In a fossil fuel world, we are all hypocrits!!! We cannot internalise the false idea that we have no right to comment for this reason. This bad idea would ensure that the world cannot be changed and challenged from those how have simply by virtue of history happened to have held onto the assets of power. There is another problem with this line, which is that energy IS power. Where energy comes from is a unique form of crystallisation that stands against change, precisely because it is the source of all our power. For this reason, it is the other way round, we need everyone to object, irrespective of their hypocrisy, because there is so very little chance that is will change otherwise. Lastly, it is a false separation to suggest that the new world must be the same as the old, driven by corporate sequestration of energy assets supporting a consumption based global economy that stands in opposition to the environment, nature, biodiversity etc. This is certainly a risk, but it is all our responsibility to be involved in trying to curate the new world for exactly the reason that we want to hold our environment up as being critically valuable. There are issues with the basic economics we have in which out economists never include energy as a factor of labour and capital in production, and pollution as being a negative factor and drag. The point here is that the economics is wrong and needs to bring energy and the environment in to actually model the economy in a more truly accurate way. So your instincts are not in opposition to where we need to go. They are crucial, AND require the objection to current fossil fuel world, hypocrits and all.
BW
Jamie (1st flight in a decade to and from Costa Blanca for a week climbing trip, and someone trying to get this world changed in my work domain of healthcare)
Unfortunately, the human race has a better chance of growing gills and going to live in the ocean than it has in getting off fossil fuels. Even the high water marks of renewables will slip back to near zero once the money runs out. How long ago was the industrial revolution? I think that’s the time scale we’re looking at, but it goes dark, we’ll never there (well, China will).
I'm not sure i can accept the nihilism of calling out a the pseudo heros (criticising the fossil fuel involvement) while refusing the hope any parent must grasp. China is in many ways more rational here and shows progression in a way that actually projects a faster rate from fossil fuels, dirty though it currently is. Indeed, what little progress the west has seen has been afforded by the technological exports of China and which would be better attributed to China. China too are securing their own future in a far more rational way than the West is, with evidence of a strategic insight into how to support its interests in the event of collapse. This sort of reality is the sort of thing that does I think require that the voices thay are right are supported even though they are necessarily hypocrits of the fossil fuel world (how could it be otherwise). The world WILL move away from fossil fuels even if it takes collapse to make that a reality. The question is only the extent to which an element of humanity is awake enough to want and try to curate that future.
Andy, in case you sre interested, see this from Steve Keen, who is like you and me, also a hypocrit, but in his economic work, along with the others he cites here, is a key activist in the description of reality and the resulting preconception of our new world (pre or post collapse), and that includes placing those traditionally held values like the environment and biodiversity in their proper place, by virtue that they are a system we are ALL completely dependent on. https://open.substack.com/pub/profstevekeen/p/comments-on-entropy-economics-by?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=15opga
Doing a few talks at KMF tomorrow and I’ve been asked to comment on something related to this. You’ve just helped me sum up how I feel. In short, I have no right to offer advice or insight on climate change. I’ve probably spent more time in helicopters than everyone in the room combined. ‘Own your shit’ and all that. Nice one.
I’m not an advocate for apathy, but I think Brenden Gleason’s view on such matters was a good one, as is Jack Nicholson’s in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest “At least I tried godamit!” I’m not sure you’d be invited back to KMFF if you said what you really think! It’s not that kind of crowd. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQtp7Z9DVEU/?igsh=cG9seWdrdXF6NWU5
A certain famous climber I’ve worked with quite a lot is openly anti ‘activist’ and ‘awareness raising’. He told me to stop talking and start doing. I liked that. Took it to heart. Doing a lot more quiet doing, and very little talking about it.
The problem is that too many people's version of Do! is "Do ME!", their activism shallow and performative, part narcissism (they are saving the world) and part nihilism (the world is doomed), but generally unhelpful to the cause (often they have been co-opted by forces they don't understand). Maybe people have developed a high tolerance for hypocrisy and double standards, do as I say, not as I do, but I can't stand it. Real change takes a great deal of work and coordination, and takes decades to realise. Putting your name to a letter going to a governing body is understandable, but it's not activism.
