If you imagine people as ‘on strike’, who say no to anything that means working more or doing anything themselves, then what you need is habit breaking science.

If their habit is to drive cars and fly planes and watch media that’s entertainment only and fight or battle and say no to things like de-development or negative growth, and they say ‘no’ to plant based diets or eg. Ceasing caffeine or alcohol, or are reluctant to quit damaging but cushy jobs, even if they complain about the low income when they are in the top 1% or 2% of income earners on earth, you’ll be stuck with a lot of people who are nearly impossible to persuade to take the path of leadership. It gets worse when they want to build more things or make everything they have bigger or more luxurious but don’t want to recycle or remove the old things.

You’re essentially stuck needing to break thousands of interlocking habits. Where people are social and those habits are reinforced in families or in friendships and positive change towards ecological sustainability or resource sharing or responsible consumption exists, it’s more than science that is needed.. it’s massive data science. The social interject to break the habit or disrupt it to lift the person to a place where they are no longer the burden to the planet, causing the extinctions, is tricky.

Typically media is used. Eg. A shocking show on animal welfare. Or a report loaded with hyperbole on some catastrophe. Or something creating social terror via financial stress. Or legislation change that enables an industry to be penalised for terrible carelessly destructive to ecosystem activity. What was the latest? Oh - no doubt it’s real. The rain with PFAS PFOS OR PFOA, no longer drinkable, without a measurable risk increase. To hopefully reduce people consuming rain, as it’s so despairingly depressing to see the cataclysmic extinctions seemingly unavoidable, as all the ecosystems are fragmented and lacking water and the climate changes causing many species to loose habitat that includes food or water, as the environmental ranges or biological thresholds of the suffering life is exceeded, and the captive species are unable to migrate.

This is in all places where cities but especially suburban sprawl and farmland exists, and parks are isolated and not connected, and only rarely have sound water resources that would see through drought or seasonal thermal variations.

The ‘interjection’ - to break habits, is not vicious or hurtful or inciting angst, the goal is simply to save the person from their own routine. It’s a ‘how to avoid the tragedy of the commons’ habit breaker. It could be as simple as getting people to stop tea or coffee. Or to choose to drive less or not at all. Or to skip a flight for a HD video link or a recommendation to visit somewhere local that is similar.

The science of breaking routines and habits.. is there one?