Making climate-friendly lifestyle choices isn’t always easy. India learned the hard way

BENGALURU, India (AP) — For nearly four years, India’s government pushed an initiative to get people to think about how to make lifestyle choices that pollute less, like cycling instead of driving or using less plastic.

But in the country’s yearly budget announcement last weekend, the once-flagship program failed to get a mention — or any promise of future funding.

The Lifestyle for Environment Initiative — or Mission Life as it’s more commonly known — was once championed by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers as a major step toward the country’s climate goals. The idea was to get the whole population working to slash emissions by cutting electricity use or skipping unnecessary private car journeys. But it’s fallen out of favor: Mission Life’s dedicated government website used to provide monthly updates on the initiative’s progress, but there hasn’t been an update since March 2024.

It shows how difficult making large-scale changes in people’s everyday lives really is, especially without financial incentives, experts say. But lessons learned can help shape policy in the future that could be more successful at getting a significant percentage of the population to ditch their more polluting habits.

Why is it so hard to make climate-friendly choices?

Latha Girish, who owns a company in Bengaluru that makes plastic packaging for industrial-scale food storage and refrigeration, says she’s occupied with making sure her business survives, not its emissions. Many small business owners “don’t have the luxury of thinking about the environment,” she said. “Ask anybody in our sector, I’m sure they won’t know about Mission Life or any other such initiative.”

Anything that puts her business’ prices up — like