Are we the 1%? Are you?
The other day someone pushed back, as usual, about flying. For most people who fly, flying hurts people more than anything else they do through polluting, depleting, funding lobbyists, funding advertising, displacing people from their homes, etc.
He started responding by saying, “The problem is that everyone has to see family …”
After he finished his whole answer, I pointed out not “everyone” flies to see family. Most Americans live within driving distance of their families. In the rest of the world, nearly no one lives flying-distance from families.
We’re so spoiled and entitled from the perks of being at the top of a dominance hierarchy we don’t know how spoiled and entitled we are.
The guy I was talking to was an environmentalist, and a prominent one at that. It doesn’t matter how much people promote sustainability, with the exception of a small fraction of people worldwide, if people can afford to fly they do, and rationalize and justify that they aren’t funding and promoting polluting and depleting more than nearly anyone who has ever lived.
Remember the slogan “We are the 99%” during Occupy Wall Street? It seems to me that people who fly overseas or more than once or twice a year are in the 1%. I wonder how many people in the 1% mistakenly believe that they are not hurting people as much as they are, are not as corrupted from their values as they are, are paying for as much cruelty as they are.
Are you the 1%?
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