Research Associate Joe Kantenbacher presents our new research that asks what gives Gen Z hope, despair, inspiration? What awaits in the best, likely, and worst possible futures in 2050 and 2100? Stay tuned.
This work is a collaboration with Nathan Gieger and Landon Yoder and funded by the Environmental Resilience Institute.
Photo by James Boyd
PhD student Deidra Miniard presents research at the Association of O’Neill Ph.D. Students 20th Annual Conference at Indiana University. She discussed our new research that explores how conservatives and liberals think about decarbonizing our energy system and some of her new research on what Indiana residents think about climate change.
Congrats, Deidra!
Huge congratulations to our postdoc Joe Kantenbacher who accepted a tenure track position at University of South Dakota in their Department of Sustainability & Environment.
Go, JOE!
Bringing social science and energy expertise to sustainability issues. Here is to the adventures ahead!
One of my **favorite** museums - the American Museum of Natural History in New York City - asked me to give a talk on Feb 5!!
I'll be talking about perceptions and motivations related to climate change.
Update: Here are some photos from the event. All with a Titanosaur measuring 122 feet in length (“The Titanosaur is so big that its head extends outside of its new home in the Museum's fourth-floor gallery. The Titanosaur lived in the forests of today's Patagonia about 100 to 95 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period, and is one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered.”) Phenomenal event with about 500-600 people thirsty to learn about climate change and political change.
Come by for an evening discussion of politics, best scifi, and life updates. Daniel is on the job market and is wonderful. Janine is finishing up her first semester in Law School. Also, so many Savannah snuggles!
I became a U.S. citizen yesterday after living in the U.S. for ~20 years.
It was an emotional ceremony in Indianapolis Indiana with about 90 new citizens representing 48 different countries. The judge presiding over the ceremony discussed how important immigration was to our country and how that is truly what makes America great.
The first thing I did as a citizen yesterday was register to vote. So here is to voting in 2020!
Visited my wonderful colleague Ezra Markowitz at UMass Amherst in the Department of Environmental Conservation. I got to learn about biodiversity and species conservation from many of their faculty. I loved meeting some phenomenal students working on behavior, policy, and climate change.
Also discovered that Amherst was home of poet Emily Dickinson!
Sierra Magazine’s current issue is about gender, equity, and climate. I am honored to have had a great discussion on climate change, consumption, and hope with these three pioneering women: Katharine Wilkinson (VP at Project Drawdown), Sherri Mitchell (Indigenous rights activist) and Juliet Schor (Sociologist at Boston College). Here is the video footage of our conversation.
in an ocean of information.
(Blue sky in Louisville, KY, Oct 2019)
Deidra presented our work, “A shared vision for a decarbonized future” at the Annual conference for the Indiana Academy of Social Sciences in Valparaiso, Indiana.
Deidra won first place in the poster competition. Congratulations, Deidra!
Environmental Resilience Institute, funded by Indiana University’s Prepared for Environmental Change Grand Challenge initiative (2019 – 2021) PI with co-PI Landon Yoder (SPEA, IU) and co-PI Nathan Geiger (The Media School, IU). Budget: ~$87,000.
When participants are asked how best to save energy in the home, the most frequent response since the 1980s has been “turning off the lights”. Here, we use an online survey (N=1,418) to investigate why turning off the lights persists as a modal response despite decades of energy education promoting far more effective behaviors. We find that participants explain their choice of turning off lights or replacing bulbs with different heuristics. Participants who choose turning off the lights state that energy savings occur when an appliance is completely turned off. Alternatively, those who pick replacing inefficient light bulbs state that far less energy can be used for a given task.
Huge congratulations to co-authors Daniel Lundberg (SPEA Alum, now at Indiana Finance Authority) and Janine Tang (IU Law School).
We find strong evidence for the negative effects of behavior-advocacy inconsistency for both neighbors and experts, albeit much larger impacts for experts. We also find highly sustainable advocates were not more influential than somewhat sustainable ones—instead they were marginally worse. Overall, these results suggest that advocates, especially experts, are most credible and influential when they adopt many sustainable behaviors in their day-to-day lives, so long as they are not seen as too extreme
New paper in Nature Energy with Tyler Marghetis and David Landy. We test two simple interventions to improve perceptions and understanding of home appliance energy use.
A phenomenal soul-refreshing trip out west to see nature’s wonders in Yellowstone National Park. Brightly colored and tantalizing geysers, exploding steam and smelling of sulphur, crossed our path. I got to see grizzly and black bears, and fields of bison across the landscape. Hope you get to visit.
Working on climate change and behavior (both personal and political) is emotionally and intellectually challenging. Our community (and academia) rarely talks about self-care. It is so important, and I try to emphasize it for my team and myself as much as possible. Here is a picture of our lab mascot, Savannah, starting a 11-mile hike in McCormick's Creek State Park in Bloomington Indiana this past Saturday. This is what happiness looks like to me. What does it look like to you?
Wonderful discussion with Daniel Raimi about our new paper on credibility and climate communication + a discussion of how stories can change us (my Andrew Carnegie Fellowship project on imagining the future to motivate action and policy support for climate change).
Joe and Deidra present our research on how people imagine the future energy mix in the U.S. at a hands-on workshop for 40 teachers from across Indiana from both elementary (K-6) and secondary (7-12) schools. Our work is funded by the National Science Foundation - Decision, Risk, and Management Science (DRMS).
Dave gifted me Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler, and I am falling in love with the worlds she creates. Words to live by: To use stories to make people FEEL!
Shaz, Dave, and Becca in Nashville TN June 2019
All day lab retreat - thinking, eating, hiking…repeat :)
A great day in Bloomington and a wonderful hike (although too many ticks!).
Joe, Shaz and Deidra with Lake Monroe behind us. Savannah loving on Deidra below 🐾
Baby turtle on our trail