Why do liberals and progressives so strongly oppose actually acting on sustainability?
Working in sustainability leadership, I interact a lot with people working on sustainability. Most of them are politically liberal or progressive. I’m prompted to write this post after finishing This Changes Everything and What If We Get It Right, both books promoting those politics.
They keep saying how individuals acting aren’t the answer. They imply or say that suggesting so is harmful. They all keep falling back on BP and its industry distracting from themselves by promoting individual carbon footprints.
They oppose not just any one individual acting. They tend to oppose any individual action at all. From a leadership perspective, doing what they say is a problem while telling others it’s bad when others do it seems to sacrifice their credibility, integrity, and effectiveness.
For the record, I know why they oppose acting: the reason everyone addicted does. We choose first on intuition, then rationalize and justify afterward, in a mental process not completely unconscious but you have to know to look for to observe. They believe themselves good people and feel change would be too much, then rationalize and justify. They believe government should solve the problem. They don’t know how to lead, only to convince, cajole, coerce, manipulate, legislate, lecture, and so on. They don’t think they’re acting counterproductively, only doing what they believe has to be done: to change the bad guys.
Do they realize they’re leading people to see their acting as bad? By telling people not to act they imply acting is hard or makes your life or culture worse. By not doing it themselves, or even trying, they don’t know that living more sustainably improves our lives. They’ll say people who are poor, lack time, have too much to do just to get by can’t do it, but they speak out of ignorance. They themselves are funding the industries that deprive the people they purport to represent of health, time, money, and other resources.
Do they think living more sustainably is worse? If so, why promote it? I suggest they should try. Living by your values improves your life.
Can you tell I don’t like when people tell others to do something while they do the opposite? I find integrity, credibility, practical experience, and living by one’s values more effective than the opposite.
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