Meme on my social feed this morning: (Photo of Taylor Swift with Travis Kelce; photo of a jumbo jet airliner). Text: “Taylor Swift produces 138 tons of CO2 emissions in 3 months to see her ‘soulmate’ Travis Kelce. And here I am drinking out of a soggy straw.”
And my response:
And all of this said, we do each personally need to do whatever we can do. I do not believe in letting ourselves off the hook.
No need to be a martyr, if you really hate that soggy paper straw then get yourself a reusable straw — or do without a straw entirely. I know a straw was just one example, but I’m using it to illustrate how we can be walking our talk without being suffering martyrs. (Although I personally am OK with making some choices that genuinely are a bit of a sacrifice.)
Our wallets may not be a big, but there are millions and millions and millions of us!! We create fads, which go on to become trends, which going to become solidified as cultural norms. What we do matters!! In a good way. We have a lot more power than we think to influence things for the good.
As leaders of the environmental movement, (by which I mean people who follow the science, see the situation in our communities, and really believe there is a crisis), we really really need to walk our talk. Fortunately there are lots of ways to walk our talk without putting up with misery. I live a very abundant life at about 10% of the average US citizen’s footprint. And I have written an easy practical guidebook, and companion blog, to help others who want to do the same.
The best way to shift cultural norms, behavioral norms, is for us to be walking our talk in many many every day practical ways in our daily lives. I call it beneficial contagion.
Back to Taylor Swift. If we the masses weren’t ourselves so willing to get on airplanes, her concerts wouldn’t be selling so many mega millions of tickets. (I personally have nothing against Taylor Swift, except that I hate to see a fellow white woman taking up so much bandwidth in a world where we need to be paying attention to a lot more important things.)
Thank you always Parkrose Permaculture for your excellent and thought-provoking posts. I wish you were my neighbor in real life, but I am glad to have you as my neighbor in cyberspace!