To believe most people who say they care about the environment are hypocrites?

[SharpUmberLeader]

I hear so many people talk about reducing waste or going green but they still fly multiple times a year, buy fast fashion, or order takeaway in plastic containers. AIBU to think most people aren’t actually practicing what they preach about sustainability?

No but it would make a difference to the local environment if:

People didn't drive when they could walk or cycle
People switched their engines off when stationary
People didn't throw rubbish around or fly tip
People drove less polluting cars

We can't do anything about climate change (at least, not to stop it, we can only mitigate it now) but we can change our local environment, reduce air pollution and rubbish.

I agree. I know several individuals who bang on about people taking multiple flights on holiday every year and driving gas guzzling cars,but they themselves don't recycle anything,and have several cups of coffee a day in (unrecyclable) takeaway cups. Hypocritical.

What do all the eco lecturers think about China opening coal powered energy stations all over the place and Trump’s ‘drill, baby drill’.

Seriously, do you not feel a bit stupid with your green tokenism?

Do you not feel a bit stupid doing nothing?

It is only by people doing nothing that the world will burn

All it takes for evil to prevail is for good women to do nothing

Every person who turns a blind eye to evil, who makes no effort to change our future is guilty

Do you think we would have the electricity we have today if everyone has given up a decade ago? it's way less carbon intensive these days

@Anniedash I’m not an eco lecturer but I do make efforts not to consume excessively and not to waste stuff, and like hearing about new ‘green’ technologies or new recycling initiatives in my local area. I don’t feel stupid about that- why would I?

It doesn't matter how much you try to the right thing, there'll always be someone eager to point out something you do that isn't the right thing, and to call you a hypocrite, as if that somehow completely negates the effect of the good stuff you do.

And the logic is "now I've reduced the good stuff you do to nil, we're even, because nil is precisely what I do. And actually, I'm better than you, because I'm honest about doing fuck-all to help, while you're banging on about helping even though I've just proved that what you do doesn't count. So I'm a nice person, and you're not, ner-ner-ni-ner-ner."

People like that should probably be dunked in peanut oil or something.

The problem is, the environmentally conscious choice is often the most expensive and time-consuming.

I agree with you that everyone should do what they can, but it's often not that easy to just walk everywhere, or to catch the bus instead of drive, unfortunately. If the government really cared, they would make these things affordable and accessible for everyone, not just Londoners or people in big cities.

The UK is small fry. We are a tiny Island with a tiny population - we make up just 0.9% of the world. Even if every single person changed their habits, it would genuinely make no difference to the state of the world.

Depends what we do really - if we develop tech and systems that improve things that could be sold/copied in bigger countries I'd say that was useful.

China put in more renewable energy sources than other country last year - it still burns more coal than most others - is it enough well no but it's a start.

https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-lead-the-world-in-wind-and-solar-with-twice-as-much-capacity-under-construction-as-the-rest-of-the-world-combined/#:~:text=Between%20March%202023%20and%20March,massive%20expansion%20of%20distributed%20solar.

Between March 2023 and March 2024, China installed more solar than it had in the previous three years combined, and more than the rest of the world combined for 2023. Solar capacity first surpassed wind in 2022, and the gap has grown significantly larger,

I am constantly surprised USA doesn't do more - it's citizens seem oblivious but then I think that's partly why China investing so heavily they want to be world leaders with the tech to make the money and when transition away from coal/oil happens - it's a finite resource even without the carbon issues - they'll be ahead.

I'm not someone who does nothing, but I also don't think that anything I do will make the blindest bit of difference to anything.

Depends what we do really - if we develop tech and systems that improve things that could be sold/copied in bigger countries I'd say that was useful.

But that would also rely on other countries giving enough of a shit to buy and use those things - and they very likely won't.

I mean, even when we post on here, we're all using cheap electronics imported from China or Korea, bought for bargain prices that the majority of us replace every couple of years to get the latest version again. While we're all doing stuff like that, I just don't see what difference it makes whether someone walks or drives to Tesco, tbh.

Meh.

Hypocrisy is a red herring. It's not about impeccable eco credentials but making sustainable lifestyle changes and increasing the integrity of our choices.

