this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
41 points (100.0% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
6862 readers
1046 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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.
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.