Climate Change Mitigation: Considering Lifestyle Options in Europe and the US
Schuetzenmeister, Falk
European Union Center of Excellence, University of California, Berkeley, August 27, 2009, 12p
"This paper summarizes the presentations and outcomes of a European-
American Workshop about lifestyle changes as a mitigation strategies for global warming. [...] Both a merely individualist interpretation of lifestyles (“green consumption”) and a rather socio-structural view (“green milieus”) are not well-geared to explain the often observed discrepancies between environmental attitudes and people’s action. Lifestyle research must address this gap by explaining individual decisions within societal contexts that provide but also limit the possibilities of lifestyle changes. Despite these difficulties, the huge appeal of the lifestyle approach that makes the work on these problems worthwhile is the prominent role of the term “lifestyle” in the public and political discourse about environmental change. However, many policy attempts to influence lifestyles are barely grounded in sociological grounded theories of social change.
Falk Schuetzenmeister works at the European Union Center of Excellence, University of California, Berkeley.
Go to the paper at:
http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&context=ies
D5/05-09 Posted September 7, 2009
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