The reason you feel judged isn’t because environmentalists are judging you. It’s because you have a conscience.
Talk to people about sustainability and they’ll say “stop judging me” or that you’re making them feel guilty.
If someone tries to judge me for something I don’t have a problem with, I don’t feel judged. When I lived in Paris and people tried to judge or make fun of me for being American, I didn’t have a problem with it. If they judged me simply for being American, I saw it as their problem, not mine.
The reason you feel judged isn’t because environmentalists are judging you, nor anyone else. It’s because you have a conscience. You’d do well to listen to it.
Abraham Lincoln’s quote remains my most relevant to sustainability: “Nothing is more damaging to you than to do something you believe is wrong.”
Note he didn’t say “. . . to do something I believe is wrong” or “. . . this is absolutely wrong” but ” . . . what you believe is wrong.” The internal conflict is the problem you can’t escape, except by stopping doing what you believe is wrong. You can try changing your beliefs and values, but when the underlying belief is encapsulated by Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You, good luck escaping a basic value of every culture known, at least as far as I know.
I recommend stopping doing what you believe is wrong. Polluting and depleting hurt people. If you believe hurting people is wrong, I recommend stopping polluting and depleting. If your mind fills with rationalizations and justifications, you’re suffering what Lincoln identified as the most damaging thing you can do to yourself.
In Lincoln’s time, if you owned slaves, would you free them, even if it upended your life? Of course you would. So in our time, would he promote stopping polluting and depleting? Of course he would.
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