Hawaiians are the Future of Low Carbon Transportation

Author: James Brooks, Chairperson of Think Beyond the Pump

SB 506 would make a climate change and public health warning label mandatory at all gas pumps in Hawai’i. 

Duke University physicist Drew Shindell estimates that every gallon of regular unleaded gas burned now costs society $6.50 — $8 for diesel – in climate and public health related expenditures. With every gas consumer currently absorbing these rising costs, it will be imperative Hawaiian gas consumers know these hidden harms not to mention, the need for oil companies to disclose them at the point of sale.

But electric vehicles for instance, thanks to government incentives and improved manufacturing techniques, are already reaching price parity with internal combustion. It seems reasonable then that these gas pump labels may be a distraction from the more important work of say, investing aggressively in public charging infrastructure? 

Or maybe, the super-low carbon, and equitable, future passenger transportation paradigm we will need to adopt, won’t involve a simple swapping-out of ICE vehicles for EV? While U.C. Davis transportation engineering professor Dan Sperling agrees transportation will need to be electrified, this new paradigm will be in a much more public transit-oriented arrangement. In addition to our existing public transit system, to reach our emissions cutting goals of carbon neutrality by 2045, people will need to increasingly eschew private car ownership he says, and choose ridesharing and carpooling summoned through their ride-sharing app. 

While we can debate the feasibility of such lifestyle changes, the point is everyday people will shape this new transportation paradigm through the behavioral changes they are willing, and able, to make. From this perspective, transparency at the pump is a sort of baseline where the labels will meet consumers where they are. That is, the public’s understanding of the harmful effects from burning gasoline and diesel it turns out, isn’t very good. “Warming labels” are a public interest, consumer-right-to-know imperative in a democracy. The labels in this context, would be an essential public education tool where it is better more people know gas burning harms the climate and health. 

Sure, when people are exposed to the label, they’ll still need to buy the gas. But the labels also can in the immediate sense, increase awareness that gas combustion has harmful effects and improve the odds consumers en masse, will ponder what the gas-free transportation alternatives are. With a commensurate response to shifting attitudes on the commercial and policy side, I might add. A more comprehensive transportation emissions policy then, would educate the consumer about these invisible damages and especially, when two in three registered voters (65%) think developing clean energy should be a high or very high priority. 

From this angle, transparency at the pump would inject a sense of urgency about these dangers when most people would say conversely, switching from gas to electrons (to cut emissions) is not their top priority. The low-salience in which most people conceptualize the urgency of climate change in their personal life make other broad and probably more consequential policies to reduce emissions, like carbon taxes, a tough sell. Part of the job of transitioning to low-emissions transportation then would involve shifting public opinion about conventional fuels.

Research shows the labels which instigate social norms could play a crucial role in transitioning more people to EVs perhaps — running increasingly on solar and wind in Hawai’i — by altering people’s perceptions of (highly polluting) fuels. Studies done on cigarette warning labels, carbon labels on locally produced apples, and Proposition 65 labels in California, have shown their capacity to permanently shift individual and group attitudes and behavior.

Labels would target inimical public perceptions there is now an urgent need to reduce emissions. Transparency obviously because the people who most need to see the information can’t see these external costs flying out of their wallets. But also, labels are a stop gap where we can’t afford to be overly reliant on the vicissitudes of markets that don’t currently pay the full external costs of these fuels. 

An expedient market instrument is urgently needed, and this is where labels fit in. So how do they work? Fortuitously, people exposed to the public health language on the label, “burning gasoline, diesel, and ethanol has major consequences on human health”, is likely to produce the greatest level of concern about the problem of gas burning. In addition, most people agree climate change is a serious threat and think others should do more to address it. Labels (i.e., transparency), by eliciting already-held concerns about fossil fuel at scale, can mobilize broader concerns about gas consumption. Improved understanding of the health risks from smoking have made it virtually unthinkable to smoke in public places these days. The advent of cigarette warnings messaging already popular health concerns about smoking have created new social rules about smoking in public. Not being able to smoke in most public places, which is more or less self-regulating these days, is a level of social protection available for non-smokers that didn’t exist before 1965. 

Similar, warming labels would enhance individual understanding of the climate change and public health effects from consuming these fuels. That burning gas has dangerous consequences is already popular, will help create appropriately negative popular conceptions about these fuels. A consensus agreeing with the message on the label will increase its certainty and provide the long-term impetus for individuals to consider less carbon-intense modes of transport. Namely, that a transition to clean mobility in Hawai’i if it is to be durable, will have to be led by Hawaiians themselves. This in turn, is reliant on a sustained increase in decision making capacity by gas consumers. The much-needed public investments in clean transportation infrastructure along with other policies, will need to coalesce with Hawaiians agreeing these investments are needed.