view. No meaningful action is ever really taken.
No, the problem lies with the paradigm itself. Nothing is done because not enough people really want to take upon themselves the burden of enacting and living with the kind of change that needs to happen, and for several good reasons. Installing solar panels on your house costs over $50,000 in some areas. Purchasing more efficient vehicles is obviously a financial burden for many. Refitting the plumbing in one’s household for more modern, efficient water usage usually entails not only enormous expense (relatively speaking), but the added inconvenience of a major remodel. The paradigm for environmental change isn’t going to be truly changed until it becomes economically feasible to do so.
The course commentary in PSYCH 424’s Week 4 Lesson serves a bit of juxtaposition with this issue. When considering how small a percentage of people have the means to “live green,” consider the sheer number of people contributing. “At the heart of all resource use problems is the size of the human population. Biologists have long recognized that ecosystems have limited “carrying capacities,” meaning that the number of organisms that can be supported by the resources available in an ecosystem is finite” (PSU, 2016). When considering this, it bears noting how large a change must truly occur within the consumption paradigm for there to be a significant improvement.
The problem with most applied social psychology theories is that they are too limited in scope; perhaps the most useful tool in the social psychologist’s handbook is matching; finding a way to make the “occupants” of earth see that their “…needs are met by the setting” (Schneider et al, 2012) is crucial to making any real change happen. Given the economic arguments and the finite nature of the system, Henry Murray’s press system provides a useful basis for an intervention framework, if not a plan itself. As described in Schneider, Gruman, and Coutts’ pages, the alpha press, or actuality, is the fact that we live in a world with finite resources, and that those resources that appear nearly infinite are part of a fragile system that has fallen precariously close to the proverbial tipping point. Conversely, the beta press, or perceived actuality, is that the work of bringing about environmental change is for those unfettered by the chains of the lower and middle economic classes, and that things aren’t nearly as bad as the silly scientists claim (Schneider et al, 2012).
This being the case, it becomes a question of how to help the majority of the world, living in the beta press spectrum, to travel over to the side of the alpha press. Seeing a harsh reality clearly is not easy at the best of times; in circumstances as dire as those surrounding the future of the environment, it seems rather more difficult to grasp. It is my hope that we can find a way to find congruence, and then develop a plan.
But before the plan can be developed to intervene, it must be collectively acknowledged that there is a problem at all.
Schneider, F, Gruman, J, Coutts, L (2012). “Applied Social Psychology.” Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks.
Penn State University (2016). PSYCH 424: Lesson 4: The Environment. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp16/psych424/001/content/05_lesson/02_page.html