We’re getting towards the end of the book. In this chapter, we start to pull together what we’ve learned about how the brain works and apply it to something relevant and topical: climate change and sustainability. The example gives us a framework to consider how the various structures of the brain combine to produce behaviour, and in this case, make decisions about how to alter future behaviour in a way that might be more sustainable for the environment (as well as the constraints of human brain function that serve as barriers). But if you’re a climate change sceptic who is merely enjoying the warm weather, just pick as your example another perceived threat to the species that must be addressed through coordinated social action, and that’ll work just as well.

• Climate change and sustainability is of course, a Big Topic, and there are things we didn’t have room to consider in the chapter. For example: social media and misinformation (as well as our own selective use of information that feeds into our own biases); and the contrast between changing personal opinions versus government legislation for driving behavioural change – a good example is reduction in smoking behaviour, where banning/restricting smoking through legislation has proved far more effective than the health message targeted at individuals to encourage them to change their behaviour. Below are annotations and supporting evidence for what we did get a chance to consider.

Climate change: should we beat ourselves up about it?

• ‘Elephants, for example, have a reputation for damaging their local ecosystems‘ – Role of elephants in habitat change: Kuiper TR, Parker DM. Elephants in Africa: Big, grey biodiversity thieves? S Afr J Sci. 2014;110(3/4), Art. #a0058, 3 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/sajs.2014/a0058

• ‘One study compared 62 different primate species and measured ecologically relevant cognitive abilities across multiple domains.’ – Study comparing social, technical, and ecological abilities across 62 primate species: Reader SM, Hager Y, Laland KN. The evolution of primate general and cultural intelligence. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2011 Apr 12;366(1567):1017-27. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0342. PMID: 21357224; PMCID: PMC3049098

• ‘It’s possible to look back over geological climate records and match these to the fossil records to understand the range of climate conditions in which each Homo species existed‘ – Study comparing climate record with fossil record to reveal the role of climate change in Homo species extinctions: Raia, P. et al. Past extinctions of Homo species coincided with increased vulnerability to climatic change. One Earth 3, 480–490 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.09.007

• ‘The Homo family tree is complex, with populations splitting, remixing, seducing, or dominating each other, rather than falling into a simple linear sequence‘ – The Homo family tree is complex. See: Reich, D. (2019). Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past. OUP Oxford.

• ‘But there’s also good news‘ – The good news argument from: De Las Heras, A. (2014). Evolution of human features driving current unsustainability. In A. De Las Heras (Ed.), Sustainability Science and Technology (p. 213-227). CRC Press. ISBN9780429185274. Researchgate.

Decision-making: What have emotions got to do with it?

• ‘Consumers systematically discount future benefits, how much they will save in the future, instead focus- ing more on immediate costs and rewards‘ – Future discounting of rewards in humans: Neuroeconomics and climate change: Sawe, N. (2019). Adapting neuroeconomics for environmental and energy policy. Behavioural Public Policy, 3(1), 17-36. doi:10.1017/bpp.2018.2

• ‘Sub-cortical structures like the limbic system and the basal ganglia play a surprisingly influential role in making decisions about value, such as when we make moral judgements‘ – Involvement of limbic, reward, social brain, and prefrontal cortex in moral decision-making: Pascual L, Rodrigues P and Gallardo-Pujol D (2013) How does morality work in the brain? A functional and structural perspective of moral behavior. Front. Integr. Neurosci. 7:65. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2013.00065

Decision-making in favour of other people

• ‘decisions about climate change involve everyone, they involve doing the right thing to favour other people rather than just me. They involve what is called the prosocial brain‘ – Neural basis of prosocial behaviours: Luo J (2018) The Neural Basis of and a Common Neural Circuitry in Different Types of Pro-social Behavior. Front. Psychol. 9:859.

• ‘These scripts also contain standards, how you should behave. If you force yourself to go against these standards‘ – Where social norms are processed: Yomogida, Y., Matsumoto, M., Aoki, R. et al. The Neural Basis of Changing Social Norms through Persuasion. Sci Rep 7, 16295 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-16572-2

• ‘the limbic structures will be ablaze with self-evaluative emotions, guilt and shame, as the amygdala flags social threat, the insula registers self-disgust, and the posterior cingulate cortex updates the reflective self in the precuneus that you have been a bad boy/girl‘ – Brain circuits of self-evaluative emotions: Whittle, S., Liu, K., Bastin, C., Harrison, B. J., and Davey, C. G. (2016). Neurodevelopmental correlates of proneness to guilt and shame in adolescence and early adulthood. Dev. Cogn. Neurosci. 19, 51–57. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2016.02.001; Piretti L, Pappaianni E, Lunardelli A, Zorzenon I, Ukmar M, Pesavento V, Rumiati RI, Job R and Grecucci A (2020) The Role of Amygdala in Self-Conscious Emotions in a Patient With Acquired Bilateral Damage. Front. Neurosci. 14:677. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00677

• ‘If we give the limbic system a puff of testosterone, the amygdala is more likely to become socially vigilant to the threat of untrustworthy faces‘ – Example of characteristics that make a face look trustworthy or untrustworthy: https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2014/august/our-brains-judge-a-faces-trustworthinesseven-when-we-cant-see-it.html

How can we use the neuroscience?

• ‘Here are half a dozen lessons from neuroscience’ – Neuroeconomics and climate change: Sawe, N. (2019). Adapting neuroeconomics for environmental and energy policy. Behavioural Public Policy, 3(1), 17-36. doi:10.1017/bpp.2018.2

• How to use neuroeconomics to address climate change, interview with Nik Sawe: https://www.theclimatechangeproject.today/single-post/2020/06/01/Neuroeconomics-COVID-19-and-Climate-Change

• ‘fear messaging can have unpredictable results‘ – Why fear is an unpredictable tool to manipulate behaviour in respect of climate change: https://grist.org/protest/the-un-report-is-scaring-people-but-what-if-fear-isnt-enough/