Recycling Helps, but don't stop there
by Alina Tugend
Gernot Wagner, an economist with the Environmental Defense Fund and author of “But Will the Planet Notice: How Smart Economics Can Save the World,” (Hill and Wang, 2011), agrees. “There’s a well-documented phenomenon known as single-action bias, where people do one thing and move on,” he said. “People don’t explicitly think, ‘I’ve recycled a cup and solved global warming,’ but rather once they’ve done an action like recycling, they feel consciously or subconsciously like they’ve done their part.”
Full column in the New York Times.