Climate Conversations 9th March 2023
It’s upsetting to see hypocrisy in other people, and it’s upsetting when we see it in ourselves.
We’re going to start with our personal encounters with climate hypocrites and hypocrisy. When have you witnessed or experienced climate hypocrisy?
What kind of stories did we tell? Are there heroes and villains or victims? Why do these stories matter?
Sociologist Kari Marie Norgaard explains how we can use stories to help us cope with troubling emotions like guilt. In her research which took place in Norway in 2001, she explored how people collectively produced denial of their role or responsibility for climate change. She describes how societies develop “tools for ignoring disturbing problems”. These tools include stories for example stories about innocence and stories that maintain a sense of stability. These stories are told or referred to in everyday conversation.
Rebecca Solnit is an author and Guardian columnist. In an opinion piece in The Guardian, she talks about how stories can give power or take it away. Stories can take away power if they can stop us from questioning the way things are and make the way the world is now seem inevitable.
“We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing, or believing in, or acting on the possibilities for change. Some are habits of mind, some are industry propaganda. Sometimes, the situation has changed but the stories haven’t, and people follow the old versions, like outdated maps, into dead ends.”
Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, 2023
Stories can give power if they help us imagine different ways of doing things and can inspire us to action. She also encourages us to be more aware of the power that stories have and to be careful about our role in accepting or challenging them.
Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, 2023
“In order to do what the climate crisis demands of us, we have to find stories of a liveable future, stories of popular power, stories that motivate people to do what it takes to make the world we need. Perhaps we also need to become better critics and listeners, more careful about what we take in and who’s telling it, and what we believe and repeat, because stories can give power – or they can take it away.”
If we look more carefully at the way stories of climate hypocrisy are told we might see a connection between our personal experiences and stories and our culture or society. A look at how stories are told and framed in different ways helps make those connections a little more visible.
In an article called “Why Don’t You Act Like You Believe It?”: Competing Visions of Climate Hypocrisy, researchers examined stories about climate hypocrisy in 12 “prominent” newspapers from Canada, Australia, the UK and the United States between 2005 and 2015. They included papers that were generally pro-climate action and papers that were generally against it.
They show how different storylines about hypocrisy can be used to make readers feel positively or negatively towards action on climate change. The different stories have different answers as to where responsibility lies, what is possible, what is the role of government, who we are, what we’re capable of. The research helps us to see, and to think about the relationship between ourselves, our everyday lives and our social context – the culture, economy, social and political systems.
Individual lifestyle outrage
The storyline
Someone who has spoken out about climate change is caught doing something environmentally damaging. It’s often something that is out of the reach of ordinary people which shows that they are elitist and out of touch. Environmentalism is a conspiracy of elites who are forcing sacrifices on others that they won’t make themselves.
Some of the effects
- Undermines the credibility of environmentalists. Their behaviour shows that they are really into environmental issues for self-promotion – if they were serious then they would live sustainably.
- More cynicism, more selfishness and acceptance of the status quo.
- Discourages public discussion of the morality in the climate crisis by using guilt and shame to shut people up.
- Proof that climate change is serious isn’t the science – it’s whether or not environmentalists practice what they preach (although if you did live a perfect life then you’d be painted as even more out of touch with ordinary people).
- Environmentalism is all about sacrifice.
- Assumes individuals have the power to change things and tackle climate change.
An example
After Al Gore won an Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth a newspaper ran a story about how the gas and electric bills for his mansion were twenty times higher than the American average.
Institutional cynicism
The storyline
Governments are hypocritical about climate change. They promise action but do very little. This really isn’t their fault though. We can’t expect them to do anything else. The green lobby are forcing them to address climate change. But everyone knows that they can’t take meaningful action because the public and the markets wouldn’t stand for it. In this story environmentalists are just a special interest group. People are self-interested. They won’t make sacrifices. Politicians are dishonest. politicians are dishonest.
Some of the effects
Loss of faith in governments. It’s pointless to ask governments to do something because they can’t. Fatalism. An increase in cynicism and selfishness. Pointing out hypocrisy isn’t meant to encourage us to be better. It’s meant to show that it’s for us to be better. We are too selfish. As it’s impossible to be better so we may as well give up.
An example
“Climate change policy hysteria,” he wrote in a 2009 column, “has led to a weird combination of schizophrenia and hypocrisy” (Foster, 2009b). US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a “full blown climate alarmist who has supported draconian measures to enforce emissions reductions [is now calling] for moderation on oil prices, lest a continued spike harm economic recovery. Does he not grasp that the alleged threat of climate change cannot possibly be “addressed” without US $300-a-barrel oil . . . ?”
