Listen to or read a brief interview from a neighborhood/friend of mine:
Prof. VANDENBERGH: We’re looking at a range of actions from household weatherization to changing driving behavior, to changing thermostat settings, to changing purchasing behavior for more efficient appliances and things of that nature.
SIEGEL: Now, you argue in the article that changing household behavior is the cheapest and fastest way of reducing emissions. But are you assuming that everybody will undertake these steps or would just, say, 10 percent of the population doing it, would that have a significant effect?
Prof. VANDENBERGH: Even a small percentage would have a very significant effect on U.S. carbon emissions. Household behavior in the U.S. makes up about eight percent of the world share of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s larger than any country other than China. We estimate that we could reduce by 123 million metric tons or seven percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions within 10 years through the kinds of behavior changes that we’ve talked about.
SIEGEL: Seven percent.
Prof. VANDENBERGH: Seven percent. That’s equivalent to the total emissions of France. It’s also equivalent to the combined emissions of the petroleum refining, iron and steel and aluminum industries combined. One of the largest problems that we face is getting over the presumption that people have that individual behavior or household behavior doesn’t matter.
The article addressing how to do this is here:
Household actions can provide a behavioral wedge to rapidly reduce US carbon emissions
