Tipping points ahead? How laypeople respond to linear versus nonlinear climate change predictions.

We investigate whether communication strategies that portray climate change as a nonlinear phenomenon provoke increases in laypeople's climate change risk perceptions. In a high-powered, preregistered online experiment, participants were exposed to linear or nonlinear predictions of future temperature increases that would be expected if global greenhouse gas emissions were not reduced. We hypothesized that the type of climate change portrayal would impact perceptions of qualitative risk characteristics (catastrophic potential, controllability of consequences) which would, in turn, affect laypeople's holistic risk perceptions.

The coronavirus pandemic as an analogy for future sustainability challenges.

The current coronavirus outbreak may provide an illustrative analogy for sustainability challenges, exemplifying how challenges such as climate change may become wicked problems demanding novel and drastic solution attempts.

Global and regional probabilities of major nuclear reactor accidents.

The continued and extended use of nuclear power is often considered and discussed as a viable energy policy option to meet energy demands while also meeting national CO emission reduction goals. A central issue in energy policy for sustainability is the question of nuclear reactor safety. However, studies on nuclear reactor safety often run up against the problem of estimating the probability of a major accident from patchy and limited empirical data.

Navigating cognition biases in the search of sustainability.

We provide a conceptual review of the available knowledge on the role of human cognition biases for sustainability and sustainable behavior. Human cognition biases are defined as any deviation in decision making from the standard framework of rational choice. We distinguish between biases in individual decision making and biases in group decision making, and highlight the relevance of each for sustainable behavior.