Mind, Brain and Planet

6. Flying, climate change and the "bystander effect"

• Paul Howard-Jones

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Why do we carry on producing large carbon emissions when we know these are damaging the lives of others? Paul explores this question in the context of the university student community – where mobile young people whose flights contribute to climate change are studying alongside those experiencing its devastating effects. Can this paradox be explained by the so-called “bystander” effect?

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Flying, Climate Change and the Bystander Effect – SCRIPT

PHJ: In today’s episode we’ll be talking about the carbon emissions created by flying. But we could instead have talked about petrol cars, heating our homes, food production - any one of a multitude of human activities contributing  to climate change - because the real focus today is on how and why as individuals, our minds and brains do and sometimes don’t respond to problems affecting our global population.

But let’s start in the Philippines in November 2020, where Patty Miranda’s family were bracing to face the realities of a warming world….                                               

Patty:  This was around 2020. I was in the Philippines then, uh, it was a few months into the lockdown. And as we know during, uh, COVID-19 across the world, there were very different responses to COVID and how lockdowns were implemented. So in the Philippines, it was very militarized. We really couldn't go out. There were curfews, there were issues around transport, there were issues around mobility, like in similar parts of the world. But what was quite different in the Philippines at the time was that we were also experiencing the climate crisis, right? Just because there was a pandemic, it didn't mean armed conflict stopped. It didn't mean the climate crisis stopped. And at that time, particularly November, so this was in November, typhoon Vamco in a six week span. It was one of the seven successive storms at that time. And that included super, a super typhoon that was the strongest in the world. 
 
 So, it made landfall in the Philippines. So, it affected more than 3 million Filipinos. And my family was one of them. And our home was actually at a higher point.  It has never, water has never entered our home before. So, we had no reason to think that this storm would be different. This typhoon would be different and that water would enter our homes. And we had sandbags in the front, so we were quite prepared. Um, but it did enter our homes. And I remember at the time everything seemed such to move so swiftly and also very slowly. Our first thought as a family was what will happen to our dogs. We have two dogs. I sent a photo over Paul, and you can just see that we placed them on top of a table. 'Cause that for us, we were thinking it, if it goes beyond the table, we wouldn't really, you know, we, you know, it just showed us at that moment that the situation was quite serious. 
 
 It's not something we've experienced before. So very quickly, in less than 24 hours, the flood waters rose so high that when my family and I tried to evacuate early in the morning, we just couldn't, we couldn't leave. So we actually had to turn back. And fortunately our home had a second story. So we were there for two to three days. We didn't have electricity. We couldn't have electricity because you have to turn off the breakers because, you know, electrocution is a real threat. You had to, I remember what seemed like ages of having to unplug every single item from refrigerators to electric fans, the tv because you know, when it's happening, you don't know really if it's going to reach that height. You know, I had a call with my best friend and that for me was quite touching because he was the last person I, I said to like, I'm gonna take this call, but no, my phone will die soon and I don't know when it'll turn on again. So we were there. So we had water in our home. We were wading through water for maybe two days. So for some people it's weeks. So, and this is why I'm able to even the privilege of sharing this story. I know that I am privileged because I can even share this story. Some people were there, you know, they would experience flooding and there would be in water for weeks, and in some areas maybe months. It depends because if it's still continuing to rain, that November was particularly hard because there were several typhoons all going through the same cutting across the same path. Some people have not survived it.

PHJ: Patty is now studying for her PhD in the UK, where she’s one of around 700 thousand students from overseas who enrich the cultural ethos of our UK Higher Education system and have also become critical to supporting it financially. And international students are not just a boon for our universities – they contribute to their host nation and their own nation’s wider prosperity. But I’ve found that conversations with our international student community can sometimes highlight the challenge we face when it comes to make global connections about climate:

Dawn: My name's Dawn. I'm psychology education student in university of Free School, and I'm first year student now.

PHJ: So Have you, have you been back to China since September?

Dawn: No, no, last two weeks. My mom have arrived here to see me, so it's kind of like a great comfort for me. Mm-Hmm. Yeah.

PHJ: Are there some students who actually feel the need to go home to China during the year that, you know? Oh

Dawn: Yeah. Mm-Hmm.

PHJ: So why do they, why do they go home during the year?

Dawn: I think it's like the homesick because I think we're all young and you need to kind of do everything independently and like do laundry, like cooking. And one fact of the homesick is that they cannot build a deep connection with this community and with the peoples around you. Like, because everybody just like talking the pe language that you don't know that much. So it's kind of like they couldn't get their securities from them. So, yeah.

PHJ: So, so what's it like at Christmas? 'cause

Dawn: I live with five students, mostly kind of the local persons, and they just like all went home. And I just live alone in the, like, the big flats. It was a little bit kind of lonely because the, the street and the shop kind of closed in the Christmas and everybody just get home with their families. So it's kind of,

PHJ: And did some international students go home as well?

Dawn: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

PHJ: Yeah. Back to China sometimes. Yeah.

Dawn: Yeah, that's right. It's like suddenly, like everyone's just disappear. Yeah.

PHJ: And what about the Easter Easter vacation? Is that another time when students may decide to fly home? Yeah,

Dawn: Yeah, yeah.

So here’s the thing – we have international students arriving whose homes have been devastated by climate change while others are flying backwards and forwards to their homes during the academic year contributing to climate change. But is this an obvious connection to make? 

PHJ: Flying is not very good for the environment because it contributes carbon dioxide. And the carbon dioxide is causing helping to cause climate change. Do, do students, are students aware of that?

Dawn: Like students do pay attention to some kind of this environment stuff or kind of some public stuff, but I think maybe sometimes we just get to know these things from the news, like the BBC or something, but it's too big, like the kind of notes the details from our daily lives. So <laugh>,

PHJ: You don't relate this big problem of climate change to the, the details of your, your life.

Dawn: The life, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative>.                                    3m20s

But hang on- maybe there’s just 1 or 2 students making extra trips – and we’re all producing emissions in different ways – so maybe I’m making more of this issue than I should be – some reliable data is needed here to estimate how big an issue student flying is. So …with colleagues across four departments,  we required students to respond to a survey about the flights they’d taken that year before they could submit their final assignment, even if it was just to say they didn’t want to do the survey. This way, 86% of the 1700 students we asked did complete the survey – which makes the date that much more reliable.  My trusted partner in this venture was Dr Lucy Wenham ….and we met recently to look at the headline results…

Lucy: I'm Lucy Wenham and I lecture here at the School of Education in Bristol.

PHJ: So it looks to me in terms of the headline figures here, that the emissions from student international travel, it's about five times the university's emissions from, from other sources. So that's scope one and scope two. Scope one being all the emissions that we directly generate from burning gas scope tubing, all the emissions that we pay other people to generate. So that's our electricity, et cetera. All of that combined, that's only a fifth of what's being produced by our students traveling around.

Lucy: I mean, I think what's terrifying about that to me is that an awful lot of institutions find these nebulous scope three things really hard to quantify and possibly then abdicate responsibility for doing anything about it. So an awful lot of people who are trying hard, an awful lot of organizations who are trying hard to address what they're doing in terms of something to do with climate and sustainability. Look at Scope one and Scope two.

PHJ: Yeah, I mean we just, and

Lucy: Avoid looking at Scope three.

PHJ: I mean that's true 'cause I think the university only just started looking at Scope three. I mean, this just happened the last couple

Lucy: Of years and it's a, and and I guess I hadn't really thought, I imagined an awful lot of students would fly in at the beginning of the year and out at the end of the year. Yes. They might go home once a year.

PHJ: I was making that assumption as well

Lucy: Actually. And I didn't sort of really anticipate just how much they might be bopping backwards and forwards.

PHJ: Yeah. 'cause I mean, most, 63% of these emissions is from our international students who are actually the minority of students. And you know, a third of those are from that return trip that we were talking about arriving at the beginning, going at the end of the year. And a quarter is due to tourism, but, you know, and that's mostly around Europe, but the rest, that's 42% of those admissions is actually due to home trips during the year. This means that just the flying of one international student is more than twice the footprint from the combined heating and and energy bill of your, of an average UK household, which is, it's quite big, isn't it? I mean, another way of looking at this now, I dunno how you're gonna feel about this, but I found this paper in Nature, a very well respected journal that gives you a number that that allows you to translate carbon dioxide that we are emitting into excess deaths over this century. Which, you know, and that's a, a mortality figure essentially when I put in that figure, it can tell us that the flights taken just by students at our university, just our one university during a single academic year, will cause more than 27 excess deaths globally during this century.

(PHJ stunning isn't it?)

Lucy: I mean, I think if we want to, if we want to make this data have an impact, if we want to genuinely say something needs to be done, this is completely unacceptable. Someone has to step up and take responsibility. All of us in fact have to step up and take responsibility. We do need these figures, but we also have to bear in mind that that can be quite traumatizing and that it will switch some people off rather than getting them onboard. So I think, I mean, I'm, I I appreciate the power of the you know, the mortality figures who I'd wanna share that with and how I wouldn't want to feel that I was sort of saying you, you personally, student or staff member are to blame for that death over there. Mm. Because you, well you can't say that you're not gonna get people on board. No. Well also I can't say that 'cause I'd be an idiot, but basically you can't get people on board with that. But we also do need to get people to stop and listen.

I’d have to say our results turned out to be a bigger deal than I’d originally imagined. So  I asked our local university sustainability manager whether our university, and universities generally, are at least trying to monitor this issue….

James: I'm James I'm one of the sustainability managers at the University of Bristol. Most universities will undertake both staff and student travel surveys, whether that's annually or every couple of years. And that looks at the, what the full extent of the, of, of the travel that they might make in terms of daily commuting, in terms of business travel. And it will also it can also ask students about their travel to and from the university during the academic year at the start, end of term and so on.

PHJ: Right. So just to be clear, does that include trips home?

James: Well, it doesn't always, but it's up to universities to decide. There's no real hard and fast guidance on whether or not on what types of travel should be included. And, and there are no standards yet for how institutions should be measuring this component of their carbon footprint. What we end up with is different institutions reporting things in different ways. Some may not report their international their student home travel at all. Some may report it on the basis of one trip home. You know, what, what we have is a sort of, you know, a mixed bag of measurement methods, which I think is not helpful for you know, for addressing, addressing the issue.

PHJ: Yeah. So this is the question that it raises, isn't it? What should we be asking students? What, I mean, what should a university be responsible for?

James: Four or five years ago you might have struggled to find a university that was doing anything to measure well, large areas of their, of their scope three, let alone, you know, a portion, this portion of the, of the, of their travel footprint that we're talking about now, you know, however significant, you know, we, we, we know it might be, but I think it's, you know, it's important that we, you know, that we have this conversation, we have that we, we talk about, you know, this as, as, as, as an issue.

PHJ: I mean, is are there any reasons why we might not want to talk about this <laugh>? 

James: I think, I think historically it's been, it's perhaps been a difficult subject perhaps because, you know, universities are in, are in a, let's say, you know, a difficult position, right. In the uk, in the uk in England in particular, you know, the funding model for universities is very dependent on student fee income. And that from international students obviously is an increasingly important part of, of, of the university's income. And it's, you know, and it's business model. So, but it's like any other part of business or economic activity, isn't it? There are benefits to, to that activity, but there are also downsides, and it's a question of how, how we manage that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.

PHJ: And student flying is not just a difficult subject for universities to talk about but, based on our student focus groups across three universities, students also feel passionate about their right to fly….

