Whether intentional or not, holding climate professionals to unrealistic standards is a tactic which delays effective climate action. It slows down climate action by redirecting responsibility and foregrounding low-impact solutions.
Whether intentional or not, holding climate professionals to unrealistic standards is a tactic which delays effective climate action. It slows down climate action by redirecting responsibility and foregrounding low-impact solutions.
I think this article identifies a genuine problem but comes up with the exact wrong solution.
The problem is accusations of perceived hypocrisy. Climate opponents claim that climate professionals aren’t living their values. They dictate rules for living to others that they don’t follow themselves. This makes climate professionals look dishonest and untrustworthy, and is used not just to discredit individual advocates but call all of environmental science and policy into question.
The solution the article suggests is to stop accusing climate scientists of hypocrisy because we all have to live in a broken system. Which is absolutely true. We do.
However. The people who accuse climate advocates of hypocrisy aren’t going to listen to that.
Here’s the way I see it. In the conversation, we have climate supporters, who believe in the science and want good climate policy; climate opponents, who want to block good climate policy; and undecided people, who don’t know about the science and/or don’t have strong opinions on policy.
Accusations of hypocrisy against climate professionals come overwhelmingly from climate opponents. The purpose of these accusations is to sway undecided people, who don’t know much about the science and who give more weight to the perceived trustworthiness of climate professionals, and their fellow climate opponents, to discourage them from listening to climate professionals and possibly changing their minds.
And then people who hear these accusations repeat them to their friends and neighbors and family. And if people have friends or neighbors or family who they personally know aren’t living their purported climate values, those accusations start sounding even more credible.
Look. The average American is not an expert on climate science. The average American doesn’t understand, in detail, the data and the sources behind the data. In order for the average American to believe in climate science, they need to trust climate scientists to be honest and provide truthful data.
The average American does understand hypocrisy and morality. And when climate professionals are credibly accused of behaving in ways inconsistent with their stated values, that harms Americans’ trust in the climate science.
Telling climate opponents not to accuse climate professionals of hypocrisy is pointless. They do it because it works. They will keep doing it because it works. Because their goal is to block climate policy and they’ll use whatever tools they have to do that.
Which is why, I think, it’s important for climate supporters - especially climate advocates - to live their values as far as they can, and to be able to talk about how they live their values. And when they’re not able to live their values - for instance, climate advocates needing to fly around the country for political rallies to build collective action - they should be able to explain why they’re not living their values and how they’re trying to make up for it in other areas.
So that when some friend or family member repeats a “gotcha” like “but you flew to Dublin for an environmental conference, lol” you can respond with “Yes, and I offset that consumption with x, y, and z, and I signed a petition to make next year’s conference virtual, and” etc, etc, etc. Show that the environment matters to you morally and that you are trying to do the right thing. Not only does it deflect the accusation of hypocrisy but it makes you appear more credible on the science.
It may not seem like it in the current political climate, but honesty still matters. Consistency still matters. Honor still matters.
And whether you’re Taylor Swift, burning enough jet fuel to heat a small country, or Joe Public the EPA paperwork drone, leaving your car running in the driveway for twenty minutes to warm it up before work, your personal consumption does matter. And the example you set to people who know you matters even more.
Most of the public opinion on this isn’t former through personal conversations with climate activists. It’s formed through mass consumption of the media, and the information environment currently maintained by the corporate media environment will never allow for that much context. Even if they mention carbon offsets momentarily they’ll follow it up with a 20 mins opinion segment from some lunatic just giving his opinion about how hypocritical it is regardless.
Even if they understand it, they certainly don’t care about it enough to vote based on it.
I agree. But this mass consumption trickles down. Alex Jones or whoever spews climate bullshit, and your conservative relatives internalize it, and then repeat it to other family members and spread it further.
If you’re a climate activist, maybe you have a big enough platform to challenge media directly - the left has been absolute shit at mainstream social media and if they don’t mount a successful challenge to alt right dominance of the Internet we’re fucked.
But even as just an ordinary person who cares about climate, you’re going to hear people in your family or community repeat the propaganda. And that’s your chance to push back.
This is true for all conservative propaganda, not just climate.
But specifically regarding hypocrisy, I think the most effective response is to, in fact, engage in individual actions that live your climate values. Reduce your carbon footprint. Eat more plants. Take public transit instead of driving.
These are examples of possible actions, not specific mandates. If you can’t take public transit for whatever reason, don’t. But do something. And be prepared to talk about it.
