How to feng shui your fridge — and other happy climate hacks | Jiaying Zhao (re-release)

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu.
You've heard tactical changes we should make to curb climate change. Drive less, eat less meat, shop less. But what if the key to saving the planet is actually about being happier? Behavioral scientist Jiaying Zhao thinks so.

**Jiaying Zhao** (0:24)
When most people think about climate action, they immediately default to things that have to give up for the planet.
This mindset is so ingrained in us, partly because the current narrative on climate action is about personal sacrifice. Drive less, eat less meat, shop less. Less, less, less.

**Elise Hu** (0:44)
In this talk from 2023, Jiaying and her colleague Elizabeth Dunn, a happiness scientist, set out to answer a question nobody had quite asked before.
What if the things that are good for the planet could also be good for you?
She calls it the happy climate approach.

**Jiaying Zhao** (0:59)
Let's take a look at perhaps the messiest part of everybody's home. The fridge. I don't think the fridge is designed with human behavior in mind. We often forget about the things in the drawers, and that can lead to a lot of food waste and emissions. So what's the happy climate action here?
Feng shui your fridge.

**Elise Hu** (1:22)
That's coming up right after a short break. And now, our TED Talk of the day.

**Jiaying Zhao** (1:36)
Hey, everyone. I'm Jay-Z. Not the cool rapper, but the professor trying to cool the planet through behavior change.
The other day, I gave my students an assignment. I asked them to come up with individual actions they can take that serve two functions. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make themselves feel happier. They did a great job coming up with actions to reduce emissions, but they had a much harder time with the happiness part. One student told me that he wanted to cut back on cheese, but right after he said that, he got really sad.
Unfortunately, my students are not alone. When most people think about climate action, they immediately default to things they have to give up for the planet. This mindset is so ingrained in us, partly because the current narrative on climate action is about personal sacrifice.
Drive less, eat less meat, shop less, less, less, less. Now, I'm a behavior scientist, so trust me when I say this, this framing doesn't make us feel great. If anything, it makes us feel shameful and guilty. Those negative emotions are not conducive to long-term behavior change because they make us retreat and disengage.
If the future of a planet depends on a few people willing to make personal sacrifices, we're not going to make it.
So what should we do instead?
The aha moment came to me at the end of a faculty meeting when my colleague Elizabeth Dunn approached me and asked, can we make climate action feel happy instead of miserable? I said, of course. But then it struck me that I don't think anyone ever connected happiness to climate action. So Liz and I sat down to do exactly that.
Liz is a happiness scientist. She knows what makes people happy. I'm a behavioral scientist. I know what makes people change their behavior. I'm also a human carbon calculator. I like figuring out exactly how much emissions certain activities have. So first, I came up with a list of actions that can substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And then Liz identified the actions with the largest happiness benefits. And this is how we came up with what we call the happy climate approach. It's actions in the sweet spot that not only reduce emissions, but also make you feel happier at the same time.
Now, I know that some of you might think that individual actions may seem trivial without large-scale system change. I get that. But let me tell you how I think about this as a behavior change expert. Our individual actions do matter because they embody our values and our care for the planet to other people. They can spread like a ripple effect to instigate collective action. They send a market signal to businesses, and they can trigger broader structural institutional change. So yes, we do need system change, but we also need individual behavior change. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. All right. Now, I want to take you on a whirlwind tour through some of my favorite happy climate actions. Are you ready? Great. Let's start with my pet bunny, since this is the year of the rabbit. A few years ago, my partner and I adopted Greenwich.
She's adorable. She's also a vegan. We have so many plants, vegetables and fruits in our house, thanks to Greenwich. And because of that, I'm eating a lot more vegetables myself than I used to. And I'm not kidding. I'm feeling a lot happier. Eating more plants can reduce agricultural emissions by up to 80 percent. I guess that part you may have known before. But do you also know that a plant-based diet can make you feel happier? Decades of medical studies suggest that a plant-based diet can increase both physical and mental health. In a recent experiment, researchers recruited people from North Dakota who barely ate any vegetables. And they fed these people a plant-based diet for two months. These people on this diet felt a lot happier at the end of two months. And they did before they started the experiment. So researchers think that this is because plants, so fruits, vegetables, are high in vitamins and phytochemicals that provide both antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits to the brain and the body. So the happy climate action here is, eat more plants.