Building Technology for Sustainable Food Future | Food & Climate Entrepreneur | TEDx Speaker
You can't be an environmentalist and eat meat. You can't be an environmentalist and fly. You can't be an environmentalist and use plastic. You can't be an environmentalist and use fossil-based energy. You can't be an environmentalist and drive, even an EV. You can't be an environmentalist and ... You can't be an environmentalist. If being perfect is the only way, we will not make any progress. Many well-meaning people advocate for absolutes because they believe so strongly in their cause. I admire and share much of that passion. And yet, blaming or shaming people for making incremental and imperfect change is entirely unproductive. Climate activists, environmentalists, and advocates live and work in modern society; therefore, they are not perfect. Let's not waste our time looking for perfection, but instead celebrate and elevate progress and those working their hearts out to make it happen. #climate #climatechange #activism #environment
I understand the point you're trying to make but I think you're making it poorly. The issue at hand is that most people do nothing to change their behavior in line with their ethical beliefs and convincing them do do so, even incrementally, is how we slowly make change. But people who consider themselves climate communicators, scholars, and activists ("environmentalists") have more onus on them to walk the talk on their messages. Studies show that this makes them more effective communicators and, conversely, that being seem to be hypocritical reduces audience support. There is a broad difference between celebrating incremental progress for people who are not in the public arena [edit] or communicating these ideas and giving a pass to "environmentalists" who don't walk the talk. I think your post conflates the two. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-019-02463-0
The difference is I can stop eating and wearing animals (and I have) and still live a perfectly productive life. It’s much harder to completely cut out air travel, and certainly plastic. It’s still challenging to transition your whole life to sustainable energy. So the bare minimum you can do to save the planet is to adopt a vegan lifestyle. Not pointing fingers, necessarily. Just my perspective.
I agree with all of those except the meat one. There's no good reason to eat meat, and it is a choice that most people could easily make with no impact on quality of life. Many people require a car to get to work, and plastic is ubiquitous in today's society. I think veganism is something that the vast majority of Global North self-described environmentalists could do without any major problems. It's not about being perfect, it's about living in alignment with our values.
Honestly: If you are an environmentalist and you change nothing in your own behavior, you are not an environmentalist. Point.
Irina Gerry wow, one of your examples really overshadowed the larger message for your readers. Were you expecting that?
A few years ago, I set a timer on Twitter one day to measure how many times I was guilted, and by whom. Within three hours, I was guilted 12 times — and more than half of those came from people who were worried about climate change, but felt I had failed one of their 10 commandments of green living. As I explain here, shaming and judging others is a zero sum game. It makes us feel temporarily better (for a second) and it discourages them from acting. https://x.com/KHayhoe/status/1441892742620139520
It feels ironic that a lot of the people commenting and critiquing are proving your point Irina Gerry...
YES
Business Development Representative I Prospectador digital I Setter & Closer I Generando leads de alta conversión I Conexiones humanas por un mundo mejor
2wGood reflexion Irina Gerry and thank you for sharing. Be as good as you can be. It might not be always easy to avoid using an airplane or a car (if you want to avoid walking or taking ships to go from London to New York). In a practical way: eating more plant based is easy to do (every day more and more) and with that change alone you will be making a HUGE IMPACT (and you can still eat delicious food). To understand and know more about the facts of a plant based diet for the environment, Pro-Veg has done a great work summarizing many of this data here: https://proveg.org/five-pros/a-plant-based-diet-is-better-for-the-environment/ To share one fact of this article from Pro-Veg: "The goals set in the Paris Agreement in 2015 – aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5°C in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming – will not be possible if current food-consumption behaviours are maintained, even if current fossil fuel emissions are completely halted." Happy to talk more about it if you see it fit.