Have you ever seen an environmentist that was not an Hypocrite in one way or another?

Question

Mostly in life stile. You do as I say, but not as I do.

or I will do this but not that.

or just over look that witch is not convenient for them, like Al Gore? Did you use a plastic bag today?

Answer 1

Nope... but then, out here in Wyoming, there are few FAKE environmentalists, and even fewer hypocrites.

FAKE environmentalist = hypocrite

TRUE environmentalist = one who loves, respects, and is able to USE (responsibly) their environment for the benefit of mankind... and yet replace/restore it.  Oh, and they are not hypocrites.

Have a "green" day.

Answer 2

well at least once [or a million times] in someones life they do act like a hypocrite. it's an almost sure thing they will and it is a sure thing that nobody's perfect. but that doesn't mean that anyone should stop trying to make the world a little bit closer to perfect by doing whatever it takes to live a little greener; even though at times we may act hypocritical.

Answer 3

I think everyone who conciders themselves earth friendly can be seen as a hypocrite by someone else, with a different set of earth friendly standards/goals.

My husband and I live a very earth friendly life, on our permaculture farm.  Yet most vegans would concider us to be horrible people.  We raise our meat animals on pasture, intensively grazed, always rotated, always green (even in winter the animals have pasture).  

The way we farm, and the foods we raise (even the fruits, vegtables, nuts, herbs, berries, ect) use almost zero oil/gas to produce.  But we certainly raise, and butcher livestock right here on our farm as part of our diet and the way we farm.  Vegans would think we are horrid.

Compare that to a grain, and legume based vegan diet.  Massive amounts of gas/oil products are used to plant, fertilize, weed/insect control, harvest, dry, package, ship, store, ect those type of grain and legumes.

So someones ideas of "bad for the enviroment" completely depend on their point of view.

We grow our own trees on our farm, to produce wood, for our woodstoves...the main source of heat in the house.  Some people would concider us horrible for cutting down any tree at all, and burning the wood, putting wood smoke into the air.

Yet trees are a completely renewable resource (we just planted 9000 trees three years ago, and will plant another 1100 this fall).  Since we are harvesting for ourselves, we do not clear cut, but harvest what we need, and selectively cut.

Most people in the U.S. recieve their power for heat, via coal burning.  

So which is worse?  That we grow forests, provide wildlife habitat, selectively cut, and put wood smoke into the air?  Or the people that are dependant on coal fired power plants to heat their homes, and put the pollutants from the coal plants into the air, mine the coal, and are completely dependant on the power grid being up and running to provide their heat needs (not to mention power)?

How about people that buy the brand new, hybrid vehicles that are supose to be fuel efficient?  Or how about people like my husband and I, who keep old vehicles on the road, running in top condition.  My Merc Sable is a 1991, and gets 36 mpg on the highway.  My husbands 1968 3/4 ton Ford truck gets 17 mpg.

Or should we scrap the old vehicles and get brand news ones with huge batteries...batteries that had minerals strip mined in 20 different countries, most of them 3rd world countries?

I raise my livestock as completely naturally as possible.  I'd like to be completely organic, but I never will be.  I personally believe it's more earth friendly to buy a locally grown animal feed, than to buy an organic feed grown thousands of miles away and shipped.

People just need to think about what makes sence in their life, and live the most earth friendly lifestyle they are able to where they are located.

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years

Answer 4

Being an environmentalist doesn't mean striving for perfection. It is a way of life and trying to make the best choices as much as possible.

For me going green is a process. I'm not ready to sell my house and move into a cabin in the woods. That doesn't mean I don't practice what I preach. I make a million little choices all day long and I try to make the best choice possible, but I am a practicle person. Sometimes I forget to bring my reusable bag into the store and I got more than I can carry in my purse or in my hand so I still occasionally use a plastic bag. I do find uses for them and I have dramatically reduced the number that enter my home.

I try to buy only organic in season produce from local growers, but I love bananas and they don't grow near me, so I eat them from South America. I still grow some of my own food and buy at my local certified organic farmers market for most of my produce.

I don't consider a lack of perfection Hypocritcal. I don't think Al Gore ever claimed to live a zero impact life. He has just provided a platform for an important message. I know people discount some of his claims. He never claimed to do the research himself, he has consulted many scientist and researchers and made the movie with the most accurate information he had available. The truth is way may never really know how much man has contributed to the changes occuring in the world now.

I hope Global Warming turns out to be untrue. However, we are depeleting our resources and polluting our land and waterways at an unsustainable rate and I will continue to shape my life in a way that reduces my impact on the planet. If I occasionally use a less than natural cleaning product or fly somewhere for vacation or use a plastic bag it doesn't undo the better choices I've made.

Answer 5

all environmentalists are hypocrites...technically just living in a house kills trees or driving a car.... so they either should start living what the preach or stop crying

Answer 6

I think Everyone is a Hypocrite at some Point... Except  for Me, Of course.

Answer 7

Well, what is it that Christ said, ye who is without sin...

Certainly, we could go on ad infinitum regarding the hypocracy of individuals and thus try by association to discredit the overall goals, but again, this does not make Christianity an invalid religion by virtue of there being some sinners among the faithful, quite the contrary, it holds the ideal up as something that is desirable.

I had a debate a few years ago with a friend of mine whom is a staunch believer in Objectivism, which - among many other things, states that there are no real constraints or limits in the world, that market economies are the perfection of mankind and similar such libertarian ideals.

While in a sense this naive concept of marketplaces is not wrong in the theoretical sense, in the practical sense, it bears little resemblance to reality, I pointed to the oil market suggesting that we were in for trouble, he immediately became violently opposed to this viewpoint dismissing it as utter "liberal garbage" that I could choose to believe if I wanted to.

