Psychology has a lot to offer the climate change debate. To date, the emphasis from psychologists has largely focused on behaviour-change strategies. This makes sense: if you are interested in changing people's personal behaviour, a psychologist is probably the person you need to speak to. But my concern over the last few years is just how effective this is. It is effective up to a point, but is it really going to bring in the returns that we need to address the very serious problems of climate change?

My line is that we can try to change behaviour, but it might be more effective to change the conditions that encourage our behaviours. There is a debate being had within psychology that we should aim for environmentally significant behaviour as opposed to environmentally convenient behaviour. Not focusing on turning lights off etc, but instead concentrating on things such as buying energy-efficient appliances.

But I would take this further: psychologists now need to work with other disciplines, such as engineering, sociology etc. We need to have a much better understanding of the conditions which lead to unsustainable behaviour. It's no good the government saying to us that for journeys less than a mile you should walk or use public transport because when you are trying to juggle demands, such as your job and children within limited time, you are probably going to take your car. We need to change the conditions rather than attack individual behaviours.

There's been a lot of finger-wagging and people resent that. They also notice the contradictions. One of the things that came out of a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs survey in 2007 was that we would do more if the government did more. We see double standards. People also need feedback on how they're doing. People need to know explicitly what the benefits are of what they are being asked to do. People are not interested in concepts such as "saving the planet" or "doing it for their grandchildren". People want impacts that are concrete, immediate and personal to them. They need to see how it's benefiting them. If they are being asked to make - what they see in their terms, at least - as a sacrifice, they need to see what the benefit is to them.