3.5. Values and responsibilities

The sustainability transformation means massive changes in the structures of societies and the everyday lives of citizens. Even though promoting sustainability and planetary well-being are overall positive goals which will, when successful, benefit all, the changes are still heavily resisted.

The slowness of the changes is related to the habit of sticking with what is familiar, which is true for societies, communities, and individuals alike, but also to limitations in social, societal, and material structures. Path dependencies, for example, are discussed at the level of societies and national economies. Because of path dependencies, the technical comprehensive solutions made in, say, industry require follow-ups based on the same technology for years or even decades. At a psychological level, the slowness of change can be caused by, for example, the need to feel safe: familiar structures and routines as well as the support received from the surrounding community feel comforting even when maintaining them is harmful or even dangerous in the long run. However, even fast changes are possible if the objectives and means are considered important and corresponding with one's values and if the executors of these changes feel they can affect the things that are changed.

In the sustainability transformation, it is thus important to identify and promote the kinds of changes to which citizens, companies, and societal actors can commit to and which align with their values. The support individuals can have from communities, such as associations, friend groups, and churches, is important in the transformation. We must also attempt to identify and dismantle the structural and psychological barriers that prevent actors from taking responsibility to perform the sustainability change.

Image. People with signs in a climate protest. Cardboard signs with texts such as "be a part of the solution, not part of the pollution", "there is no planet b" and "it's a beautiful world, let's keep it that way". (Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash. Free to use under the Unsplash License.)

On the relations of knowledge, values and action

Knowledge is formed as part of human activity in the world. In scientific research, it is understood that knowledge is not gathered, it is produced. Philosopher Ville Lähde (2012, 103), who has investigated the conceptions of nature of different branches of science, points out that nature – or anything else – cannot be studied as “bare, uninterpreted, unconceptualised”. The form of scientific knowledge always reflects the instruments used in the research, no matter if they are measuring devices or concepts.

“The world does not spontaneously open for research in a specific manner, but rather it is defined by the questions asked and the models and theories employed. It is also necessary and common that some results need to be ignored to reach results. [...] The more complicated the instruments are, the more complex are the theoretical models and assumptions needed for the interpretation of the produced information. When theoretical views change, this interpretation also changes, i.e., the reality “revealed” by the research tool opens for research in a new way. Without such room for interpretation, the world would only be disorganised information with humans helplessly stranded in the middle of it. A sailor navigating with a star chart models the sky as a pattern of stars to reach their destination, and a farmer focuses on certain properties of the weather, living organisms and soil. To disregard unnecessary things and consider them as background noise is necessary for all activity in the material reality.” (Lähde 2012, 103–104.)

For this reason, bracketing out information that is irrelevant for reaching the destination is an essential part of producing information. This phenomenon is also an indistinguishable part of every day life and societal activity. In order to know something about nature, for example, we must have a conception of what kind of knowledge is important or essential. These conceptions can be conscious or unconscious, and they often include valuations and stem from valuations.

For example, a person picking berries may consider it important to know if the flowering of bilberry has taken place during a sunny or rainy period, because this information can be reliably used to predict the yield of bilberries. On the other hand, a forest owner, whose primary goal is the financial capitalisation of the lumber, does not necessarily appreciate information on the flowering of bilberry and therefore disregards it. In this regard, the berry picker's and forest owner’s knowledge of the forest differ from each other. Valuations have also affected the extent to which climate change and biodiversity loss have been studied. For example, the dramatic decrease in the number of insects might have been left unnoticed if a small group of amateur entomologists had not made annual calculations of the number of insects. Journalist Brooke Jarvis recounts this in her article published in The New York Times Magazine.

Values also affect, among other things, what kind of research is considered important and thus gets funded, and what political decisions are made. Studies have also revealed that values, attitudes and world views also often guide whether the results of research are believed or not. This explains, for example, whether climate change is believed to be true or not. Climate denial has also been explained with different psychological mechanisms that we will discuss next. 

Climate denial and avoidance

Even though research data on the severity of climate change has increased over the last decades, the general concern and prioritising of the subject compared to other problems has simultaneously decreased in many countries. This type of illogical thinking has been named the psychological climate paradox. There have been attempts to find reasons for it from the psychology of individuals.

The conflict between an individual’s cognitions, such as values, knowledge and actions, is called cognitive dissonance. Psychological defence mechanisms, whose purpose is to relieve the guilt from, e.g., causing environmental problems, are used to answer the perceived conflict. Defence mechanisms include, for example, denying the problem, putting the blame on someone else or convincing oneself that one's own minor deeds are more significant than they actually are.  For example, someone may consider recycling household waste and taking old clothes to a flea market as sufficient environmental acts and otherwise continue to lead an ecologically unsustainable way of life. When environmental problems are difficult to control and extensive, it may be easier to change one's attitude than one’s actions. Cognitive dissonance can therefore lead to an individual not perceiving the need for change in their own activity, even though there are known and sound reasons for it. Therefore, there is a conflict between knowledge and activity.

