“I cannot believe how anyone could know what I know, and yet still behave in such environmentally destructive behaviour.”
Every morning I think something similar to that, as I scoot past dozens upon dozens of crawling, single-occupant cars spewing filth into my atmosphere. Why can we not prioritise non-polluting, healthy means of getting around and price private cars off the road?
No doubt every environmentally-motivated vegan will have similar thoughts should they have the misfortune to see me enjoying a steak. And the air pollution police will be tutting to themselves when they see the wood-burning stove fitter’s van outside my house. “Haven’t you read the reports? Don’t you know what you’re doing?!?”
It’s the classic ‘argument from personal incredulity’, one of the bits of Dawkins that has really stuck with me from my undergraduate readings, 25 years ago: “I cannot believe x could be true, therefore x cannot be true.” It’s the deficit model writ large as well: “If I shout the facts more loudly at you, you will change for the better.”
But in terms of environmental behaviour, it’s perfectly possible for people to read the same reports, ingest the same data, and come to different conclusions - either because we disagree on what the data say (my steak is from a cow grazed on high biodiversity, carbon sequestering woodland pasture; my stove is 90% efficient), or because we choose different indulgences and different sacrifices. We are all, in the end, a mass of contradictions: we give up palm oil while still flying intercontinentally; we reuse our coffee cups but buy a bigger, less efficient house to accommodate our growing families. We are all muddling along as best we can, doing good where we can whilst clinging to the things we care about.
I am able to curse cars because I don’t get them. I own one, and I’ve driven since my 17th birthday, but cars themselves do nothing for me. I can’t think of a worse way to start my day than participating in traffic. Why don’t more people take advantage of our perfectly adequate public transport system, or walk, or use a bike or scooter? But for plenty of people their car is their independence, their primary interest, their pride and joy. Some people actually watch Top Gear, for heaven’s sake. Ask people to give up their car and they will make all kinds of excuses for why they it is essential for them to have one (“Of course not everyone should have a gun; I should”, as Hunter S. Thompson put it) but dig a bit deeper and you’ll realise that you’re effectively asking them to give up a limb.
I’ve rehearsed my justifications for eating meat before - tl;dr: I bloody love it. Ditto setting fire to stuff: burning logs in my front room is not essential for my physical comfort, but it does a lot for my soul. I can argue that modern stoves are cleaner and more efficient than many central heating systems, but that’s special pleading. I just like to watch the flames.
Expressing incredulity for the perceived damaging behaviour of others is, therefore, a failure of empathy and of imagination. Your personal incredulity is preventing you from understanding the motivations and cares of others, and what you think of as easy behavioural shifts are much more profound for some. It does not mean you’re wrong, of course, and we should still argue our case. But if environmentalism reduces to “everything that makes your life more convenient, more comfortable, more enjoyable is bad”, we’re on a hiding to nothing.
Robin Williams famously once said that “everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” This is a lovely sentiment, and one I try to bear in mind while silently judging drivers on my morning commute. Because while shortages of natural resources seem out of our control, the global shortage of empathy is something we can all do a little bit to alleviate.