Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Pat – Guardian Climate Agoniser Madeleine Somerville, who has a BA Sociology, with a concentration in Criminology, Deviance and Social Control, has provided what might be the most hilarious excuse ever, for not personally practicing the green philosophy which she preaches.
… This hypocrisy is a delicate balancing act. It speaks to the seemingly inescapable reality of this North American machine we’ve built and which now runs our life.
In order to avoid it, one needs to escape to the woods, go off the grid. You’ll subtract most of your environmental impact by doing so. I think everyone fantasises about it from time to time (I certainly do), but you’ll also lose priceless human connection and culture, alongside the ability to educate or inspire change in others.
The fear of navigating this cognitive dissonance, as well as the fear of armchair critics declaring that you’ve failed is, I believe, at the heart of many people’s reluctance to adopt more green practices.
…
By doing so, you open yourself to harsh criticism; you’re asked to justify your decision to change anything when you’re not committing to change everything. It can be intimidating: suddenly you’re expected to have all the answers. “Why bother recycling when you still drive?” “How can you wear leather when you don’t eat meat?” “Aren’t those annual flights erasing the impact of anything else you do?”
My reluctant decision to continue owning a car came about as a result of a handful of carefully considered factors: the limited public transportation options in my city, six months of Canadian winter, car shares which can’t accommodate a car seat for my daughter, and a custody agreement which requires me to drive her to see her dad three hours away, twice a month. To be honest, it makes me feel bad, but I’ve also realized that choosing to try means also accepting that you’ll fail, at least some of the time.
You can either accept the status quo, or you can work towards something better. Doing so often looks less like an off-grid hut in the woods and more like finding a way to exist in an uncomfortably unsustainable society while also trying to change it. …
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/05/environmentally-friendly-green-living-ideas
You see, it is not reluctance to give up modern life, and live in a mud hut in the wilderness, which stops greens from practicing what they preach; It is the fear of being mocked by armchair critics, when they dial out for a pizza delivery.
So Madeleine works for a future in which we all live in mud huts, and nobody has access to pizza delivery – except perhaps for a handful of special people like her, who may still need access to planet destroying fossil fuel powered badness, to travel the world, to inspire the rest of us stay on message, to be certain that ordinary people don’t slide back into embracing the evil conveniences of modern life.
Keep writing Madeleine. Now that we are aware of your heroic efforts, to navigate that fine green balance between recycling urban kitchen waste, car ownership, and racking up air miles, I’m sure we are all looking forward to you sharing more pearls of green wisdom, to add to your growing list of titles, which includes How to make your own toothpaste and lotion – and help the Earth in the process, and How to green your home: make your own cleaning spray for every task.
So Ms. Somerville is trained in Criminology, Deviance and Social Control. She may not know beans about the climate, but she should be well equipped to analyze the mentations of Mann, Hansen, Pachauri, Holdren, Obama, and those “RICO All Realists” fraudsters at George Mason.
Now we also likely know why her husband divorced her. Her essay provides ample evidence.
Heh, good point!
Might also explain why he moved 3 hours away.
What Ms. Somerville, socialogist, has just done is identify the social benefits of burning fossil fuels…benefits she feels she, and her implied others, cannot do without. She really should write this up and submit a paper, so that the IPCC can include this analysis of these important benefits in their next report.
In particular, I found this sentence to be a powerful observation: “…but you’ll also lose priceless human connection and culture, alongside the ability to educate or inspire change in others.”
Yes, she said these benefits are priceless. What would the world be like without these priceless benefits if her crusade were to succeed? Brrr. Color me convinced!
She obviously learned well from her hero Suzuki.
Guardian continues the theme?
8 Apr: Guardian: Lauren Dake: Eco-friendly Portland baffled to discover an artisanal industry is polluting its air
Instead of eating the kale she grew in her backyard garden in Portland, Oregon, this spring, Jessica Applegate will submit the leafy green plants for toxic metal testing.
Recent revelations that heavy metals – specifically arsenic, cadmium and chromium – are hovering above the city in toxic hotspots have stunned the eco-conscious city. Along with the news came an unlikely culprit: artisan glass manufacturers…
“I’m educated. I’m politically active. I serve on the board of Oregon Wild [an environmental advocacy group]. I’m a good citizen,” Applegate said, while sitting on her front porch last week. “And yet, I felt baffled by my own ignorance of the true state of our airshed.”…READ ON
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/07/portland-oregon-environmental-glass-companies-pollution-cancer
It’s a rich, modern society that looks after the environment – it can afford to – and we’re taught to feel guilty for living in it. That’s bad enough. Now the hypocrites, whilst taking “carefully considered factors” into account and making willful decision to drive that car and live in that house with modern heating and power on grid, are nevertheless quite happy to force their children (or their children’s children) into a life with no such choices!
