'I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle'

[editor]

Interesting piece:

This is where the victim blaming takes hold. All too often, our culture broadly equates “environmentalism” with personal consumerism. To be “good,” we must convert to 100 percent solar energy, ride an upcycled bike everywhere, stop flying, eat vegan. We have to live a zero-waste lifestyle, never use Amazon Prime, etc., etc. I hear this message everywhere: the left- and right-wing media and within the environmental movement. It’s even been used by the courts and the fossil fuel industry itself as a defense against litigation. In fact, industries have redirected the environmentalist narrative to blame consumers since the ever-so-problematic “Crying Indian” ad campaign of the 1970s. I hear it from my friends and family, strangers on the street, random people in yoga class.

And all this raises the price of admission to the climate movement to an exorbitant level, often pricing out people of color and other marginalized groups.

While we’re busy testing each other’s purity, we let the government and industries — the authors of said devastation — off the hook completely. This overemphasis on individual action shames people for their everyday activities, things they can barely avoid doing because of the fossil fuel-dependent system they were born into. In fact, fossil fuels supply more than 75 percent of the US energy system.

If we want to function in society, we have no choice but to participate in that system. To blame us for that is to shame us for our very existence.

"I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle."