I saw a news article this morning about how some famous pro climbers – including friends of mine – have written an open letter to the International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC), asking them to keep fossil-fuel sponsorships out of the sport, specifically from sponsoring events like World Cups.

I’m sure you have a view on this polarising story – a story that might have been less polarising five years ago, but isn’t now. You probably think either: a) these people are noble heroes, bending the arc of history toward cosmic justice, doing something rather than nothing; or b) they are hypocritical sporting dilettantes whose luxury beliefs the rest of us are forced to suffer – and pay for.

My gut instinct would be to avoid the subject altogether. I know several of the people who signed the letter; I understand why they felt compelled to sign it, or felt they were unable not to. I’ve also picked up a few thousand extra Substack subscribers lately – some of them paying ones who keep the lights on – so there’s always that inner accountant-cum-censor who stays your fingers on topics that might ruffle feathers (and which, incidentally, is killing writing and journalism). Lately, I’ve been trying not to stir the pot, reaching that place in life David Lean described (while casting the ideal actor for Doctor Zhivago) as “a man who’s taken a long, hard look at life and decided there’s absolutely nothing to be done.” That’s me right now.

And yet I must speak – if not for me, then for them.

First, a defence, to show whose side I’m really on.

In the past six years, I’ve taken a grand total of six flights – three round-trip flights, or one flight a year, or 0.002739726 flights per day. A bit like Dave MacLeod, I’ve tried to live a responsible life: staying close to home, walking and cycling whenever I can, and consuming as little as possible. It has come at a steep cost. It basically cost me the job I once had – public speaking in theatres, schools, and businesses (writing was the hobby; talking was the job). You can’t really do that when you live on an island called Ireland and all your work is in other countries. In the last four years, I’ve done exactly one talk – it was close enough to drive to – whereas before I’d be doing one or two a week, sometimes three in a day. It also means I no longer go on trips, which has the knock-on effect of shrinking what I can write about (when you stop travelling, you rapidly become irrelevant). Of course, having bonus children is another reason, but that’s also a reason to change as well.

I’m not a climate fundamentalist; I’m just an old-school environmentalist, the kind that grew up in the 80s. I don’t actually care that much about climate change (in the 90s we just called it El Niño), which I see mostly as societal asset-stripping, not about stewardship of our environment. What I do care about is old-fashioned stuff, like biodiversity, sewage in rivers, nitrates in the lakes, green industrial deserts, and the fact that I can’t remember the last time I saw a ladybird.

So when people sign a letter like this, I know they’re good people and that it comes from a good place. I know they know they’re going to hell to be boiled in the oceans of petrol and aviation fuel they burn every year, travelling the world to climb and compete. (You can’t fool the devil with that film you made about cycling from crag to crag – he sees everything.) The devil also keeps meticulous tabs on all the petrochemicals in their plastic sport and lifestyle they live: ropes, clothes, holds, helmets, shoes, grippy paint over plywood. Even when it is “natural” or “organic,” unless it was harvested by horses and hand-woven, it’s still a product of fossil fuels. They know they’ll be roasted over mountains of coal used to forge the steel and alloy in their quickdraws, belay devices, bikes, and VW vans – petrol or electric. And yes, I could go on about rare-earth minerals, prisoner and child labour, or the fact that most of them are funded by billion-dollar fast-fashion mega-corporations masquerading as outdoor brands that vomit out mountains of unnecessary gear, made there, shipped here, dumped somewhere else. But they already know all that. That’s life.

Telling petrochemical companies to stay out of our sport might feel like doing something rather than nothing, maybe even some form of moral carbon-offsetting – but it may actually be worse than nothing.

In the real world, I’m sure you’ve noticed domestic energy bills have risen 64%, while manufacturing costs have gone up as much as 200%. More and more people are going cold, perhaps hungry (food production needs energy), and more and more are losing their jobs. That old slogan – “Affordable and clean energy for all” – was always a lie; utopia was never on sale for the price of a scoop of ice cream.

Maybe energy is finally being priced at its true cost, and we’ll use less of it. But cheap energy is precisely what has allowed us the luxury of planning to do away with it, of imagining a greener future, of lecturing poorer countries on how to behave; it gave us the moral high ground. Fossil fuels are what let us plant forests, fund environmental NGOs and activists, and pay people to earn a living pulling on plastic. Make it costly – or bite the hand that feeds you – and people will chop down every last tree just to warm themselves one final time.

Should the IFSC take money from Shell, BP, or some Saudi fund? No – if only because it’s the wrong crowd. But is The North Face or Adidas any better? Why have a body like the IFSC at all? What does it actually do for the planet?

For me, this isn’t really about the IFSC or oil money. It’s about how it looks when people I like and respect sign a letter like that. It lacks self-reflection. It stops being about the IFSC or oil and starts looking like it’s about them – and not in a flattering way.

To explain what I mean – though most of you already know – here’s something I wrote back in September 2019 on some eco “Earth-this-or-that” day, when social media was full of sponsored heroes telling the rest of us how to be better versions of ourselves:

This is a friendly message to all the pros – the sponsored climbers, filmmakers, photographers, skiers, BASE jumpers, outdoor brands, and outdoor influencers. We’ve been following you, the general public, for a very long time. We’ve watched you on Instagram, read you on Twitter and Facebook, watched your videos on YouTube; in fact, we’ve supported you, in one way or another, for most of your career. We bought what you sold, helped build your brand, watched you do things we could never do, go to places we’ll never see, and live the lives we dreamed of.

Most of us have boring, ordinary lives. We gave up our dreams for jobs, families, and Netflix. Whatever life we have left over, we waste watching you – because if we can’t afford to be what we wanted to be (getting paid to surf big waves in Patagonia by Nat Geo), at least we can live it vicariously. At least someone, somewhere, is living it while we educate the kids, drive the buses, replace society’s lightbulbs.

BUT here’s the rub.

If you now want to tell us how we need to change our wicked ways – not to fly to the places you fly to, not to consume the stuff you’ve spent years telling us to buy, not to drive 4×4s we don’t own to places we’ll never visit – it’s like asking us to step off life’s red carpet when that carpet is one we’ve only ever seen on your Instagram.

If it were just one or two of you lecturing us, that would be fine. But not all of you at once. Because you do know we’re not stupid, right? We read books and newspapers, watch documentaries; some of us even choose these downsized, staycation lives on purpose, for the greater good.

So perhaps have a little more self-awareness – it helps avoid the hypocrisy – and maybe a touch more shame. It does not aid the cause we all claim to serve, and sometimes it just looks like brand-building to people who are already trying to live low-carbon lives. When everyone shouts “Fire!” at the same time, no one hears anything; people just switch off.

I say this as both your friend and a friend of this planet. Going forward, try to remember that, in terms of the life a person can aspire to live and its associated cost to the planet, you are the 1%.

Rather than read all the above, my point is best made by this short story.

Once upon a time, another friend of mine posted his own heartfelt lecture about how we could all “do better” – despite probably burning almost as much jet fuel as the US Air Force in his career as a super guide to the super wealthy. It was the usual tone deaf and unreflective kind of thing that’s so common; most don’t even see it, the kind of thing he might just have copied and pasted from some marketing company attached to one of his sponsors. But in the comments came the ultimate takedown, from the common man, one line that captured exactly what I’m trying to say here:

“Are you still sponsored by Land Rover?”