Stating that "there is no oil shortage, that it was all just a question of drilling here and there" and if "socialists would stop trying to control the marketplace and allow drilling - everywhere" everything would be fine. Well, while there are a couple of places where we still can't drill, 160 dollar oil has failed to produce the miracle of loaves and fishes my buddy got on about, the "marketplace" has yet to provide, and more importantly - barring the miracle technology, it won't be providing anything other than higher prices and REAL constraints.

What people fail to consider is that the world is NOT always confined to our beliefs.

The fact that gasoline now costs 4-5 or soon 6-7 dollars is not viewed as a problem to him, when he was reasonably wealthy, but he has been recently in the unfortunate position to take a serious fall in both economic and material sense and so now lives at home and is unemployed and without a car because he can't afford it.

It is immaterial to him, that he accepts unemployment but rails against the system for having generations of 'welfare babies' and good for nothing liberals just looking to soak up our tax dollars.

When last I met with him, he still held these positions, I bought dinner though.  In this case, it highlights alot of the "problem", from my perspective, I don't pick on him or call him out, except when he is blatantly wrong.

It's just not productive and so it is with this line of discussion, so common on Y!A. With certain personalities, Mr. Gore or other personalities where the message outweighs the activity obviously there are contradictions or outright hypocracy, but for my money it misses the point.

My buddy and a fair percentage of people are in the position of having strong beliefs of one stripe or another and those beliefs are challenged by reality.

There is an important difference, Mr. Gore on the other hand is not in the position of having his beliefs challenged by reality, but by the prevailing political viewpoint - quite a different matter.

For myself, I did my homework, if that makes me a liberal - so be it.

So I understand that oil will go up and continue to go up for the forseeable future, so 15-20 years ago "liberals" or whatever were crying foul that the end of oil was near, and guess what ... they were right.  I also understand that in less than 20 years, we had better be using something other than oil or we are in serious serious trouble.

So environmentalists / liberals are again screaming that global warming is near.... but people say that is not a problem, that it's just a bunch of hypocritical liberal _fill in the blanks_.

The circumstances of spending some money now, both personally and nationally to mitigate our circumstances are pretty trivial and completely consistent with the national goals of REAL energy independence - the rationale for which - could not , in my opinion - be more obviously compelling, so why on Earth shouldn't we do this, if the consequences could be of a negative consequence to our nation.

It seems profoundly against the national interests to delude ourselves when the preponderance of scientific evidence and obvious ecological damage are so painfully obvious to see.

So considering that we slowly are moving towards a situation where it will just be common for crops to fail in the Midwest after August, rainfall will become erratic throughout the eastern 2/3rds of the nation and non-existent in other parts.

The world itself will not stop, but things will change imperceptibly, but those changes will net out to something which we cannot deal with...

So if the US should suffer a run of 5 or 6 years of sporadic crop failures, how many people would be willing to try and explain to US children whom receive food ration cards or worse just go starving, all the compelling and plausible reasons we didn't really have to do anything at all and felt good about fiddling while the environment went to h**l in a hand-basket..

I'm sure there will be many of reasons, but I'm just as sure whatever those reasons are , will be pretty hollow sounding and significantly dis-satisfying.

I for one prefer to say we tried, that we tried - even against the circumstances of almost certain failure to do something.

So while I did not use a plastic bag today, or recently - to my recollection and I do drink my coffee from a metal tote-can, and drive a hybrid car, I understand that I don't put that on anyone as being "holier than thou", that's not proper in polite conversation.

Rather I say nothing and do what I can afford to do to prepare myself, in the face of rather unknown consequences

Meanwhile, there are those whom suggest, as if nothing could ever go wrong, there is no problem and no reason to get upset.

The oil crisis of today, is manifest and painful proof that such faith-based ideology that everything will "just work out" without having to work for it as a nation, is just wrong.

What upsets me is that people so perfectly content to do nothing, are also so perfectly content to be the first in line for stones.

There is also that category of people whom are possibly in the position of having efforted to move beyond the oil economy, whom may see Al Gore's viewpoints and consciousness raising exercises differently.

But they - typically will not be the ones to call him to the carpet, for wrong headed as he may be for using jet transportation or driving an SUV from time to time, the message is important and he is at least trying to do something.

Politicians have always had contradictions , the staunch leadership of Winston Churchill is inconsistent with his heavy drinking and brilliant oratory and determination.

Conversely the monstrous persona of Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian whom abhorred even hearing about violence personally but was in fact a highly functional sociopath.

Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and helped draft the Constitution itself, and was a life-long slave-holder.

Abraham Lincoln carried the weight of both the North and the South upon his shoulders during the war between the states, but was chronically depressed and suffered from "malaise" often both before and after the war.

Ghandi freed his people through non-violent demonstration and was a staunch proponent of egalitarianism among the Hindu and Mulsim peoples of India, but was less than kind to his wife and short with staff from time to time.

So is there ever a perfect leader, doubtful this species will ever see one, Perhaps some philosopher in the past or future, but everyone has flaws.

Answer 8

What's worse?

Striving for an ideal and falling short?

Or not giving a **** in the first place?

You tell me.

Answer 9

That's like asking "have you ever seen a Christian (or any other religious follower) that was not a hypocrite in one way or another?"

The answer to that question is the same:  of course.  

Being an environmentalist, or a Christian (or anything else, for that matter) is a conscious choice.  Of course, your lifestyle should follow suit and that's where most of us fall short.  However, falling short doesn't mean that you're no longer an environmentalist or that you were never a "real" one to begin with.  Same with religion.

At the end of the day you acknowledge your short comings and vow to do better tomorrow.

Hiram

Answer 10

Yes, I looked in the mirror this morning.