Climate concern is on the rise in many countries and recent research finds that lifestyle- and behaviour-change could advance climate action; yet, individuals struggle to move their climate concern into action. This is known as the ‘awareness-action inconsistency,’ ‘psychological climate paradox,’ or ‘values-action gap.’ While this gap has been extensively studied, climate action implementation and policy-design seldom sufficiently apply that body of knowledge in practice. This Perspective presents a comprehensive heuristic to account for how individuals bring climate change into their awareness (climate action-logics), how they keep climate change out of their awareness (climate shadow), how social narratives contribute to shaping choices (climate discourses), and how systems and structures influence and constrain agency (climate-action systems). The heuristic is illustrated with an example of 15-Minute Cities in Canada. Understanding the multifaceted dilemma that weighs on people’s sense-making and behaviours may help policy-makers and practitioners to ameliorate the climate awareness-action gap.

许多国家对气候问题的关注日益增加，最近的研究发现生活方式和行为的改变可以推动气候行动；然而，个人却在努力将他们的气候关注付诸行动。这被称为“意识与行动的不一致”、“心理气候悖论”或“价值观与行动的差距”。尽管这一差距已得到广泛研究，但气候行动的实施和政策设计很少在实践中充分应用这些知识。本视角提出了一种全面的启发式方法，以解释个人如何将气候变化带入他们的意识（气候行动逻辑），他们如何将气候变化排除在他们的意识之外（气候阴影），社会叙事如何有助于塑造选择（气候话语），以及系统和结构如何影响和约束机构（气候行动系统）。以加拿大 15 分钟城市为例说明了这一启发式方法。了解影响人们认知和行为的多方面困境可能有助于政策制定者和实践者缩小气候意识与行动之间的差距。