10.3.2.3 Choices and Decisions Related to Lifestyles
There are two reasons why lifestyles are an issue of climate policy. First,
consumption patterns are an important factor in climate change since they have
become an essential element of lifestyles in developed countries. If, for instance,
people changed their preferences from cars to bicycles, this would alleviate
climate change and decrease mitigation costs considerably. Second, many promising
domains for substantial environmental improvements through technological change
also require changes in lifestyle. With respect to traffic, for instance, to
reach sustainability beyond that of increases in efficiency requires changes
in the modal split and ultimately in urban planning (Deutscher Bundestag, 1994).
Yet lifestyles have been subjected to far less systematic investigation than
technology (Duchin, 1998, p. 51). In SAR they were not discussed at all.
The concept of lifestyle (Lebensführung) was introduced by Weber
(1922). Lifestyle denotes a set of basic attitudes, values, and patterns of
behaviour that are common to a social group, including patterns of consumption
or anticonsumption. It seemed for a while that a change from environmentally
less benign to more benign consumption patterns had emerged by itself (Inglehart,
1971, 1977) in the 1970s. What really happened, however, was not a switch from
one coherent and dominant set of values to another, but an end of coherence
through a pluralization of values (Mitchell, 1983; Reusswig, 1994; Douglas et
al., 1998). Current lifestyles reflect this patchwork of values. Some of
these, however, are environmentally more benign than others. The idea of promoting
transfers from the latter to the former must take into account that lifestyles
are not just a matter of behaving this or that way, but are basically an expression
of people’s self-esteem (see below). Lifestyles, therefore, are based on
ideas with respect to the individual’s identity. To this extent the issue
is not only that individuals need to change their behaviour, but that they need
to change themselves. This tends to be underestimated in policy considerations,
but must be accounted for when such changes become relevant with respect to
climate change. Otherwise discrepancies between people’s environmental
consciousness and behaviour are deplored but not understood.
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