this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
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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.
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.
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.