Pork or cheese? SUVs or trucks? Test to see if you know what's better for the environment

Imagine you’re ordering lunch in a restaurant, selecting a protein to add to your salad. What would be your best choice as far as carbon emissions? How would you judge?

Or you’re about to go on vacation and must decide how to get there. What method of travel would contribute the most in greenhouse gas emissions? 

If you don’t know, you’re not alone.

Researchers from say that many ordinary Americans can’t estimate the carbon footprint of their everyday choices accurately — whether booking a hotel room or buying a burger.

The ubiquity of carbon incompetence is at the center of the recent study  

As you might expect, experts have a better grasp of the subject but for everyone else, political ideology, concern about climate change or confidence in their carbon knowledge failed to help.

That’s a problem for people who want to live sustainably. Consumers appear increasingly willing to pay a premium for greener choices; but if they’re going to make a difference, they must choose correctly when they buy, boycott or invest. Otherwise they can easily fall victim to greenwashing, when companies and others market their products and services as more environmentally friendly than they really are. 

Humans are responsible for nearly all of the increases in greenhouse gas emissions over the last 150 years, the researchers write, so it’s reasonable to think of emissions as the product of collective consumer decisions. 

And while there is a need for policy interventions to reduce the emissions responsible for climate change, individuals can have an impact. They can reduce the amount of waste they produce, for example, or cut their electrical use.

For changes to be effective, consumers must be able to measure what they are doing and seek better alternatives when not satisfied with results.

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How do you think you would do?

Here's a question from the team at Columbia.

Please consider the following 5 actions and rank how effective you think these actions are at reducing annual carbon emissions. To rank them, click and drag each action into the order of most effective (at the top) to least effective (at the bottom).

Remember, the "most effective" action is the one that you believe has the largest annual impact on mitigating climate change. Not sure? Give it your best guess.

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The researchers have done five studies in all. Participants were asked to rank their own behavior in terms of emissions, then seven industries and finally 27 firms within those industries both for overall emissions and those associated with fulfilling a $100 order. The industries were airlines, apparel and footwear, lodging, non-alcoholic beverages, personal care and home products, restaurants, and wireless communications. 

From the results, it's unclear whether people know which firms are the best or worst emitters or which industries emit more than others, the researchers wrote. Their answers are not far off from what you would expect if they chose at random. 

“Everybody but the experts is essentially doing this at random,” said Eric J. Johnson, a professor at Columbia Business School and a lead author of the greenhouse gas emissions study. 

Here’s one example of a miscalculation: Participants gauged correctly that airlines emit exceptionally high levels of emissions, but judged that the fast fashion industry was worse than it is.

“There’s a widespread belief that fast fashion is bad — and it's not good — but I think people think it's an important industry to worry about,” said Johnson, the author of "The Elements of Choice" and director of the school's Center for the Decision Sciences. “And it is, but it's much less important than, say something like airlines.”

Another phenomenon might also be at work. Faced with a difficult question they cannot answer, people sometimes answer a different one they know something about, Johnson said.

For example, someone deciding which would minimize emissions the most, lunch from Chipotle or McDonald’s, might rely on Chipotle’s advertising emphasis on health, although health benefits may or may not correlate with emissions.

Future studies will ask the same questions in India, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia to find out if the lack of knowledge is global.

Johnson noted how hard it is to decipher carbon emissions. That’s something he would like to change, and thinks labels similar to what’s on food could be the solution. 

“There’s no labeling when it comes to carbon emissions,” Johnson said.

Test your knowledge

You can do your part in reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Test your knowledge here in this quiz.

Eli Rosen Sugerman of the Columbia Business School helped to compile questions for the above quiz. Sugerman is a co-author of the study "Widespread misestimates of greenhouse gas emissions suggest low carbon competence.”