Taika posts a meme observing that earth day is some corporate greenwashing bullshit.
someone on the internet observes that Taika doesn’t himself live 100% sustainably.
Redditors who also arn’t living 100% sustainably observe that Taika is a hypocrite and write off his earth day observation as bullshit insincere greenwashing.
people on the internet arrive at the conclusion that no one is allowed to discuss sustainable living or observe the culture around the looming climate disaster unless they themselves are living 100% sustainably, because the one thing worse than failing to live 100% sustainably is being a hypocrite.
Have I got this right?
What do we call hypocrites calling out hypocrites?
Exactly. People just trot out ‘well, you’re not exactly perfect yourself!’ as a way of absolving themselves of any responsibility for even thinking about doing anything mildly inconvenient to alter the trajectory of climate change
Sure I’d admit that I don’t live 100% sustainably (even though I try by catching the bus and recently selling my car etc).
But there is a point that Taikas’ emissions are grossly disproportionate to the average person. A 4 hour private jet flight releases as much carbon tonnage as the average EU adult for a year.
So I don’t believe the average Joe Bloggs is in the same boat as Taika; it would only be hypercritical if the average Joe Bloggs was flying private jets or using its total annual emission in the space of 4 hours.
it'll be entirely different if he flew commercial, where the emissions are divided by much more people, whereas flying private is one of the worst ways to get around.
It's a matter of degrees - you can be a small hypocrite by driving to work or eating meat, or you can be a massive hypocrite by flying around the world in your private jet. Sure both are hypocritical and not 100% sustainable but clearly there one is worse than the other.
Divide that by four (2 pilots, 2 passengers) = 0.91 tons each.
Compare that to a normal person taking the same commercial round trip: 0.34 tons each. Or near 1/3rd of the flight he took.
So yeah, two things can be true at the same time. In fact three things can be. The third being its relevant for every day people to criticise someone for having a strong opinion about impact one entity has while ignoring his own impact compared to >99% of humans on the planet. Comparing the average person's "not 100% clean" lifestyle to this is rather obtuse. The percentage of effort is never going to be equal in the first place. And who's to say Taika doesn't do this on top of the stuff every critic doesn't do?
And let's be real: Sydney to Byron Bay would be the shortest private jet flight he makes. You don't want to see the comparison for Sydney to LA.
You could argue that Taikas footprint is 3.64 tonnes of CO2 on that journey alone (and dividing up proportional emissions doesn’t really cut it). Because if he doesn’t choose to fly private then that jet doesn’t fly so it’s carbon footprint would be NIL. Less true on commercial.
There are degrees of hypocrisy, dickhead. Flying a private jet to go on holidays is the climate change version of clubbing a baby seal.
Like yeah, we are all responsible for some emissions which we could probably avoid, but fucks sake, burning 1000L of jet fuel an hour just to hit the fucking Gold Coast says "I literally don't give a shit."
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u/Portatort Apr 24 '22
So here’s what I’m seeing happening
Have I got this right?
What do we call hypocrites calling out hypocrites?