Cognitive dissonance may also lead to moral disengagement, i.e., a state in which otherwise responsible and considerate persons perform irresponsible actions without feeling anxiety or guilt. Moral disengagement may include trying to justify irresponsible actions and disregarding them as harmless, hesitation, comparison, dehumanisation of other parties, downplaying or distorting the consequences of the actions, as well as shifting responsibility to others. According to sustainability researcher Paul Shrivastava and others, all of these psychological mechanisms are also present in the environmentally harmful actions performed by companies.

Shifting responsibility from oneself to others is one way to answer the cognitive dissonance resulting from the conflict between environmental awareness and environmentally harmful actions. In that case, the shifting of responsibility may manifest itself in the thinking and argumentation of an individual through a so-called NOMBO effect.

“Not me but others”

Many individuals and collective actors, such as companies, feel that the prevention of climate change and other interference in environmental problems are goals that they themselves, and their reference group, are not responsible for and which should be solved by someone else. This way of thinking and argumentation has been called the “Not me but others” effect or NOMBO. The NOMBO effect thus describes unintentional and intentional “Not me but others” thinking that occurs in various situations and at different levels. In this type of thinking, the responsibility for environmental problems is shifted from oneself or one's group to someone else. The type of argumentation and thinking that shifts environmental responsibility from oneself to others has become popular, for example, in populist statements on climate policy, and the transfer of responsibility hinders the implementation of sustainability transformation on different levels of society. Therefore, it is important to investigate the reasons and means of the transfer of responsibility in order to advance the sustainability transformation.

Sustainability researcher Matleena Käppi and her colleagues have studied the NOMBO effect in Finnish companies and concluded that the environmental responsibility experienced by entrepreneurs as individuals is also reflected on the environmental responsibility perceived at company level. According to Käppi et al., the following are common beliefs and assumptions associated with the NOMBO effect:

1. The alleviation of environmental problems, for example, through emission reductions are believed to cause economic harm to oneself or one's reference group, and advantage to their competitors.
2. The significance and influence of oneself and one’s community in solving environmental problems is perceived as weak.
3. The assumption of the greater influence and weaker ecological sustainability of others.

According to research, humans tend to think that environmental problems are worse somewhere else and to believe the most severe environmental problems are located somewhere far away. When it is simultaneously thought that one's own chances to affect environmental problems are slim or that environmental acts cause direct harm to oneself, people tend to transfer the responsibility for environmental actions to others or outright deny their necessity. Käppi et al. emphasise that the transfer of responsibility is both a psychological and a social phenomenon, and that the opponents of environmental actions attempt to reinforce it.

According to Käppi et al. “whataboutism” is also quite similar to the NOMBO effect. Whataboutism refers to an argumentation strategy or logical fallacy in which the attempt is to divert the discussion by presenting a counterargument or to steer the discussion to irrelevant comparisons without responding to the original criticism. In environmental policy, “What about China and India?” is an example of an argument that attempts to indicate that environmental problems are bigger elsewhere and therefore environmental responsibility is primarily the responsibility of other countries. The means of whataboutism is used by, among others, a movement that opposes environmental actions, which actively and consciously attempts to prevent policies aiming to delay the climate change, in order to protect the interests of, e.g., the fossil industry. The arguments that are used to hinder climate acts aim to cause uncertainty and opposition in the general public towards the meaningfulness of environmental actions. In particular, the climate denial movement attempts to influence attitudes, emotions, and opinions.

Käppi et al. suggest that the NOMBO effect can be alleviated, and environmental responsibility and environmentally friendly actions increased, by emphasising the roles of individuals as parts of different communities such as companies and associations. In these roles, individuals can make significant impact on the realisation of the sustainability transformation.

Taking responsibility

Philosophical sustainability research often talks about increasing responsibilities. Therefore, it is assumed that the ability to take responsibility for, e.g., the realisation of the sustainability transformation is not endogenic or obvious but instead a skill that is reflected on different areas of life and experiences and must be gradually learned. Responsibility is therefore not only responsible action, but also comprehensive understanding of one's own connectivity with nature. The development of this type of understanding requires skills discussed in this section, from literacy to imagination and emotional skills – not to mention leniency towards oneself and others.

Even though it is clear that many changes (for example, in widely used technologies and economic practices) may be demanded to be put into effect immediately, a cultural change cannot be ordered to happen. It is work that is done over years and decades. The entire history of the environmental movement, the beginning of which can be traced back to the 19th century when understood broadly, can be considered part of the cultural change required by the sustainability transformation. Depending on the perspective, this can be either a discouraging or comforting thought. On one hand, cultural transformation is slow, and it is sometimes difficult to see how it is concretely realised. On the other hand, cultural transformation is deep and rich, and there is already a vast archive of knowledge and wisdom for building sustainable societies.

The challenge of responsibility is great. Arto O. Salonen and Raisa Foster have called this planetary responsibility: 

Then again, planetary responsibility is also carried out in local connections. Salonen and Foster remind that becoming connected with local economies, say, through the communal production of local food is a way to increase one’s own engagement in environmentally responsible activity. According to research, experiences of engagement and belonging increase responsibility and reinforce trust within communities. They can also awaken desire to care for the entities with which one engages – communities, environments, and diverse life.

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