Dopamine and the Climate Crisis

In their 2022 policy brief "Mental Health and Climate Change," the World Health Organization (WHO) warns that the climate crisis will have increasingly stronger and longer-lasting effects on people in the coming years and decades and will have a range of negative effects on mental health and psychological well-being (WHO, 2022). The WHO lists several hazards related to the climate crisis that can have negative psychological consequences for people affected by them such as wildfires, extreme heat waves, floods, storms like hurricanes, and drought. These hazards can have a variety of negative consequences for mental health, such as causing or increasing anxiety, depression, and stress-related disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorders (e.g., if somebody witnesses their home burn down in a wildfire, this may cause trauma and stress). Environmental hazards caused by the climate crisis can also lead to increased feelings of fear and grief, an increase in alcohol and drug abuse, and many other mental health problems.

The climate crisis is caused by human behavior (e.g., the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because of coal or oil production) and almost all human behavior is caused by the brain. Thus, one could ask: Which structural or functional aspects of the human brain are particularly relevant to the climate crisis? This could entail two questions. On the one hand, it is interesting to know why the human brain generates behavior that is likely to negatively affect mental health in the long run. On the other hand, knowing about the principles that cause climate-damaging behavior in our brains may help tackle the climate crisis.

The neurotransmitter dopamine and dopaminergic structures in the brain’s reward system may be particularly relevant in the context of the climate crisis. Several online articles suggest that dopamine may be a key to understanding climate-damaging and climate-friendly behavior. One suggestion is that dopamine is some sort of “pleasure chemical” that causes an “addiction” to seek rewarding experiences such as buying a new car even if the old one is still fine. If everyone behaved like that, the suggestion goes, this could hurt the climate, e.g., by increasing carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere due to increased car production. However, this view oversimplifies how dopamine acts in the brain and is not scientifically accurate.

What scientists say about dopamine and the climate crisis

Are there any scientific ideas on dopamine and the climate crisis? The topic does not seem to be a major focus of psychological research so far. Looking up the search terms on the scientific search engine PubMed, I could identify only a single published article: In 2022, Jérôme Munuera and Eric Burguière of the Paris Brain Institute published “Can we tackle climate change by behavioral hacking of the dopaminergic system?” in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (Munuera and Burguière, 2022). In the article, they present some interesting ideas on why dopamine may be highly relevant for understanding why the climate crisis is happening. Moreover, they share thoughts and what can be done about it.

To understand these ideas, let’s have a look at the functions of dopamine. Dopamine plays an important role in the brain’s reward system. It does not, however, reflect pleasure or reward in itself as sometimes suggested in popular science literature (e.g., regarding the scientifically not proven idea of “dopamine fasting"). Instead, Munuera and Burguière point out that dopaminergic neurons encode “reward prediction errors”, e.g., how high the differences between what you expected and what you got in a situation were. For example, if you have low expectations regarding a friend’s birthday gift for you (e.g., mildly funny socks), but then get something awesome (such as a new bike), the reward prediction error is high. If you expect the socks and get the socks the reward prediction error is low. Interestingly, it is also low if you expect the bike and get the bike, so the overall cost or worth of the gift is not what drives the dopaminergic response. Inversely, when you expect the bike and get the socks, the reward prediction error is also high, but negative. In this case, the dopamine response will be inhibited.

The most important aspect of how the dopaminergic system works in the context of the climate crisis is that it is sensitive to time. If somebody increases their carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, e.g., by driving a sports car very fast, this does not have immediate negative consequences for the person. However, when many people do this constantly, it could have (but it is not sure to have) severe negative consequences for many other people, decades or centuries later. In general, the value of a reward is reduced the further off the reward lies in the future. Thus, the brain favors a small but immediate reward (driving a sports car) over a big but delayed reward (showing climate-friendly behavior and thus reducing the risk of wildfires and other extreme climate events in the decades to come).

Everybody would probably agree that it is a worthy cause to try to make the Earth an inhabitable planet for future generations. But since this reward is so intangible and complex and unrelated to everyday life in the here-and-now, it is difficult for people to focus on it and ignore the small reward now. Very likely, there will be no tangible reward for someone who lives their whole life climate-friendly, as they may be dead and gone by the time their actions have any consequences. This so-called “delay discounting” of the dopamine system could be the reason why it is often so difficult to get people to change their habits to take action against the climate crisis.

What can be done to promote climate-friendly behavior

Interestingly, Munuera and Burguière (2022) suggest that this knowledge about the dopamine system may also be helpful in fighting the climate crisis. Specifically, they suggest that it is crucial to promote climate-friendly behavior that has immediate positive effects, so that the reward is not delayed. For example, they suggest that city gardening is helpful in increasing biodiversity, increases the re-uptake of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since more plants are present in the city, and can help in reducing heat waves. Importantly, seeing a city garden grow and harvest its produce can be an immediate reward for people within a few months or weeks. Thus, promoting such initiatives as making cities greener may be more successful than asking people to abandon their cars or stop flying.

Moreover, the scientists suggested promoting so-called intrinsic rewards for climate-friendly action. For example, it can be a positive feeling to know that one’s action made the Earth a better place for future generations. Making the psychological benefits of climate-friendly action clear to people thus may also help to foster them.

Dopamine Essential Reads

Social Media Influencers and Dopamine Overdose

3 Activities to Beneficially Release Dopamine

Moreover, Munuera and Burguière (2022) suggest giving people immediate rewards for climate-friendly behavior by using economic tools. For example, people could get bonuses for climate-friendly behavior such as using a train instead of a car. This could be like the miles-collecting system many airlines have.

Last, but not least, the scientists suggest promoting education on the severe long-term consequences of the climate crisis. While such knowledge would not directly affect the dopamine system, it could affect other brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex relevant for higher cognitive functions and decision-making, that could regulate the dopamine system.

These ideas are speculative, but they make one thing clear: Further investigating the role of the dopamine system and how it interacts with other parts of the brain may be very important for researchers to understand the causes of the climate crisis and how to fight it.