Institutional call to action
The storyline
Point out the hypocrisy of governments, institutions and corporations that talk about addressing climate change but carry on with business as usual.
Some of the effects
- Create public outrage to generate positive action on climate change.
- Assume that governments and institutions have real choice and power to tackle climate change.
- Highlights the constraints and limitations that individuals face (without making excuses for people’s decisions).
- Identifying alternative possibilities.
- Challenge the storylines that say that hypocrisy is an intrinsic part of human nature.
An example
Angry at what they say is government hypocrisy about climate change, groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are framing the fight over the third runway [at Heathrow Airport] as a critical test of global efforts to stem the trend toward ever bigger airports and ever more flights…. “We want to highlight the inherent contradictions between having a supposedly progressive climate change program on the one hand, and on the other hand pushing forward plans to lock Britain into high emissions for decades to come’ [a Greenpeace spokesperson] said (Lyall, 2008)”
The reflexive mode
The storyline
People care about the environment but find it very difficult to live sustainably in a society and culture where high fossil fuel use is normal, and where highly polluting behaviour is encouraged. People struggle with what they know about the climate crisis and pressure to live a normal life. Often the storyline follows a sequence of gaining awareness, then taking responsibility, then a change in behaviour.
Some of the effects
- To try and open up conversations about a difficult subject.
- Is honest about the gap between their values and behaviour, and the feelings of guilt they have, and their responsibility.
- Environmentalism as sacrifice.
- Non-judgemental. Talk about self-doubt, anxiety, guilt.
- Focus on individuals changing their own behaviour as a way to resolve the feelings of hypocrisy.
- Expose or counter the “cynical” strategy of using accusations of hypocrisy to shut down discussion or action on climate change.
- Let’s us see and think about the structural issues that limit individuals ability to live as sustainably as they want to.
An example
A protester at a climate camp responding to a journalists question:
“The thing about asking when we last flew—I understand why you want to know, but I worry that it gives the impression our protest is about attacking people at the level of individual guilt. Because it’s not. Foremost this is about highlighting government policies that, on one hand, want people to change to energy-efficient bulbs and on the other hand is hypocritically in favor of doubling air traffic to facilitate the binge flying of the super-rich (Cited in Potter, 2007).” But she acknowledged that her “guilt for having flown to Vancouver” also played some role in her politics. “There are no simple answers… But surely at least one part of the answer is to question a culture that has persuaded us we have to fly in order to be happy. This issue needs special attention. And that’s why we are here” (Cited in Potter, 2007) to fly in order to be happy. This issue needs special attention. And that’s why we are here” (Cited in Potter, 2007)
Gunster and others 2018
Our discussion
The first thing we did was look at the question and told examples of hypocrisy from our own experiences. We’re not sharing the personal stories because we have an agreement to keep our personal stories confidential in the the group! The following ideas and questions came from us talking about those stories:
- Is it really so bad to be called a hypocrite? After all, none of us perfect and we all fail to live up to our ideals at times.
- If someone in a position of influence is giving out a good message does it really matter if you know they don’t really commit to it in their personal life? We thought probably not.
- Is someone accuses you of hypocrisy it shows you’re hitting a nerve.
We looked at two types of storylines on climate hypocrisy from the research paper by Gunster (see below). The ‘gotcha’ story that the researchers called “individual lifestyle outrage” and “institutional cynicism. Unfortunately, these two examples were the two negative ones, where the story is framed in a way that puts you off climate action. We’re going to pick this topic up in the future and take a look at the complete set!
From our discussion:
- We wondered why we react so harshly to individual people’s hypocrisy. Why aren’t we kinder when we know we struggle ourselves?
- It’s notable the accusations are only made against environmentalists, not all the other billionaires who have similar or more wasteful lifestyles.
- Why are stories about hypocrisy so emotive? Even knowing that these particular stories have been written to make us feel cynical or disillusioned then still work. Especially, the story about “institutional cynicism”. Even though I know the story has been deliberately framed to make me feel defeated it works every time.
Sources:
Gunster, S., Fleet, D, Patterson, M., and Sauretter, P. 2018 “Why Don’t You Act Like You Believe It?”: Competing Visions of Climate Hypocrisy
Norgaard, K. 2011 Living in Denial
Solnit, R. 2023 ‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate