This is one of the best posts I’ve read in a long time about—not just how to help the environment—but how to approach any movement that, at its root, is about cultural change.
This should be a set of guiding principals in the playbook for the environmental movement, but it won’t be, sadly. Why? Because it’s not sexy enough. Because it would require self-righteousnes, fear-mongering, and indignant anger to take a backseat to reason, humility, and actual progress. That is, of course, unless some of us are willing to examine our motives of why (and how) we’re working to change culture for the better.
There’s too much fear in the way we talk about our environment: fear of running out of oil, fear of climate change, fear of pollution, fear of diminishing biodiversity, to name a few.
Often, science turns to dramatic, fear-inducing predictions to convince people that environmental issues are important and certain changes need to be made immediately. Act now, or it might be too late, we’re told.
But it’s not working.
Fear of something in the distant (or even not-so-distant) future is a lousy motivator of sustained action in the present. People lash out against fear; they rarely take calm, rational action against it.
Jeffrey Tang, How to Save the Earth (Without Fear)