There's more than one thing going on at once here though. Do ME is a cultural idiom of newer generations who see the world through tools they are trapped by, including social media. There is also a sense of entitlement in which human rights have gone from being things we look to protect in others worse off than ourselves, to being things we assert for ourselves at home. Is it any wonder we have been so shaped by an endemic consumerist and individualistic culture? This is much more of an endemic opiate for the masses, than an easy choice that is easy to escape. Forgiveness comes first. And, again, there is nobody who is not a fossil fuel hypocrite. This phone, your computer, full of tonnes of embodied carbon emissions that well outstrip their cumulative daily use, toxic chemicals mined by kids to make the components, clothes made of plastic, emails, blogs all generating emissions, expecting out of season food from across the world. The first rampant online climate change deniers were experts at pointing to this reality, and now we have matured to the point that it is traditional environmentalist making that same criticism within what should be an ever more powerful collective voice. How could this fossil fuel hypocrisy be any other way, and how does this really help to bring progress when it is really just a tautology that people live in a fossil fuel way in a fossil fuel world. Our civilisation has been built on an edifice (and it's resistance to entropy is) dependent on fossil fuels. Being a hypocrite is a necessary viewpoint for us all. Even a few years of being a hermit wouldn't undo that. And as much as you want to DO, we also have to DO while also doing our best not to do as Larkin shows we are prone to do in effing up our kids, which I personally find hard. Activism is a privilege few can really afford except to the extent they always have. Only one woman threw themselves under a horse, but they were all important.
As always I appreciate reading your honest takes, though I think this one is missing the mark. Recognizing the ways our lifestyles impact the environment is certainly important, especially when we are critical of our current system of consumption. However, throwing up our hands and saying "we participate in the system, therefore we cannot criticize it" is a defeatist attitude that is entirely unproductive. What should we do instead then?
An obvious answer to that is to live a low-consumption lifestyle. Like you, I have been avoiding flying, and haven't travelled by plane in the past year (inspired by Dave and Aidan Roberts). However, I still climb and travel North America to do so, seeking out more carbon efficient means to do so (often horribly convoluted due to the state of the US rail system). To me, any step in the right direction to reduce environmental impact is a good one. We should encourage incremental improvements instead of highlighting the imperfection of such improvements. Realistically, people need to be making changes en masse for any of this to matter, and I would argue that small improvements are an easier pill to swallow for the average joe.
Overall, there's only so much a single individual can do. They can vote with their wallet or ballot, though those even are of dubious efficacy. Anyone who uses their position to take action or make a genuine statement should be encouraged for that behavior (within reason. Sneaky greenwashing and the like exist).
Maybe I'm getting off topic by this point, but I don't think we should be fighting each other for wanting a better future. There are many means to the same end.
I knew this would be a polarising subject, but although it's one man's opinion, I think the majority would agree with it, but would never dare say so, so calling out hypocrisy is perhaps a public good.
We spend around $1 trillion a year on "climate change", much of which I'd view as corporate embezzlement, fraud, money laundering, think Enron at a global scale, almost all of it wasted, but leading to deindustrialization, societal impoverishment and political instability, all of which undermine our ability to adapt to change, as well as mend our ways.
People are really, really struggling in Europe, and we really are looking at a new Dark Ages in many ways, and so, when some of the most privileged people make a statement, people who jet around the world without a concern, I don't think they should get off Scott free. People need to begin feeling emboldened to speak up. The king has no clothes.
The reason is that once someone tags what they're saying or doing as being about "climate change", they become untouchable, beyond criticism or question. "How dare you point out my hypocrisy, when I'm trying to do my bit to save the planet!" Well, a "bit" won't do it; it's just play-acting, like how every young climber puts 'activist' on their Instagram bio.
Really, the only real 'activists' in their world as those working and paying tax; they're the heavy lifters, whose money should be going to mitigate and adapt for a world that is changing (as it always has, and always will), rather than being stolen, sunk into eco black holes and governmental incompetence.
If you were to pin someone down and ask them to describe a world without fossil fuels, at this point in time (it might be different in 3025), I think they'd describe a world like Cambodia in 1975, or Ukraine during the Holodomor, or the Chinese Great Famine, the greatest caravan of human misery ever seen, and like these three examples, all driven by ideological arrogance.
I know it's just a letter to some pointless climbing organisation, as important as big oil sponsoring the Hula-Hoop World Cup, but it's indicative of a deeper issue.
The Land Rover question at the end is brutal. Theres something particularly uncomfortable about watching people who make their living from globe-trotting adventures lecture the rest of us about carbon footprints. The self-awareness gap you're pointing to feels like the core issue here, more than the actual question of IFSC sponsorships.
I see your point but don't quite see how it's relevant to the people having signed this thing. I only know of a few of these people but the ones I do follow aren't sponsored by land rover, have as far as I know sworn off flying and do in fact leave an exeptionally low carbon footprint even compared to us muggles. You probably know more people on this list and more closely intimately but my gut feeling is that your argument is targeting the wrong people.
'kin Gold Andy - from a fanboy who heard you speak in Aotearoa NZ
In a fossil fuel world, we are all hypocrits!!! We cannot internalise the false idea that we have no right to comment for this reason. This bad idea would ensure that the world cannot be changed and challenged from those how have simply by virtue of history happened to have held onto the assets of power. There is another problem with this line, which is that energy IS power. Where energy comes from is a unique form of crystallisation that stands against change, precisely because it is the source of all our power. For this reason, it is the other way round, we need everyone to object, irrespective of their hypocrisy, because there is so very little chance that is will change otherwise. Lastly, it is a false separation to suggest that the new world must be the same as the old, driven by corporate sequestration of energy assets supporting a consumption based global economy that stands in opposition to the environment, nature, biodiversity etc. This is certainly a risk, but it is all our responsibility to be involved in trying to curate the new world for exactly the reason that we want to hold our environment up as being critically valuable. There are issues with the basic economics we have in which out economists never include energy as a factor of labour and capital in production, and pollution as being a negative factor and drag. The point here is that the economics is wrong and needs to bring energy and the environment in to actually model the economy in a more truly accurate way. So your instincts are not in opposition to where we need to go. They are crucial, AND require the objection to current fossil fuel world, hypocrits and all.
BW
Jamie (1st flight in a decade to and from Costa Blanca for a week climbing trip, and someone trying to get this world changed in my work domain of healthcare)
Unfortunately, the human race has a better chance of growing gills and going to live in the ocean than it has in getting off fossil fuels. Even the high water marks of renewables will slip back to near zero once the money runs out. How long ago was the industrial revolution? I think that’s the time scale we’re looking at, but it goes dark, we’ll never there (well, China will).
I'm not sure i can accept the nihilism of calling out a the pseudo heros (criticising the fossil fuel involvement) while refusing the hope any parent must grasp. China is in many ways more rational here and shows progression in a way that actually projects a faster rate from fossil fuels, dirty though it currently is. Indeed, what little progress the west has seen has been afforded by the technological exports of China and which would be better attributed to China. China too are securing their own future in a far more rational way than the West is, with evidence of a strategic insight into how to support its interests in the event of collapse. This sort of reality is the sort of thing that does I think require that the voices thay are right are supported even though they are necessarily hypocrits of the fossil fuel world (how could it be otherwise). The world WILL move away from fossil fuels even if it takes collapse to make that a reality. The question is only the extent to which an element of humanity is awake enough to want and try to curate that future.
well put!
Andy, in case you sre interested, see this from Steve Keen, who is like you and me, also a hypocrit, but in his economic work, along with the others he cites here, is a key activist in the description of reality and the resulting preconception of our new world (pre or post collapse), and that includes placing those traditionally held values like the environment and biodiversity in their proper place, by virtue that they are a system we are ALL completely dependent on. https://open.substack.com/pub/profstevekeen/p/comments-on-entropy-economics-by?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=15opga
Doing a few talks at KMF tomorrow and I’ve been asked to comment on something related to this. You’ve just helped me sum up how I feel. In short, I have no right to offer advice or insight on climate change. I’ve probably spent more time in helicopters than everyone in the room combined. ‘Own your shit’ and all that. Nice one.
I’m not an advocate for apathy, but I think Brenden Gleason’s view on such matters was a good one, as is Jack Nicholson’s in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest “At least I tried godamit!” I’m not sure you’d be invited back to KMFF if you said what you really think! It’s not that kind of crowd. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQtp7Z9DVEU/?igsh=cG9seWdrdXF6NWU5
A certain famous climber I’ve worked with quite a lot is openly anti ‘activist’ and ‘awareness raising’. He told me to stop talking and start doing. I liked that. Took it to heart. Doing a lot more quiet doing, and very little talking about it.
I thought the latter was activism! You aren't an activist if you don't DO!
The problem is that too many people's version of Do! is "Do ME!", their activism shallow and performative, part narcissism (they are saving the world) and part nihilism (the world is doomed), but generally unhelpful to the cause (often they have been co-opted by forces they don't understand). Maybe people have developed a high tolerance for hypocrisy and double standards, do as I say, not as I do, but I can't stand it. Real change takes a great deal of work and coordination, and takes decades to realise. Putting your name to a letter going to a governing body is understandable, but it's not activism.
