Scholars and students of environmental politics alike at some point inevitably ask themselves the same fundamental question: what is my role in contributing to the world’s environmental problems? We are all complicit in a global economic system that drives carbon emissions, species extinction, and the accumulation of plastics in the oceans, among myriad other problems. For students increasingly coming to terms with the environmental reality that they will inherit, questions about how the choices they make in their personal lives shape that reality loom large. Elizabeth DeSombre’s Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things provides an impressively comprehensive account of the forces that shape the environmental choices that individuals make. For that reason, I have been assigning segments from it (and the article that preceded it) to my political economy of the environment undergraduate seminar since its release.

DeSombre’s core argument is that relying on persuading people to care about the environment and to take action is a woefully inefficient way to bring about positive environmental change. To echo some of DeSombre’s important caveats, that is not to say that we should not do good environmental things or that we should not persuade others to. It is not, however, a reliable way to make a significant impact. Instead, we should focus our efforts on shaping systems and institutions so that we can change behavior en masse, even that of those who might not care. In building her case, DeSombre covers a comprehensive array of forces that shape individual decision making; namely, problem characteristics (chapter 2), incentives (chapter 3), information (chapter 4), habits (chapter 5), and attitudes and norms (chapter 6). The book positions most environmental problems as collective action problems—more specifically, common pool resource problems—and draws from these categories to explain why people are just not very good at making (or being motivated to make) decisions in the name of collective outcomes. It includes many of the concepts that political scientists will already be familiar with, including environmental problems as externalities, bounded rationality, and market distortions such as subsidies, among many more. It grounds these concepts throughout by applying them to a range of behaviors, with some of the more popular examples being commuting, managing fisheries, and buying organic produce.

Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is the sheer array of interdisciplinary concepts that DeSombre brings to bear to explain precisely why persuading people to care is such an ill-advised strategy. In addition to concepts drawn from political science, DeSombre ventures into the economics, psychology, and sociology literatures to build her case. The sections drawing from psychology literature about decision-making heuristics and willpower were especially compelling and relatable. As a longtime reader of popular psychology books, I was pleased to see some of the ideas that I find so interesting applied to environmental problems. For example, psychology research shows that willpower is often a depletable resource, which can explain why even the most committed of environmentalists will find themselves doing bad environmental things on occasion. Similarly, sections that focus on decision-making heuristics, habit formation, and moral licensing all apply prominent concepts from psychology to better our understanding of environmental behavior. By delving into these diverse literatures and synthesizing them in this book, DeSombre has done a big favor to scholars of the environment looking to better understand why people make the environmental choices that they do.

The obvious critical question to ask of this book is whether or not DeSombre goes too far in discounting the importance of individual action. To the extent that DeSombre is building on existing literature on the individualization of responsibility—most notably, Maniates’s work (e.g., Michael Maniates, “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?” Global Environmental Politics, 1[3], 2001)—she convincingly deploys concepts to strengthen the argument that individual behaviors cannot and should not be the solution to the world’s environmental problems. To take the reverse position would be to neglect the power that countries, corporations, and other elite actors bring to bear. But at the same time, having more environmentalists in the world is essential for the structural change that is needed. Every commuter who conscientiously rides their bike instead of driving to work is one more individual who may vote for stronger climate action, implement a corporate sustainability code of conduct at work, or devote their life to environmental activism. DeSombre does acknowledge this dynamic, but possibly understates it. Perhaps convincing more people to do good environmental things may be an effective strategy after all, if it means that future leaders will advocate for or be more receptive to the institutional change we desperately need.

My other critique ventures beyond the scope of the book. I wholeheartedly agree with DeSombre that individual responsibility for environmental problems is not likely to be an efficient path forward. However, the problem is that the other paths are also pretty discouraging. As this book so expertly demonstrates, trying to change individual behavior is tricky. But group behaviors are often even more immutable. It is easy to imagine the book as a series asking why good politicians, political parties, governments, corporations, environmental NGOs, or international organizations do bad environmental things. The list of thorny challenges for groups and institutions to overcome in order to yield better environmental outcomes may rival those documented in this book for individuals. That is, however, the task, and with this book, DeSombre reminds us to keep our sights focused on the powerful actors that are responsible for driving environmental decline.

There is both optimism and pessimism to be found in the implications of DeSombre’s Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things. The pessimism is that targeting the modification of individual behavior does not seem to be an efficient strategy for working toward a more sustainable world. The direct effects of individual behavioral changes are too small to address global collective action problems. At the same time, it is unclear how to overcome the many political obstacles to the structural changes we would need to shape the choices that people make, including those who do not care about the environment. The optimism is more personal in nature, and I have witnessed it repeatedly among my students. This book can help them to understand that although their environmental choices do matter, they are also fundamentally limited by the incentives they face and the structures within which they operate. It helps them to realize that the game was rigged against them from the beginning. That may sound pessimistic, but the more we can encourage young environmentalists to shift their focus from feelings of guilt over the choices they make to working for structural change, the better off we will be. This book makes an important contribution to doing exactly that.