Our understanding often guides our actions. For example, we can understand how our diet affects our health, and therefore, we are likely to eat a healthier diet. This line of reasoning can be applied to other scientific, technical, or social domains. However, it implies a behavioural 'leap' between what we know and why we act. Similarly, we might understand how the causes or consequences of climate change work, and therefore, do we want to take better climate actions?

This latter example highlights our starting point: the understanding of climate change, which is often fragmented, biased, and limited, does not necessarily determine our actions to combat it. In addition to this agency problem, we must also consider the nature of the climate crisis and its inherent complexity. The intricate relationship between causes, consequences, actors, or magnitude makes even the first assumption difficult to fulfill: we may not even fully understand the real implications of the climate crisis.

This project examines the relationship between knowledge and action in the context of climate change, with a special focus on the influence of emotions, motivation, and decisionmaking. We have set three main goals and three secondary ones. Our first goal is to conduct an interdisciplinary analysis of how moral emotions, in their natural motivational role, influence climate action. This analysis will involve a comprehensive evaluation of emotions and their corresponding behavioural and group manifestations. As a secondary goal, we aim to conduct experimental research on different forms of emotionally motivated action. Secondly, this study aims to analyse the cognitive and moral mechanisms that underpin human actions. Special attention will be given to our way of processing information, such as heuristics, common sense judgments, and decision-making architecture. Additionally, we would like to investigate the applicability of this cognitive design to other similar global issues, such as racism or speciesism. Finally, our third goal is to implement our key findings by disseminating the results and tailoring potential measures to our real human fallibility. In this context, a secondary aim is to empirically explore the concepts of sacrifice and effort, their meanings, and variability.

In summary, this research project aims to investigate the underlying reasons for the effectiveness of climate policies. We intend to analyse the reasons for a more effective climate policy in the face of excessive—and often ineffective—climate legislation.