When we arrived at corona press conference number so many around this time last year, a pressing question came to me: isn’t it time for climate press conferences too? The streets of Limburg were flooded, which led to considerable damage, just across the border in Belgium and Germany, more than two hundred people were killed by storms. Shouldn’t governments, businesses and consumers be shaken up even more repeatedly?
A month later, an invitation for an information evening fell on my doorstep: the neighborhood would be updated about the potential construction of meter-high windmills. I, fearing cast shadows, noise nuisance and depreciation of my newly purchased home, was immediately against it. A few days after that primary reaction, another feeling came along: shame. For my literal ‘not in my backyard’ attitude – abbreviated as NIMBY.
I made myself guilty of climate hypocrisy, a concept that, according to language blog de Taalbank made its appearance in 2010 in the Dutch-language media and is used, among other things, for a ‘climate activist who calls on others to take climate measures, but in the meantime shows behavior that promotes climate change’. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t not see it again.
Climate hypocrisy is there when actor and climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio takes a plane to receive a prize for climate advocates, and receives a lot of criticism from people who probably don’t only travel by train. It’s there when the vegetarian looks on disapprovingly as his neighbor throws steaks and chicken skewers on the barbecue, and then the neighbor yells defensively: “Yes, but you, with your sprinklers in the garden while there is a water shortage.”
It’s there when you shake your head and watch PostNL deliver four packages to the neighbors – ignoring that the van will probably be at your door again next week. It is there when Liza Luesink, former GroenLinks party leader and party leader in Zutphen, takes the plane and people point out how unsustainable that is – “People who fly themselves, huh”, emphasizes Luesink. She is director of behavioral consultancy Duwtje, which advises companies and the government on behavioral change. “Climate hypocrisy exists because we hate it when others do better than us,” says Luesink.
The results of a 2016 study by a social psychologist at Utrecht University to meat eaters and vegetarians underline that. The meat eaters surveyed did not feel threatened by the vegetarians who don’t eat meat for health reasons or because they just don’t like meat very much. But people who experienced meat as ‘wrong’ caused irritation in the meat eaters. Luesink: “If someone chooses not to eat meat, the person who does eat meat feels very well inside that his choice is worse than the other’s. And nobody wants to feel that. People are threatened in their self-image and then start with their ‘yes, but you…’.”
New phase
According to behavioral scientist Reint Jan Renes, climate hypocrisy shows that we have entered a different phase of the climate debate. He is professor of psychology for a sustainable city at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and author of The Climate Split: on the psychological challenges of sustainable behaviour (2021). “Five years ago there was still a lot of doubt, should we really worry about this?”, he says. “Precisely because more people are now pointing at each other with a raised finger, you see: it is alive.” From research by the Social and Cultural Planning Office (SCP) published last year, shows that 76 percent of the Dutch are sometimes concerned about the climate. A smaller proportion (27 percent) are extremely concerned about it. Renes: “That denial, that was one thing. The question now is: what should be done.” And in answering that question it is easier to look at the other than at ourselves. “People tend to judge the other person’s behavior as ‘weak and inconsistent’. But if we show the same behavior, it’s because of the circumstances.”
According to Luesink, looking at the other without context is the breeding ground for climate hypocrisy. She cites an example from her own life: “When I participated in the elections in Zutphen on behalf of GroenLinks, my head hung on green posters throughout the city. I argued for a sustainable society. But meanwhile I went on holiday with my best friend during the same period. To Ibiza. With the plane.” Context: Luesink often takes the train, she and her friend had been saving for this for ten years, had also opened a joint savings account especially for it, had postponed it three times due to pregnancies, childbirth and subsequent maternity periods. “But the outsider does not know that context and does not include it in the judgment. Only my behavior is seen. While: how sustainably does that outsider live?”
More Roman than the Pope
Criticizing others harder than ourselves is a coping strategy to be able to live with the sometimes abrasive choices we make ourselves, says Renes. We feel better if we can conclude: but that train passenger is also doing things wrong. In addition: “The louder a climate activist speaks out, just look at me being green and nature, the stricter you are held accountable for that identity.” Luesink about this: “As a proclaimer of the message you have to be more Catholic than the Pope. Otherwise they will fillet you on your behavior or inconsistency. Like vegetarians who get that famous saying: ‘But you do wear leather shoes.’”
Werner Schouten noticed that too. Until last year, he was chairman of the Young Climate Movement, an organization that wants to make the voice of young people heard in the climate debate. And he is director of the Impact Economy Foundation, an organization that advocates a more sustainable business community. Friends once pointed out to him that he was still cooking on a gas stove, ‘bad for the environment, Schouten’. “There was something uncomfortable about that, I noticed, I immediately went looking to see if I could change it into my rented house. The answer was ‘no’. But it’s good that things like this are brought up, that the inconvenience is there. Let’s not be so fragile, because only when we confront each other about it will the conversation get going.”
Incidentally, Schouten, like Renes, prefers to use the word ‘climate splits’, a little more neutrally, a little less negatively, ‘because it does show awareness’.
“However, awareness is not enough,” says Renes. The climate issue is largely about the intention behavior gap, the gap between intention and behavior, and that gap has not yet been bridged by many. International market research agency Kantar conducted research last year on 9,000 citizens in ten countries, including the United States, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Of them, 62 percent see climate change as the biggest environmental problem, but the willingness to actually do something themselves was much lower – and the lowest in the Netherlands: 37 percent indicated that they wanted to take action.
According to Renes, a similar gap can be seen when it comes to health. “We know it’s not healthy to eat that bag of chips, but we do it.” This has to do with the fact that people like familiar patterns and behavioral change, especially in the case of sustainability, is often accompanied by personal sacrifices. And that makes people good at moral licensing, Renes says: I know I fly, but I only do it once a year. “With that we give ourselves moral reasons why we can do it.” According to him, this also promotes climate hypocrisy.
Good sign
According to Schouten, the fact that the climate split is becoming increasingly tangible is a good sign. “There has been a collective silence for a long time, but we can’t all tackle such a big issue from our islands. Especially not because the biggest and most important behavioral change really has to come from companies and governments.”
Renes: “It is important that we do not judge too quickly in the conversation.” He is concerned about the dichotomy that arises in society. “Not everyone moves at the same speed. It also has to do with your environment. I am very much in my climate bubble because of my work and the place where I live: the Randstad. I myself have three brothers who live in Twente. They don’t understand that I travel by train every time and then take the public transport bicycle to their house in Markelo, where three cars are parked in the yard. But I will explain why I do it. And that can hurt. Resistance means movement. Indifference to other people’s polluting behavior would have been much worse.”
According to Schouten, discussions should be conducted in a constructive manner. “Everyone has imperfections, because sustainable living contains so many facets. They can be the basis for the conversation. I’m not doing it 100 percent right, you aren’t – how can you help me and I help you?”