Why environmentalists fail and what environmentalism lacks: integrity, credibility, and experience
I like Nate Hagens’s videos. We’ve hosted many of the same guests. A mutual friend put us in touch. I followed up, though he hasn’t responded. I’m only using him as an example of someone going beyond caring about the environment to acting. Beyond caring, he understands the issues beyond what most people do.
If you scroll down, you can see the full video that I pulled this clip from. A friend sent a link to the full video to me, saying it resonated with her. The part in this clip struck me because it exemplified one of the main problems I see in environmentalism. Can you tell what?
The Two Problems I See
First comes the lesser problem. He says sustainability has to fight the market. Well, if the market represents demand, he’s saying that people don’t want sustainability. As I wrote in my post Environmentalism, Coercion, and Authoritarianism,
If you think living more sustainably makes people’s lives worse, you have to become a better dictator.
I would clarify that point now to “If you think living more sustainably makes people’s lives and culture worse, and you want more sustainability, that path leads to dictatorship and authoritarianism, since you want people to act against their interests.
I’ve watched maybe a dozen or so of his videos. From what I could tell, Nate doesn’t seem to want to push people against their interests, but he also seems resigned not to try to influence people beyond giving them information and hoping they act. I haven’t seen him try to lead, which, as regular readers know, means the opposite of telling people what to do, the opposite of convincing, cajoling, coercing, or seeking compliance.
The second problem I see is the big one. I see his talking about flying as a proxy for acting through whatever impacts the most. I conclude that he sees living unsustainably as more effective and preferable to living sustainably. He contrasts flying and maximizing impact with withdrawing and acting ineffectively.
This dichotomy is false. He ends up promoting living unsustainably and denigrating living sustainably. He doesn’t know what works. If Martin Luther King had acted like Nate during the Montgomery bus boycott, he would have said, “Yes, it’s important to boycott buses, but my work is so important, I should take the bus.”
Well, who thinks their work is unimportant?
Missing from sustainability is leadership. We don’t need more people lecturing facts, numbers, and what to do. We don’t need more technology, legislation, or market incentives.
Sustainability needs credibility, integrity, and practical, hands-on experience. Living unsustainably undermines all these things. It fuels the opposition and resistance.
Dr. King was more effective living like his followers. It’s the only way he could be effective. Undermining his integrity, credibility, and opportunity to gain experience would have undermined the movement.
Moreover, it would have kept him from finding solutions that worked. It would have distanced him from his followers.
Nate said many other things that undermine sustainability. Artificial intelligence, for example, isn’t only a tool for people who agree with him. It helps people who disagree too. It mostly doesn’t change the direction of our culture, it accelerates it, including the parts he doesn’t like. To the extent it will change direction, it will help people preferentially by access to resources, so it will likely increase pollution and depletion.
Another example: he values systems thinking, but misses the most important parts, such as changing the goals of the system.
I could cite other examples, but you can find them. I want to focus on the main problems:
Sustainability lacks leadership, not facts, numbers, instruction, coercion, cajoling, convincing, lecturing, seeking compliance.
Leadership requires credibility, integrity, and practical, hands-on experience.
Acting unsustainably undermines these two points. Acting sustainably doesn’t have to mean ineffectiveness.
Again, I pick Nate as an example because he understands and acts more than nearly anyone.
Here’s the original:

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