Another great post today from one of my favorites, Revitalize or Die:
YES! And ….
(Warning: Ranty comment ahead, to my fellow “green Boomers”)
And, I would even further go on to say, to my fellow “Woodstock/Earth Day” Boomers, especially those of us who have traveled a lot in our younger years, should STOP the overseas travel, and instead get our thrills from using our resources to make our home places lovable & livable, and support the livelihoods & dreams of the younger generations.
We owe it to them. We are the most-resourced generation in history, and however unintentionally it may have been, we have gotten our wealth and security on the backs of the global majority & the rest of the planet. And borrowed ecological capital from younger generations.
Seeing the social-media posts of fellow eco Boomers, I often feel a heartsick cognitive dissonance. The endless rounds of cruises, annual European vacations, etc.
Does our demographic even notice the irony of us bemoaning the planet burning, but continuing the super-high-end travel habits & other consumerism? How are we any different from the “climate deniers” who we claim are the problem???
All these fellow eco-Boomers’ travel-porn social-media posts like, “what a quaint village, oh I love the public transportation in this country” etc. Sorry but this makes me want to retch.
Maybe if we stayed put in our own country and devoted more of our money and labor to actually changing things here?
I know, I know, a lot of you are going to say how much you do. And I believe you. However, high-end travel habits and other conspicuous consumption totally undermine whatever we do.
Not only undermine our credibility, but also actually undermine whatever political will the leaders might have, because our habits are creating massive demand for fossil fuels and other resources.
— Voting is great and necessary, but it’s not enough.
— Protesting is great and necessary, but it’s not enough.
— Writing letters to corporations is great and necessary, but it’s not enough. Same with showing up to speak at government meetings and so on.
— Running for office is wonderful and downright heroic, for those who manage it, but even that is not always enough.
The missing ingredient is where and how we are continuing to spend our big fat wallets of money. Even if you don’t feel like you have a fat wallet, all of us Boomers have a fat wallet in comparison to pretty much everyone else in the world.
Where and how we spend, or don’t spend, matters! There are so many many of us, and our habits are adding up big time. For better and for worse.
I will say something for the climate-deniers and Magas (and other groups/people who we love to self-righteously contrast our own selves with): At least they are not living in outright contradiction with their beliefs about what’s up with the biosphere!!
To put it another way: If our mouths and our wallets are saying opposite things, guess which one is going to carry more weight in the world. If we keep not matching, we have only ourselves to blame.