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We know less than we think we know about climate. And we know even less than that about our carbon footprint. This doesn鈥檛 mean we鈥檙e all idiots. Instead, it means that we live in a world where this information isn鈥檛 widely available, or particularly well-conveyed. This needs to change. Quickly.

We don鈥檛 need everyone to become carbon-computing experts, but we do need to make it easier to understand the basics of climate science and emissions reductions, in the hopes that people will be empowered and inspired to take climate action.

What We Don鈥檛 Know

The fancy term for thinking we know more than we do is overconfidence bias. In the case of climate, a finds that we overestimate our knowledge significantly. The study revealed that 鈥�67% of adults around the world said they had a good understanding of climate change terms, but when asked to choose the best definition of those terms, only 41% of adults chose answers that showed they knew what they were talking about.鈥� It seems our knowledge of basic climate change is, well, not so hot.

Which is why it鈥檚 no surprise that a finds that North Americans don鈥檛 know much about what causes emissions either. In fact, we are surprisingly off the mark when asked to make trade-offs (nope, the emissions from a transatlantic flight cannot be mitigated by picking up litter). Carbon numeracy, or people鈥檚 knowledge of the carbon impacts of goods and services, is a remarkably under-researched area. The good news is that we鈥檙e starting to learn about how much we don鈥檛 know. 鈥淧eople have very incorrect ideas of what鈥檚 effective and what鈥檚 not,鈥� says Jiaying Zhao, an associate professor of psychology at UBC, and one of the study鈥檚 co-authors.

Why We Don鈥檛 Know

There are lots of reasons why we don鈥檛 know nearly enough about climate change and carbon emissions. The consensus on climate science grows stronger by the day but has only existed for a few generations, and is . And the science is complicated, especially when we鈥檙e not formally taught about climate change with any great breadth or consistency across our formal education.

In some areas, the public has been well-educated, as is the case with the benefits of electric vehicles versus gas vehicles. In other areas, we鈥檝e been fed a lot of misinformation, such as the overstated that actually have minimal effect on our emissions reductions.

What鈥檚 more, numbers are communicated in ways that have no relevance to the average individual who doesn’t talk in megatonnes. Better to say that a transatlantic flight is roughly that an average person in The Global North produces in an entire year.

Another key reason all this is so difficult is that it鈥檚 impossible to know the carbon footprint of most of the stuff we buy. Climate impacts are much more complicated than calories or personal finances, because they require an understanding of energy, agriculture, and fuel efficiency. 

Why It Matters

All of this is so important because you can鈥檛 measure what you don鈥檛 understand. It鈥檚 hard to care about climate and know what actions to take or advocate for if we don鈥檛 know what emissions are or what we can do about them.

What We Can Do

We have lots of ways to improve basic climate knowledge and carbon numeracy. But we should focus on the arenas in which people鈥檚 knowledge gaps are the largest: What is climate change, and what are the best things to do to stop it? Upstream policy interventions are essential, but people need to understand the basics to care enough to advocate for those important interventions.

Quick Tips for Climate Shifts

The message isn鈥檛 austerity. It鈥檚 that we need to be smarter. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 have to become calculators,鈥� says Shahzeen Attari, an associate professor in the school of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University Bloomington. 鈥淲e just need to know the most effective things we can do and go out and do them.鈥�

We should be doing the things that get the most bang for our buck. Right now, we鈥檙e spending lots of effort on the wrong things. Simple heuristics or shortcuts can help people focus on the most important things to reduce their footprints, starting with how we travel, then moving on to how we power our homes and what we eat.

Label This

We should really slap carbon labels on everything. There鈥檚 no excuse for not providing people with what should be one of the most important metrics in determining what they buy. Recent polling by Canadian climate policy institute Clean Prosperity suggests . , a research consultancy, finds that people overwhelmingly want to live sustainable lifestyles but need concrete information to support their efforts. 

As technology makes it easier and easier to calculate a product’s emissions, the industry complaint that figuring out how to do this is untenable or expensive no longer holds water. Large manufactures track and manage every aspect of their supply chain. (It鈥檚 why they can do things such as , as the Mars candy company did with palm oil). Calculating emissions along the way is increasingly becoming the cost of doing business. A few big manufacturers, including Unilever, have .

How companies label will also help people understand and quantify their emissions. Carbon Trust, a leading U.K. carbon footprint labeler, suggests language like 鈥渢his product is X times lower than the market standard.鈥� Companies can also share emissions info by representing it with visual metaphor. For example, trying to visually quantify emissions in ways that people understand, such as traffic lights or a simple scale of 1 to 10. In this way, labels can fulfill their responsibility to disclose, while also helping improve carbon numeracy for consumers.

鈥淚 think we should label all the things we buy, so all consumer products going from a sandwich to a car to a flight we book,鈥� says University of British Columbia’s Zhao. 鈥淭hat doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean you can influence actions, but the hope is that consumers would become more aware, and they will make different choices if they can.鈥�  

That said, Indiana University’s Attari cautions that labels are not the only solution. 鈥淕iven our limited time and attention, people need to know the things to do as individuals, and as political actors. That includes things like voting, protesting, and voting with your wallet.鈥�

Put a Price it

A partner recommendation to carbon labeling products is putting a price on carbon itself, in the form of a carbon tax. A carbon tax means the cost of the good or service will automatically reflect the emissions required to produce it. And in a world with far too much information to consume already, this seems . By pricing carbon, the cost of the good or service gives us important information about its emissions intensity.

Together, labeling and taxing go a long way towards informing the consumer of the true cost of emissions. It鈥檚 about transparency and clarity. And you know, saving humanity.

Of course, we need a whole whack of other solutions, too. But to mobilize people in support of our most imminent existential threat, we should use the simplest, quickest tools to bring the world up to a modest degree of carbon fluency. There isn鈥檛 time for anything less.