This post was prompted by a dear old friend and highly dedicated fellow environmentalist, who recently told me she became burned-out; got sick of making sacrifices when she realized that all of her reductions and advocacy work didn’t even offset one week of a rich fatcat’s life.
This is actually very common; turns out there are lots and lots of my fellow Boomer and Boomer-adjacent eco folks who feel this way. It’s become so common and widespread that we are unintentionally legitimizing –even glorifying — the very hyperconsumerism that we lament.
So I wanted to write a post to try to offer some comfort and guidance to the many of you who have been feeling this way.
(I first posted the following paragraphs as a days-later add-on to my post the other week, in regard to the “being forced to eat bugs” question.)
My answer to my friend, and to all others of you who are in despair, knowing that your reductions would not even offset one week of a jetsetter’s high-flying lifestyle, is:
We are NOT setting out to make reductions in order to offset other people’s overconsumption. That would be physically impossible, and no wonder so many of you are getting demoralized if you have been trying to do this.
Rather, the reason why we must make reductions is to reset the norms of what has come, in our hyperconsumerist “first world,” to be defined as a good life.(Basically the norms have been sent by USA American popular culture, and then gone on to infect other wealthy countries.)
It’s not about offsetting; it’s about resetting the norms. It’s about normalizing living within limits. It’s about de-normalizing our culturally instilled sense of entitlement.
Why?
To bring ourselves in line with the physical ecological limits of the planet. (These have been widely documented by science.) We quite simply have a moral obligation to not take more than our share. We cannot use wealthy mega consumers as a benchmark. We need to use the 2 ton benchmark widely agreed upon by scientists.
It’s already how the global majority lives, by default. What we in the “first world” have a responsibility to do is show how living within Earth’s limits can be done comfortably, with enough to eat, safe clean water, access to healthcare, access to learning, humane livelihoods, comfortable dwellings, treats and enjoyment and recreation for all.
As eco activists we pride ourselves on listening to science, and on being fair and equitable. We must live up to our own awareness of what’s right and fair. We must walk our talk! I cannot emphasize this point enough. We will never be truly happy otherwise — and of course that gnawing dissatisfaction just leads us to more compulsive consumerism.
My entire mission is about helping fellow eco folks walk our talk. My book, this blog, my talks & consults, my house which I have turned into a low-footprint lifestyle demonstration laboratory, visible from the sidewalk and partly open to the public. I am here to serve you! Please make use of the growing body of resources that I have been offering for close to two decades now.
You are not alone. There are many, many more of us than you might think. Take heart! And please don’t give up. We simply can’t afford to give up. We have an obligation to our children and to all other children on the planet.
PS. Just now thought of this! If we’re going to think of our reductions as offsetting anything, I suggest we think of them as offsetting, at least in part, our own past choices. The choices each of us made before we knew better, or had better ways available to us.
In part 2 of this post, I reveal the real secret about what keeps me doing voluntary radical reduction.
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