I bred two consumers into a Western economy (easily the biggest impact on emissions) before I really woke up to the climate emergency. Now I do a few things to mitigate this huge contribution to our family's carbon footprint:

Money: we made some financial decisions around banking, pensions, savings and divestment in fossil fuel.

Travel: we decided to limit flying and have flown short haul twice to visit family in the last decade.

Consumption: we buy only second hand clothing and other consumer goods (tech, furniture, home textiles etc), only eat meat once a week and avoid excessive food miles.

Resource use: we keep the house responsibly heated (try to heat the person, not the home), paid for external insulation and use as little water as we can reasonably get away with.

Sure, I avoid excessive packaging and do my recycling, but there is proportionality in the impact of the choices we make.

I'd like to think that those 'big ticket items' such as gratuitous air travel will be considered more problematic by people in general in the near future. I feel there was a time, maybe five years ago, when people were, quite rightly, side-eyeing those who announced intentions to fly on holiday, but since then we've become much more collectively complicit in a weird pact of silence surrounding this elephant in the room. We all know it's bad, but won't ever bring it up in conversation in case it 'flight-shames' someone, or, God forbid, it makes us look like hypocrites should we too decide to hop on a flight. The old "The plane will take off anyway, whether you're on it or not." rhetoric is stronger than ever, it seems. So dumb.

I don’t like this gotcha mentality about this stuff.

It’s completely unreasonable to think people are going to stop flying - they won’t. And there is currently no environmentally friendly alternative. Same with driving - people aren’t giving up their cars. We need to find ways to do these things more sustainably rather than complaining when people do them.

But this stuff will be solved globally by governments - look at car emissions legislation, low emissions zones etc. Complaining that someone orders from Shein, Amazon or invests in crypto isn’t going to stop them doing it.

Maybe invest your energy elsewhere - lobby your MP, train as an engineer or scientist and help develop environmentally friendly alternatives. You’d achieve a lot more than by criticising others.

While we're all doing stuff like that, I just don't see what difference it makes whether someone walks or drives to Tesco, tbh.

I'd prefer there to be more buses frankly - so people have more options.

Plus walking - more walking -physical exercise has benefits other then fewer driven miles.

I don't think heat pumps work for most housing in UK and get sick of all the pushing and ignoring and downplaying issues with them. I think electric cars in very cold parts of world - will have issues with battery charging - as seen in USA in recent cold snap making electric cars a poor choice. I think there are issue with them in UK - where I heard on radio 40% of people don't have drives so will struggle to home charge.

I think many things are beyond my impact - I think many things may be beyond my governments impact. I think groups like Just Stop Oil and similar groups probably plant by oil industry as they are so counter productive and frankly ignorant about many of the actual issues.

However I think some things done over a population can make a difference and I think it's a better attitude than we're all doomed so why bother. I also think we have are making slow changes all the time and many just ignore them because they don't want to hear it. I also think we probably in an energy transition period world wide - it's not going fast enough but it is happening.

But we're not all switching up our tech every couple of years though, and it's important that this is not the narrative that's allowed to dominate and set the expectation. We've four phones in my house, all bought reconditioned second hand and, although 10+ years old, work brilliantly, take decent photos and allow for all necessary online activity. I've a small portable solar charger which juices up on a sunny window sill in the day and charges the devices in the evening / overnight.
I run all our phones on SIM only deals (£7.50 / month for everything we need); if we paid £×× for monthly contracts, perhaps I'd be inclined to get my money's worth and accept a grotesquely unnecessary upgrade every 24 months. Gross.

It's all bullshit. Everyone is a hypocrite by definition. Just being alive in the modern world produces emissions (generating the climate crisis). Where do you draw the line? Most people who think of themselves as environmentally minded only change their lifestyle to an acceptable standard. Only the true hardcore will disadvantage themselves to beyond their comfort level.

Anyway, it is pointless. The increase in population, increase in energy-demanding technology (internet, card instead of cash, data in the cloud, AI, etc), positive feedback loops of increasing temperatures, political polarisation. All lead towards a momentum against stabilising temperatures. We can't go back. We are on a course.

I believe the best thing you can do is vote the right way. But honestly as individuals we are pretty powerless. It's fucked, it's just a question of how fucked. And in whose lifetime.

Exactly.

