Together We Can by Claire O’Rourke

Author:Claire O’Rourke [Claire O’Rourke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761066818
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2022-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

GIANT LEAP

One Small Step, an app that uses behavioural science to help people successfully adopt greener habits and reduce their carbon footprint, made it into the economy category in Holon IQ Australia–New Zealand top 100 climate tech start-ups in 2021. Founder Lily Dempster, a self-described climate activist and behavioural economics nerd, is a living example of why there is no such thing as a typical type in the emerging climate tech start-up ecosystem. You’d expect to encounter Dempster working in the halls of government or among the crowds in grassroots advocacy, and in earlier days she did both, working in the federal Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet before campaigning at GetUp to save the Renewable Energy Target and stop coal-seam gas projects. A background studying complex systems theory, behavioural economics and microeconomics mixed with politics, law and renewable energy came together when she delivered one of Australia’s most successful climate-positive consumer-switching campaigns, when 35,000 people switched away from Australia’s number-one carbon polluter, AGL, to Powershop. (In 2021, when Powershop was acquired by Shell, the consumer backlash was ferocious, with thousands switching to newer, cleaner start-up energy retailers like Amber, which also made it onto Holon IQ’s list.) Second-year university was the turning point for Dempster, when she watched Al Gore’s global filmic phenomenon An Inconvenient Truth and life was never the same again. ‘I was at university because I cared a lot about social justice,’ Dempster said. ‘The inequitable impacts of climate change I found horrifying, both intergenerationally and for the people who have the least responsibility for causing the problem: the most vulnerable people in our communities, internationally and here, are going to be most badly affected. So that’s why I decided to, honestly, dedicate my life to it, and I’ve been doing that and it’s been challenging and purposeful.’

Running the consumer campaigns at GetUp, Dempster saw the impact on emissions and on markets from a few thousand people taking action together and came to the realisation that pushing for top-down changes through policy and law reform was critical, but so were the bottom-up actions that people take in daily lives. ‘When you look at consumption-based carbon accounting, the influence that consumers can have when they collectivise is pretty significant, especially people in developed economies, where you have really high personal footprints.’ One Small Step, a social enterprise, launched in 2020 and a year later its tailored programs across energy, waste, purchases, food and transport had saved 3500 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions thanks to the efforts of 18,000 initial users. If 50,000 people reduced their carbon footprints by one-quarter over twelve months, Dempster said, 250,000 tonnes of carbon emissions would be saved (based on an average of 20 tonnes of CO2 equivalent as a baseline), roughly the same amount as planting 4 million tree seedlings or taking 54,000 cars off the road.

A big part of One Small Step’s approach is trying to encourage positive spillover effects, a concept in the field of behavioural economics that suggests that one pro-environmental behaviour leads to another.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.