People often make wrong climate choices, a study says. One surprise is owning a dog
By The Associated Press
Published: Aug. 13, 2025 at 11:53 AM EDT|Updated: 19 hours ago
It turns out many Americans aren’t great at identifying which personal decisions contribute most to climate change.
A study recently published by the National Academy of Sciences found that when asked to rank actions, such as swapping a car that uses gasoline for an electric one, carpooling or reducing food waste, participants weren’t very accurate when assessing how much those actions contributed to climate change, which is caused mostly by the release of greenhouse gases that happen when fuels like gasoline, oil and coal are burned.
“People over-assign impact to actually pretty low-impact actions such as recycling, and underestimate the actual carbon impact of behaviors much more carbon intensive, like flying or eating meat," said Madalina Vlasceanu, report co-author and professor of environmental social sciences at Stanford University.
The top three individual actions that help the climate, including avoiding plane flights, choosing not to get a dog and using renewable electricity, were also the three that participants underestimated the most. Meanwhile, the lowest-impact actions were changing to more efficient appliances and swapping out light bulbs, recycling, and using less energy on washing clothes. Those were three of the top four overestimated actions in the report.
https://www.wcax.com/2025/08/13/people-often-make-wrong-climate-choices-study-says-one-surprise-is-owning-dog/