There's more than one thing going on at once here though. Do ME is a cultural idiom of newer generations who see the world through tools they are trapped by, including social media. There is also a sense of entitlement in which human rights have gone from being things we look to protect in others worse off than ourselves, to being things we assert for ourselves at home. Is it any wonder we have been so shaped by an endemic consumerist and individualistic culture? This is much more of an endemic opiate for the masses, than an easy choice that is easy to escape. Forgiveness comes first. And, again, there is nobody who is not a fossil fuel hypocrite. This phone, your computer, full of tonnes of embodied carbon emissions that well outstrip their cumulative daily use, toxic chemicals mined by kids to make the components, clothes made of plastic, emails, blogs all generating emissions, expecting out of season food from across the world. The first rampant online climate change deniers were experts at pointing to this reality, and now we have matured to the point that it is traditional environmentalist making that same criticism within what should be an ever more powerful collective voice. How could this fossil fuel hypocrisy be any other way, and how does this really help to bring progress when it is really just a tautology that people live in a fossil fuel way in a fossil fuel world. Our civilisation has been built on an edifice (and it's resistance to entropy is) dependent on fossil fuels. Being a hypocrite is a necessary viewpoint for us all. Even a few years of being a hermit wouldn't undo that. And as much as you want to DO, we also have to DO while also doing our best not to do as Larkin shows we are prone to do in effing up our kids, which I personally find hard. Activism is a privilege few can really afford except to the extent they always have. Only one woman threw themselves under a horse, but they were all important.
As always I appreciate reading your honest takes, though I think this one is missing the mark. Recognizing the ways our lifestyles impact the environment is certainly important, especially when we are critical of our current system of consumption. However, throwing up our hands and saying "we participate in the system, therefore we cannot criticize it" is a defeatist attitude that is entirely unproductive. What should we do instead then?
An obvious answer to that is to live a low-consumption lifestyle. Like you, I have been avoiding flying, and haven't travelled by plane in the past year (inspired by Dave and Aidan Roberts). However, I still climb and travel North America to do so, seeking out more carbon efficient means to do so (often horribly convoluted due to the state of the US rail system). To me, any step in the right direction to reduce environmental impact is a good one. We should encourage incremental improvements instead of highlighting the imperfection of such improvements. Realistically, people need to be making changes en masse for any of this to matter, and I would argue that small improvements are an easier pill to swallow for the average joe.
Overall, there's only so much a single individual can do. They can vote with their wallet or ballot, though those even are of dubious efficacy. Anyone who uses their position to take action or make a genuine statement should be encouraged for that behavior (within reason. Sneaky greenwashing and the like exist).
Maybe I'm getting off topic by this point, but I don't think we should be fighting each other for wanting a better future. There are many means to the same end.
I knew this would be a polarising subject, but although it's one man's opinion, I think the majority would agree with it, but would never dare say so, so calling out hypocrisy is perhaps a public good.
We spend around $1 trillion a year on "climate change", much of which I'd view as corporate embezzlement, fraud, money laundering, think Enron at a global scale, almost all of it wasted, but leading to deindustrialization, societal impoverishment and political instability, all of which undermine our ability to adapt to change, as well as mend our ways.
People are really, really struggling in Europe, and we really are looking at a new Dark Ages in many ways, and so, when some of the most privileged people make a statement, people who jet around the world without a concern, I don't think they should get off Scott free. People need to begin feeling emboldened to speak up. The king has no clothes.
The reason is that once someone tags what they're saying or doing as being about "climate change", they become untouchable, beyond criticism or question. "How dare you point out my hypocrisy, when I'm trying to do my bit to save the planet!" Well, a "bit" won't do it; it's just play-acting, like how every young climber puts 'activist' on their Instagram bio.
Really, the only real 'activists' in their world as those working and paying tax; they're the heavy lifters, whose money should be going to mitigate and adapt for a world that is changing (as it always has, and always will), rather than being stolen, sunk into eco black holes and governmental incompetence.
If you were to pin someone down and ask them to describe a world without fossil fuels, at this point in time (it might be different in 3025), I think they'd describe a world like Cambodia in 1975, or Ukraine during the Holodomor, or the Chinese Great Famine, the greatest caravan of human misery ever seen, and like these three examples, all driven by ideological arrogance.
I know it's just a letter to some pointless climbing organisation, as important as big oil sponsoring the Hula-Hoop World Cup, but it's indicative of a deeper issue.
Completely agree.. thank you Andy for rare honesty..!
The Land Rover question at the end is brutal. Theres something particularly uncomfortable about watching people who make their living from globe-trotting adventures lecture the rest of us about carbon footprints. The self-awareness gap you're pointing to feels like the core issue here, more than the actual question of IFSC sponsorships.
I see your point but don't quite see how it's relevant to the people having signed this thing. I only know of a few of these people but the ones I do follow aren't sponsored by land rover, have as far as I know sworn off flying and do in fact leave an exeptionally low carbon footprint even compared to us muggles. You probably know more people on this list and more closely intimately but my gut feeling is that your argument is targeting the wrong people.