How I deal with the unbearable hypocrisy of being an environmentalist

I consider myself an environmentalist, yet last weekend I spent five hours in a car dealership going through the rigamarole of getting a new car – arguably one of the most polluting devices in modern-day life. I advocate buying second-hand, but I leased new. I encourage walking and biking and public transportation, and I do take advantage of these options on a regular basis, yet there I was, taking the keys and driving away with a shiny new ride and a sinking sense of discomfort.

Likewise, I recently met an environmental lawyer (and a car-less one too, I might add). He came to his profession amid a deep and decades-long affinity for the lakes and rivers which make Canada beautiful, and a strong desire to protect them. Yet the same work, in which he makes great strides to protect these natural landscapes, also prevents him from enjoying them. He works 50 to 70 hours a week in a downtown office, spending hours staring at a pixelated computer screen rather than the starry sky. When he tells me about it, he sounds vaguely helpless. He’s torn between the change he wants to create, and his ability to see the natural world for more than the odd weekend between cases.

Climate change may be a burning issue – but election campaign tells another story

Read more

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.

This unbearable hypocrisy is a struggle for the individual and a delight for the critic, yet it seems both necessary and inescapable.

All of us exist within the very system we hope to change. I use a laptop, a smartphone, internet, electricity. Most of the publications I write anti-consumerism articles for are propped up and paid for by advertisements.

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.

If you begin to use cloth diapers or ride your bike or compost, you are tacitly branding yourself. You’re dipping a toe into the often-mocked world of Portlandia characters, the shrill hippies who speak in acronyms (GMO, BPA, SLS, WTF?), and the righteously indignant environmentalists who rail against big oil while still availing themselves of heated homes and gas-powered transportation.

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.

I think George Monbiot summed it up best: “Hypocrisy is the gap between your aspirations and your actions. Greens have high aspirations – they want to live more ethically – and they will always fall short. But the alternative to hypocrisy isn’t moral purity (no one manages that), but cynicism. Give me hypocrisy any day.”