Perhaps Ms. Somerville should think about this a little more deeply. As should the rest of them.
Two points she missed:
“In order to avoid it, one needs to escape to the woods, go off the grid. You’ll subtract most of your environmental impact by doing so. I think everyone fantasises about it from time to time (I certainly do), but you’ll also lose priceless human connection and culture, alongside the ability to educate or inspire change in others.”
She doesn’t seem to realize that the RESULTS of the action she would have all of us take is to completely destroy the economies of the world as we know it. Without using the energy in fossil fuels the widespread trade we now enjoy could not exist and the wealth that creates would never happen. We would literally be back in the dark ages very soon.
Second, she doesn’t even seem to realize the in class inequity involved in HER decisions which profoundly affect the rest of us without our consent and in a most unequal way. Where does HER authority to make these decisions derive from?
Yes, and if 300 Million Americans were to “escape to the woods”, in short time there would be no woods. And where does she think her food will come from without farmers using prodigious amounts of fossil fuels for machinery and fertilizer and getting those products to refrigerated and frozen food aisles nearby? How vacuous this woman sounds, how utterly ignorant of how the world works. Way too many people like her that are clueless about energy, power, manufacturing, engineering and the like that make her life possible.
“My reluctant decision to continue owning a car came about as a result of a handful of carefully considered factors: ” (1) I am green; (2) therefore I am holy; (3) I am trying to save the Earth; (4) therefore I am a Messiah; (5) Messiahs are not bound by earthly considerations; (6) I want to drive; (7) Therefore I will drive.
Actually, you can skip the first 5 factors. She just wants to drive.
If we all live in mud huts in the woods, how many of us could there be? ie. What is the carrying capacity of North America given a stone age population? The maximum estimate is about a hundred million.
To support our current population we need a functioning society with industry and transportation and efficient agriculture. Most greenies aren’t so stupid that they don’t understand that. It’s not hypocrisy, it’s survival. If they were serious about avoiding hypocrisy, they would live in a mud hut in the woods in about a quarter of the area necessary to sustain them (thereby dying a slow painful death by hypothermia and starvation).
When I think of someone who wasn’t a hypocrite, I think of Simone Weil.
She starved herself as an act of solidarity with her subjugated countryfolk.
I see a new business opportunity………’green’ indulgencies.
I’m thinking of publishing house plans: neolithic house plans. They are going to need to know how to stack stones . . . or mud.
So
Guardian Climate Agoniser Madeleine Somerville – tells green live is UNSASTAINABLE:
This tension is familiar in the lives of most environmentalists. Some own cars; some still eat meat. The more famous in our midst regularly fly great distances to speak about the horrific impact of carbon emissions – such as the 53lb of CO2 released by their airplanes with each and every mile traveled.
_________
Climate models are UNABLE to depict the real world – suspected of just lying.
_________
CAGW claims are UNTRUE on a climate self regulating planet that shows no proven mechanisms for runaway positive feedbacks atmospheric warming.
_________
CAGW is just another pain in the ass burden of life on this dirty old minor planet.
Madeline should sell Green Guilt Gift Certificates.
Buyers could give them to people they think need to feel more guilt.
She sells her book – “All You Need Is Less:”, which is written on paper, shipped using fossil fuels and is apparently something you need (even though you actually need less) as she encourages people to buy a copy or two! And she doesn’t seem guilty at all when she does it!
(from the back cover according to Amazon-“Recycle a jelly container from home and you will save an entire forest while getting lots of compliments on your coffee jar.”)
Really? An ENTIRE FOREST??? wow.
This woman has taken a hundred ideas from sites like Pinterest (which uses no paper products and costs nothing to use) and printed them up in a book that SHE is now profiting from! I highly doubt that ANY of the ideas or recipes or recycling ideas in her book are original to her. I wonder if that makes her feel guilty?
It is impossible to determine which is greater…her egotism or her hypocrisy.
Hey, news flash, lady! Everyone else has REASONS too, you nitwit.
So she can’t avoid creating a warmer climate because the climate is too cold where she lives.
By copying Ms. Somerville’s mental gymnastics, I believe I could justify most anything I might wish to do.
“I’d like to join you in the wilderness, folks! But they need me here. Rest assured I’m with you in spirit and I’ll be observing from a comfortable distance through heavy lenses.”
Heavily rose-tinted lenses.
It is amazing how many seemingly perfect, non hypocritical, people comment on this site with their harsh, belittling invective. Oh well, I will just keep trying my best anyway knowing that everyone, including myself is a hypocrite, it is just a matter of degrees.
+1
d’accord, EWR – not a perfect World.
PLUS
Those Madelines with their CAGW threaten our everdays lifes!
Regards – Hans
Geoffrey Preece
The subject is “Green Hypocrisy”. Very few people on this side are “Green”. We don’t preach “Greenness” and therefore cannot be hypocrites about not practicing “Greenness”. In what other ways we may be hypocrites is irrelevant to the discussion. Try to think, man. Your indignation is sort of laughable.
Eugene WR Gallun.
false positioned –
Johann Wundersamer on April 8, 2016 at 5:14 am
d’accord, EWR – not a perfect World.
PLUS
Those Madelines with their CAGW threaten our everdays lifes!
Regards – Hans
As is yours.
Thanks for your reply Eugene WR Gallun, that is a reasonable response, except that my subject was Hypocrisy in general. I do try to think, man, thank you for the encouragement.
My indignation is long standing in regard to the way those who have different views are treated on this site. Imagine writing a long entry or two or three on biblical text and telling everyone that this is the way it should be interpreted. Someone comes along and responds to the interpretation with comments like “stupid”, anyone with “half a brain” would know that is wrong, that’s biblical “fascism”, “Stalin” would be proud, “Hitler”, “Socialist”, “Communist” nonsense, “Capitalist” garbage, that’s the way you capitalist “terrorists” have destroyed our society and then they laugh at you. All these and more are acceptable apparently to the moderators, but not a word starting with “d” because of a perceived connection with a heinous historical event. You don’t need much perception to associate most of the words that I used in quotes above with heinous historical events.
I’m personally in favour of decent, respectful discourse without the use of epithets of this nature entering in to the conversation.
@ur momisugly Geoffrey
Lots of assumptions in your Olympian, high-dudgeon booger-flicks, immediately above, and elsewhere on this thread, Geoffrey. Good stuff, in its way. And inspirational too–to moi, at least. So let me try my hand at it, too, and tell me what you think.
My surmise, Geoffrey, is that you’re used to a snooty, fuss-pot class-privilege in life, in which an appeal for “decent, respectful discourse” (self-servingly defined by you and your hoity-toity set, I suggest), is really just the figurative, corrective slash of a riding-crop, intended to put us coolie-trash herdling-nobodies in our place, for daring to sass back to our betters.
That’s the best I’ve got, Geoffrey, and allowing for the humble, vulgarian means of expression, at my disposal, how do you, from your equestrian-order, “high-horse” perch, think I did?
Why does every “reply” I click on say I’m responding to “Bartleby” above the response box?
Geoffrey Preece-
“It is amazing how many seemingly perfect, non hypocritical, people comment on this site with their harsh, belittling invective.”
Seemingly-“so as to give the impression of having a certain quality; apparently”
I cannot seem to collect any real evidence that demonstrates “how many” of the people who comment on this site with “harsh, belittling invective” also act in a manner “so as to give the impression that they are perfect and non hypocritical”. Id like to examine the evidence from which you arrived at such an “amazing” conclusion myself.
“Oh well, I will just keep trying my best anyway knowing that everyone, including myself is a hypocrite, it is just a matter of degrees.”
You contradict yourself. How can anyone who KNOWS that everyone, including himself, is a hypocrite, (it is just a matter of degrees), ever engage in thinking that the people who comment on this site appear to be, or give the impression that they are, “perfect and non hypocritical” in the first place?
If you are insinuating that YOU THINK that many people have been faking some sort of perfection and non hypocritical personas-when in fact they are truly harsh and belittling creatures…then 1) you are some kind of arrogant and presumptive and 2) the comments on this post shouldn’t have been even remotely “amazing” to you at all!
