Are environmentalists hypocrites?
A common charge against environmentalists is that they鈥檙e hypocrites. They tell us to reduce our carbon emissions, the typical argument goes, yet they fly planes all over the world. They condemn Big Macs, yet they buy raspberries imported from a different hemisphere. They sneer at our plastic shopping bags, yet every year they buy a new iPhone.
The same charge is frequently leveled against rich nations. For instance, a 2014 Financial Times op-ed by science policy analysts Roger Pielke and Daniel Sarewitz criticized the Obama administration for focusing foreign aid on low-carbon projects instead of those that would deliver electricity to the most people, choices that they say reflects 鈥渁 widely shared assumption that poor nations need not aspire to the sort of energy consumption seen in North America, western Europe and other wealthy regions.鈥�
Is it true? Researchers have found that concern for the environment , but . This leads to a truth that some environmentalists might find inconvenient on this Earth Day weekend: The greater your concern for the environment, the more likely you are to be destroying it.
This contradiction arises from the simple fact that those experiencing poverty, be they individuals or nations, devote more time to their own survival than to global issues, even when the two are linked. Given the choice between electricity and clean air, most choose electricity.
In effect, it鈥檚 when faced with the option of having both electricity and clean air that environmentalism gains traction as a political force. There鈥檚 evidence that poor and lower-income people care about the environment, but feel on that concern.
鈥淛ust because there's a kind of general prevailing idea of what sustainability and preserving the environment are, does not mean that people of color, poor people are not really concerned about the environment or involved in it,鈥� says Melissa Checker, professor of urban studies at Queens College and professor of anthropology and environmental psychology at the City University of New York. 鈥淭here are just different ways to think about nature and caring about it. All equally valid.鈥�
The intersection of economics and ecology is a complex one, but it can be partially explained with a Kuznets curve, an upside down 鈥淯鈥� shaped graph developed by Nobel laureate economist Simon Kuznets in the 1950s to illustrate economic inequality. As a country鈥檚 per capita income rises, Kuznets argued, inequality increases at first, before reaching a turning point when it starts to decline.
Some evidence points to an environmental Kuznets curve: As an economy grows, the environment suffers due to increased consumption. This continues until the average income of that economy is high enough for individuals to make the environment a priority. A 2008 study suggests that this happens when a country鈥檚 annual per capita income reaches .
Something like that appears to have happened in the United States around 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, when public demand led to the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the years since, The United States has seen a 73 percent drop in the pollutants listed in the Clean Air Act and are saving nearly 100 billion gallons of water a day compared to the 1980鈥檚 peak, even as the economy grew. Iconic species such as the and the have returned from the brink of extinction.
When it comes to greenhouse gases, America鈥檚 turning point came much later. .
Again, all this doesn't mean less-affluent people don't care about clean water and air, or Earth's climate. While polls in the US show concern for the environment rising by education level, lower income voters or residents sometimes show stronger concern on issues like or global warming than those with higher incomes. And globally, polling by the Pew Research Center finds people in聽聽more worried about global warming than those in developed nations.
Still, the conundrum remains: Can environmentalism coexist with rising prosperity? Some experts argue it鈥檚 impossible for economic growth to continue indefinitely, as long as that growth is linked to the physical world.聽
鈥淚nfinite economic growth is horrible for the planet,鈥� says David Pellow a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 鈥淪o the very framing of the idea of pro-environmental behavior is missing this really important point that it is almost always rooted in an anti-ecological framework of infinite economic growth.鈥�
So to save our environment, must we sacrifice our economy? Professor Pellow offers no easy solutions. 鈥淭o achieve ecological sustainability, we鈥檙e going to have to go beyond basic reforms and tweaks,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e absolutely need to rethink and overhaul our entire idea of our way of life and what civilization is.鈥�
Other experts, while agreeing major economic changes will be needed, are more optimistic, especially if human population peaks and then begins to decline, thanks to lifestyle changes that come with rising prosperity. Some have outlined of the economy, seeking to stop global warming.聽Their vision includes continued economic growth, but with vastly greater energy efficiency and reliance on renewable power, including in developing nations.
Joela Jacobs, an assistant professor of German studies at the University of Arizona studying the culture of environmentalism among refugees in Europe, sees a few cues we can take from those refugees and the poor around the world.
鈥淎ssuming that those who are poor do not know about the importance of environmentalism is a huge misconception,鈥� she says. 鈥淚f you live in poverty, you know what scarcity of resources means and what an uncertain future means, and I think that's precisely [the lesson] to learn.鈥�
