| Your trusted inner circle is one of the most potent and overlooked weapons to stave off the worst of climate change. All of us function as billboards for others looking for cues about how to act. These social comparisons among your friends and family add up. "It's a shift of perspective to see yourself as a member of [the] community, as an entrepreneur of norms," says Michael Brownstein, an associate professor of philosophy at the City University of New York who studies societal change. Humans evolved, says Brownstein, to pay incredibly close attention to what others are considering and doing as models for their own behavior. For those trying to curb global warming, that means thinking strategically about how people make decisions — and how our lives can become a mirror for others to see themselves. It's about the messenger There is an assumption that good data speaks for itself. At best, it usually whispers. Take vaccines. About 20 percent of eligible Americans say they still haven't gotten a coronavirus shot. "Maybe we underinvested in behavioral research," Francis Collins, then leading the National Institutes of Health, said to "NewsHour" on PBS in 2021. "I never imagined a year ago, when those vaccines were just proving to be fantastically safe and effective, that we would still have 60 million people who had not taken advantage of them." Sadly, the climate issue is not much different. In 1980, behavioral scientists were invited to share the table with geophysical scientists as the U.S. government began planning a response to climate change, says Baruch Fischhoff, a Carnegie Mellon University social scientist who has worked with the Department of Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies. They helped sketch an ambitious program to inform public messaging, policies and future research. But as funding dried up during the Reagan administration, behavioral science largely fell off the agenda. "We basically were no longer at the table for the next quarter-century," says Fischhoff. "The natural scientists trusted their story would tell [itself]. … We blew it." A subsequent deliberate misinformation campaign led by fossil fuel companies affected the public's perception of climate risks, and programs designed to cut energy use or boost renewables failed to live up to their potential. But scientists are attempting to fix that. Facts vs. deeds Scientists have observed again and again that others profoundly influence what we do and don't do. Researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March examined data from 430 individual studies to see what factors influenced people's environment-related behaviors, from recycling to switching modes of transportation. Providing data or facts or setting personal goals and appeals did little. Financial incentives performed relatively well. But leading the pack were what scientists called "social comparisons" — people's ability to observe others' behavior and compare it with their own. Such comparisons persuaded more than 14 percent of people to change behavior across experiments from around the world. Write me with your questions at climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails. | 
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