杏吧原创

鈥淐limate compensation鈥� is in fashion. We see it everywhere: restaurants claim to be 鈥�100% climate compensated鈥� and you can .

Psychologically, this speaks to people鈥檚 tendency to think that good deeds can compensate for harmful ones. Humans have long benefited from making up for the harm they cause others, and natural selection has not been kind to those who have failed to understand this basic rule in relationships. This has made the human brain specialised in seeking balance between good and bad deeds.

Seeking this balance works well in the context of social relations, but the thinking that has been crucial for our survival in the past can be terribly wrong when applied to environmental impact and global climate change. It can actually further damage the planet.

In their attempts to compensate for mistreating the environment, people put their faith in misguided quick fixes and can end up consuming or wasting more overall: for example, by bulk-buying eco-labelled wares even though they may need only one or two of the products. The balancing between good and bad can even make people harm the environment because they recently did something environmentally friendly, like driving a fossil-fuel car to work because they have separated their waste.

Research from our lab at the University of G盲vle in Sweden shows what can happen when people apply the compensation logic to the environment. For example, people tend to erroneously think that the construction of 鈥済reen鈥� buildings in a neighbourhood not only keeps the neighbourhood from causing more environmental harm as a whole, but even reduces the neighbourhood鈥檚 overall environmental burden.

Faulty thinking

Other researchers have found that consumers think a meal consisting of a hamburger and an 鈥渆co-friendly鈥� apple is less environmentally harmful than the burger alone. And car owners tend to think that while buying a regular car increases the environmental burden, buying a hybrid car doesn鈥檛. This is like saying that 鈥渢he more 鈥榞reen鈥� constructions we build or the more 鈥榚co-friendly鈥� apples we eat, the less harm humans do to the environment鈥�.

Everyone seems susceptible to this faulty thought pattern. For instance, our lab has found that even energy-systems experts think that fewer trees are needed to compensate for the environmental costs associated with building 50 energy efficient and 150 regular buildings together, in comparison with the regular buildings alone.

If you really must take the plane for that important meeting, then climate compensation is welcome. But it is better for the environment to avoid flying. Instead of finding ways to compensate for our behaviour, we should try to find ways to stop our harmful behaviour altogether. For example, pressure should be on new technologies that make face-to-face interactions over the internet in every positive sense equal to physical meetings.

There can be real merit to climate compensation, because it does some good for the environment. But climate compensation is never sufficient and should never be used to justify environmentally harmful behaviour. All consumption causes environmental harm, and it is almost always best for the environment to do nothing at all to begin with.

The way climate compensation is represented in people鈥檚 minds today makes us think we can not only justify harmful behaviour but even do the environment a favour by compensating. It would be wonderful if that was the case, but sadly, in the real world, it isn鈥檛.