Aphan, thanks for the reply. You certainly have gone in to a great deal of detail on my brief comment. You are right, I have made some assumptions, and I have exaggerated to make a simple point. I’ll try to make my point a little differently. This sort of posting is designed to make fun, belittle another human being that is struggling, according to what she writes, with her conscience and behaviour, a pretty common human dilemma for humans if they believe in anything at all. Those who criticise someone for writing about this dilemma are, I think, speaking from a position of their perceived superiority, as if they are not hypocritical like the person they are attacking. I can’t get inside anyone’s head, I can’t develop an algorithmic model to prove my point, I am jumping to a conclusion.
You seem to have an issue with me KNOWING that everyone is a Hypocrite. Well, everyone I have ever met who espouses a position, a belief, something they proselytise, has done something that I’ve seen makes them hypocritical. The word “amazing” you also have an issue with, and all I can say is that I do not see the level of abuse on most other sites that I visit as I do on this site, I find that amazing. I responded in a little more detail to Eugene WR Gallen on this point. RESPECT.
This is my problem with the Cult of Calamitous Climate, the individual members are beyond parody.
I would love to mock their hypocrisy, stupidity and smallness of soul, but every time I start, I find they exceed my imagination.
These are the ‘Timothy Tredwells of environmentalism.
Too foolish to know the hazards and too incompetent to comprehend the obstacles facing them.
The irony of this person complaining of the six month canadian winter, yet she worries about warming of less than 1C….How cold does Canada need to be?
To satisfy her paranoia?
A fine product of our tax funded university system, the very model for her generation,so she sees no problem importing Saudi Oil to allow her to drive her car,yet I am sure passionately despises Athabasca Oil,calling it Tar Sands Oil.
CAGW is simply one of many Leftists’ tools to bring about the destruction of Capitalism and limited-government/decentralized Republics and replacing them with GIGANTIC tyranical centralized governments that manage and control every aspect of “THE OTHERS” lives.
Of course the ruling elites and their minions are immune to all the rules, regulations and mandates impososed on the peasantry because they both make and enforce them so they’re entitled to live above them; i.e “Do as I say, not as I do”…
To Leftists, there is no hypocrisy–there is only entitlement for the rulers and their minions and complete submission by the peasants…
Green hypocrisy existed long before it was called “Green”. Its recognized founder and Icon Henry David Thoreau did live by Walden pond for a while. He supposedly built his shack out of the refuse of the nearby town of Concord. (very doubtful, he traded chores for goods. And how did he water proof his roof — plastic sheets were not available then as they were to later day hippies.) Concord was really only a long stone’s throw away (Alright, a little further than that but not much — he could hear Concord’s church bells.) He did not live by Walden pond while building his future dwelling but in a nice wall plastered English cottage. When he finally moved into his “hippy” dwelling he brought basic furniture with him. He was a regular for dinner and after dinner wine at the nearby house of Ralph Waldo Emerson (about a mile away). His mother would come and pick up his dirty laundry, wash it and return it to him.(That has such a familiar ring to it.) Where he spent the coldest winter nights is a debatable question. After he had his book, he left Walden pond, moved to the big city and remained a city person for the rest of his life never again living in the “wild” nor practicing the things he preached — if he ever really practiced them at all.
Eugene WR Gallun
It seems that those who fully support the effort to fight climate change have no smaller carbon footprint than those who don’t. The difference seems to be that climate change advocates feel superior because they “want” to lower their carbon footprint. They just have lots of reasons why they can’t. They are still convinced, however, that they can persuade others to give up fossil fuels even though they have failed to persuade themselves. They think it’s okay for them to be major hypocrites by failing to practice what they preach because they have the best of intentions and because they’re on the right side. They other side is evil, not because they’re carbon footprint is any bigger, but because they refuse to join with them in their hypocrisy.
Louis — Truly said — Eugene WR Gallun
Typical behaviour of a member of the priestly classes. Conflicted by the tension between the demands of their one true religion and the practicalities of earthly life, all the while taking money off people who are already poor to build their temples. They they demand our sypmathy.
In order to live the ‘simple’ life you need to be able to get along with other people through thick and thin. But Madeleine tells us:
“…. a custody agreement which requires me to drive her to see her dad three hours away, twice a month.”
Ahh the noble polluter, a new concept, again, enter concept, exit reality
That filter is driving me nuts. Too constricting Anthony
The “Do as I say, not as I do” school of leadership is alive and thriving north of the Class Warfare Divide.
Actually, I cannot disagree with Ms. Somerville. I won’t moving into a mud hut in the forest because of all of the wonderful advancements provided by modern technology and reliable energy that make life livable. (And I have no interest in dealing with the numerous and various pathogens spread by those many large and small biting creatures.)