Lucy: I was, you know, fairly overcome actually in those focus groups, the ones that I did with how powerful the emotions were. And it wasn't, this wasn't a, a dispassionate conversation at all. And young people are trying to grow into their adult identity at university. They're finding their freedom. It's a, you know, it's a time of change, right? It's a complicated time of change, a complicated emotional time. And for many, the first time they're away from their family. For international students, they're further away from their family. It's a psychological thing, isn't it? Thinking, feeling further away, feeling that you are on another continent or in another country, and the different language around you and the unfamiliar culture. So, you know, it, it is a exciting and, and brilliant experience. But, but, you know, but it's difficult and it has its challenges. And so when we ask people about why they go home, sometimes they just want to have fun and they're traveling around, but often they want to reconnect with their culture, their friends, their siblings, their parents have a bit of, you know, being looked after by mom or whatever it is. Yeah. And so just to go back and say, I'm exhausted. Can someone make me my dinner is just wonderful. Not,

PHJ: So, as with many other environmental issues, there are multiple stakeholders involved here- the government; airlines; university; the staff; students and even their families – everyone has something to lose – yet everyone will lose if we don’t act on climate. It’s almost as if everyone else is waiting for someone else to do something. And it’s not just flying, of course – this feels like a microcosm of the ecological challenge facing humanity – why aren’t we doing more – why do we seem to be just watching disaster unfold? 

In 1964, the New York Times reported on the death of a 28-year old local bartender using the headline “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police”. It sparked outrage amongst readers – seeing tragedy develop, how could people just stand by? What’s behind this so-called “bystander effect”? Social psychologists Latané and Darley explained it was a diffusion of responsibility: because each person saw others witnessing the same event, they assumed someone else would take responsibility and call the police - so did nothing to stop the situation themselves.

Moving onto 2014, researchers in the Netherlands were able to show that as the number of people witnessing an emergency increases, our brain activity associated with preparing to take action (Hortensius and de Gelder, 2014) decreases  - so, in an emergency, our brain basically stands down if others are watching the emergency with us. 

There are various explanations for why our brains do this. It may be a self-serving bias to let others take the risk. Or, in evolutionary terms, the best outcome of a situation may depend on only the fittest individual stepping up with others contributing more cautiously or not at all, so it makes sense for us to generally hang back. But in 2020, scientists in Taiwan found evidence for an even simpler explanation. They asked individuals to categorise actions as moral or immoral, and noticed that differences in brain activity between individuals reduced in the presence of someone else. In other words, when our brains process what we should do, the presence of others drives us towards social conformity. We just tend to do what others do. So if no-one else is doing anything yet, I won't do anything yet either. And that can lead to nobody doing anything -  until it’s too late.

But this explanation of the bystander effect also give me hope – because when we notice others starting to talk and take action, we know our idea of what the social norms – the one we’re trying to conform to - can be changed – as we saw in Episode 4 – and the bystander effect can give rise to a domino effect. 

Our students suggested one solution might be to build a stronger sense of student community during breaks – especially Xmas -  which might encourage some to stay in the UK.

PHJ: This is what one of the students has written down, actually, a lot of Chinese feel too lonely to stay at Christmas. They don't celebrate Christmas, then they go home a second time for Chinese New Year because that's too important to miss. So actually in terms of emissions, we need to start thinking more about what students are doing in these breaks, don't we? You know, and concerning ourselves with that.

Lucy: Yeah. And it's about connectivity and human relationships. It's about if we provide a university community and support people and, and I think you had a, a first year student talking about how difficult it can be speaking in your second language, in a different culture. If we're helping more to bridge those divides and to, and to help people connect, they

PHJ: Won't want to go home then

Lucy: Exactly. 

PHJ: I actually asked a group of students if there was one thing that we could do, you know, to enhance your experience over Christmas that might make you stay, what would it be? And they told me Karaoke

Lucy: <Laugh>. Yeah. But it's, it's about, yeah,

PHJ: I'm quite keen on trying that actually

Lucy: <Laugh>, it's about doing things together.

It’s been shown that the bystander effect can also be broken down simply by priming – by activating those pro-social brain networks that help us think about others – including those on the other side of the world such as Patty’s family – who we heard about at the start of this episode  - people who are already feeling the destructive impact of our carbon emissions. So yes we’re planning sort of multilingual karaoke sessions with a smattering of environmental messaging – and since I’m sure you can’t wait to hear how that goes – I’ll try to include an update in the next season of this podcast. 

Because yes – this is the last episode of Season 1 – thank you for listening and helping me get this podcast launched. I’ll be back in a couple of months with Season 2 – when we’ll be looking at eco-anxiety, the effects of climate activism on well-being and many more links between mind, brain and planet.