You should do that so that if you are accused of hypocrisy you can push back and say “no, I live my moral values, and here’s how.” And climate activists should do the same, and publicize it, so when they are attacked by bad faith conservatives with false accusations of hypocrisy they can push back. And you can speak up in their defense when people around you attack them.
One of the ugliest victories of modern conservatism is rooted in the fact that this is wrong.
Because Americans do care about hypocrisy and morality.
And conservative media has convinced half of America that all politicians are corrupt, and liberal politicians are more corrupt than conservative politicians, so that the left has no moral basis to accuse the right of corruption.
American conservatives ignore the left when the left accuses the right of corruption, because they’ve been convinced the left is thoroughly corrupt and it’s hypocritical of them to call out corruption in others.
So when Trump is accused, rightfully, of nepotism and bribery and an overwhelming amount of obvious public corruption, American conservatives ignore it. Because American conservatives believe Trump is only doing, openly, what every politician has done secretly. I mean, how the fuck can Chuck Schumer accuse Trump of, say, insider training, for swinging the stock market with ridiculous tariff announcements and retractions, when Chuck has been insider trading on secret Senate information for decades?
And because American conservatives see left-wing politicians as corrupt and hypocritical and dishonest, they happily ignore every accusation they make her against Trump.
That’s why Bernie and AOC are so popular right now, because they have reputations for living their values, so when they go out and flip their shit about economic injustice, people listen.
Harris, during her campaign, tried to publicize a coalition of “good billionaires” support her to challenge Trump’s bad billionaires. Which, I’ll admit, is Harris living her values. But her values are shit and she lost for it.
Anyway, yeah. It’s because the American people care about hypocrisy that conservatives feel free to ignore criticism of Trump’s corruption. They think the liberal politicians accusing Trump are just as corrupt, if not more.
And the only solution to this is restoring honor to the American political system - getting a left-wing politician, or a coalition of politicians, that are widely seen as trustworthy and incorruptible, to lead the American left, instead of the usual DNC corruption and fuckery. And after the shitshow that was 2024 I’m not sure where someone like that will come from.
I believe this was the whole (or most of) the explanation at one point, but here in Trump’s second term I simply don’t believe it. The evangelicals who support Trump have long since simply made their peace the hypocrisy - he is God’s instrument no matter how personally flawed. Much of the rest of his base see hypocrisy as a sign of strength - yeah we condemn stuff and then do it ourselves , and we win anyways. Wtf are you going to do about it loser?
Your whole explanation seems like a post-hoc rationalization based on the increasingly untenable assumption that most people are genuinely good if you just get past all the noise. Evidence suggests that people will gladly vote for a wretched person like Trump if they think it means they’ll pay $50 less in taxes, all else be damned.
Trump is the culmination of long-festering sicknesses in American culture, not just the result of a media scam that just happened to bear fruit now.
Problem is that no matter what you do or excuses you give, critical trolls can always point to something you can do better.
Like eating meat causes more emissions than a vegan diet, not working from home causes emissions, visiting family out of town causes emissions, buying anything with plastic in your life is supporting the oil industry, etc. etc. You can do some of that but you can’t do it all, at the same time. All stuff with a small grain of truth but designed to confuse and distract with no regard to relative value, since each one will need a different excuse or metric to counteract, when in the time to refute one, ten more can sprout up. All the while, each “hypocritical” thing is merely an excuse for the accuser’s inaction, but the attention has been misdirected to what the ‘environmentally conscious’ advocate is doing wrong.
Absolutely. People who don’t argue in good faith won’t argue in good faith. Responding to such people in public is not about convincing them - it’s about swaying the audience listening to your conversation.
The people we want to convince are the people who want to argue in good faith, who care about understanding reality and doing the right thing, and who aren’t climate experts themselves so have to choose what experts to trust.
Those people are actually swayed by those bad faith accusations of hypocrisy - and can be swayed back by proof that you (or whatever climate professional is under attack) is not a hypocrite and is making a good faith effort to do the right thing.
A lot of time is wasted on arguments made in bad faith that have already been debunked ten times over, trying to get through to a reactionary for the 11th time is unlikely to work. Maybe there should be more emphasis on the overarching mechanism of disinformation which you describe, and how it’s intended to stop people from taking any action at all. I feel like this educational approach will be a more friendly for people who are still capable of changing their mind.
99% of conservative arguments on climate boil down to:
There is no reason to it, pointing out the absurdity and nihilism of this might be more effective.
Exactly. My strategy is to focus is less on the whatabouts, and show that every change in the direction of desirable progress adds up, rather than allow deficiencies from an impossibly high or constantly moving goal-post standard of true progress serve as barriers.