I think there is a view that anyone who's not on board with net zero etc is a raving lunatic science-denying imbecile who wants humanity to burn for his own selfish profit or something.

The debate is what to do. "Let's cut back on our energy usage" only works if the scale of the cuts is material, which only works if you're also going to cut usage by industry, businesses, hospitals, research labs, engineering facilities etc, and even then it's not material on a global scale.

Going all in on Net Zero, bankrupting the economy and destroying our manufacturing and military capacity, does nothing but convince other countries that it's a fool's errand. I guess that's a sort of influence...

I think many people in the UK have no idea what it's like to live in a country without energy security.

You think the U.K. has energy security? We import huge amounts of energy which could leave us in a very vulnerable position.

We should have invested in nuclear but people don’t want it.

Making people feel individually responsible for climate change is a con. The only things that will achieve enough change are laws to make unsustainable practices illegal, taxes and international cooperation. Ideally no more wars.

The situation is otherwise too confusing and incoherent for sufficient individuals to make meaningful life changes to make any difference.

Yes we are all hypocrites but it's industry that cons us into it. Greedy people and money is the biggest threat to the environment.

I do the minimum that is convenient for me as a pp said. No guilt. I recycle paper, cardboard, bottle, jars, plastics, garden waste, no problem in the relevant colour bins that are collected from the side of the road.

I'll take the bus/train/tram as often as convenient. Car is for life things that a bus can't get to. Big thing for me is safety as a woman. I prefer to drive with the doors locked after dark than stand in a dark street for a bus or tram, and smaller train stations can be dodgy also. My safety trumps any eco intentions.

For me, until the Government policy is fully weighted towards FREE public transport, or at a minimum heavily subsidised, BETTER public safety, BANS fossil fuel, CLOSES down airports, TOLLS on all motorways every 20 miles. You get the drift - I'm not going to do their job for them.

I'll do what's easy and convenient, but if anyone thinks they are helping anything to improve if Governments do not incentivise people to improve also, you are sadly deluded. The rest of it is preaching and signalling.

No kids. No car. Meat once every other week. Do the household recycling and use the dryer sparingly. Fly 1-2 times a year and haven't bought any clothes for a year.

With all that, we're still fucked until the businesses start actually caring. Oh, and celebrities in their private planes.

Unless you live in a largely uncontacted tribe its impossible to be perfect, but that doesn’t mean its pointless to try.

We’re vegetarian and diary free, we eat seasonally for the most part, when we do we’re eating things we froze when they were in season. We have a car, but we very rarely use it, we don’t actually need it, but I’ve kept it purely because I like it. The majority of our holidays are in Europe and we tend to go by train. We did a little camping tour in Sweden and rented an electric car to do it. We aren’t big clothes buyers, we tend to buy quality and wear it for a long time. Anything our kids outgrow is either given to someone with younger children, or donated. We used cloth nappies, as while both have an impact, we didn’t want to be creating more landfil. We use a guppy bag so our laundry doesn’t cause microplastics to enter the environment. The takeaway we occasionally use welcomes bring your own tub, so we take some pyrex ones with lids, so no plastic/metal/plastic coated cardboard container being wasted. When our boiler recently broke we replaced it with a heat pump, our electricity comes from a supplier that only buys electric from renewable sources. We rarely buy ready made food, so very few jars, bags, plastic containers etc.

No - I agree with you - I think addressing this should be very high on the list of the government, to be clear! Perhaps I should say "...haven't lived in a country where lack of energy security has come to bite them yet"

I'd prefer there to be more buses frankly - so people have more options.

Same, but until the government invests, it's frankly unrealistic to expect people to choose the expensive, time-consuming option over the cheaper, quicker one.

Plus walking - more walking -physical exercise has benefits other then fewer driven miles.

Yep, but in many areas, it's not safe or practical to walk. Same goes for cycling.

But when you have people like Kylie Jenner flying half an hour in their private jets on a daily basis, the fact that your family only buy new second-hand phones once a decade just doesn't mean anything. It's pointless, really. And I don't say that to be nasty, it's just facts.

It might make you feel better, or save you some money, but realistically it does nothing for the health of the planet. Even if everyone in England did it, it still wouldn't change anything.

Our planet is set up in such a way that we've fucked ourselves as a species. It's just a matter of time.