If you are trying to find someone, what is to blame Climate changeDon't look at me. When it comes to a small carbon trace, I practically wear shoes in the pointer. The last time I owned a car in 1979, when I moved to New York and sold my Datsun B210 – neither the company nor the car even exists. There I spent the last decades, enriching almost completely in mass transit. This does not mean that my ecological hands are completely clean, or that I do not feel guilty for my omissions. I fly whenever I need, I am processing only indifferently, I didn’t even think about making the most green choice for my diet: vegan.
I am by no means alone in my shortcomings in stability or I feel guilty of them. 2021 survey in Lancet They found that 50.2% of people surveyed are guilty of their contribution to the environment in particular, and in particular climate change. Among young people, the numbers are even more. According to the consulting of branding and social influence BBMG, 61% of them up to 30 They said that they feel guilty for the harm that they help to cause the planet. Wine may not be completely inappropriate, especially among people with higher income in developed countries.
“If I have a privilege to gain benefits from all the ways in which this modern, Western, Eurocentric life allowed us to get certain advantages, I am also part of the problem, because I am engaged in certain practices,” says Wendy Greenspun, a clinical psychologist who is associated with Alliance of Climate Psychology North AmericaEducational non -profit organization. And although guilt may be higher among young people, according to the BBMG survey, older people in no case get rid of their particular guilt. “In the older generation, [guilt is] One of the main emotions associated with the climate that occur, because it looks like what we did to protect future generations, our own children and grandchildren? “Says GreenSpun.
Read more: Climate anxiety affects young people
So, how much should we feel and what can we do to overcome this?
Why do I feel climatic guilt, but others do not?
If about half of the people Lancet The survey is sensually guilty, this also means that many others do not. Of course, this supposedly impeccable cohort does not consist completely of people who returned to the ground, raise their own cultures, do not own the car and do not make planes. So how do they evade the negative feelings associated with modern life? One way is the climate denial. If you convinced yourself that human activity does not cause climate change, you get a free moral pass to live the way you choose. One study of 2023 V Business ethics magazine I studied this issue, especially with regard to decisions in air travel.
“The more people feel responsible for pollution and environmental problems,” says Barbara Kulberg, associate professor of the marketing department at the University of Lubububwean, and the leading author of the newspaper, “the more they feel the guilt for the influence that their air travels have on the planet.”
This was discovered by researchers, can have direct causal relationships regarding decisions on the fly or not to fly. Indeed, according to the study, which the authors quote, 40% of the Europeans surveyed reported that the rejection of the flight would be the easiest victim that they could make to try to cure the planet, because this is not what will affect their lives every day, as wakefulness of driving or abandoning meat.
In any case, the denial of climate is a bad way to evade guilt for the environmental riots of mankind. This challenges the main truths of science and pollutes rational debate with erroneous and refutations – arrests. But he served the fuel industry well – and this is not the only tool that used large oil to distract society from the main factors of growing emissions. In 2004, BP came up with the term “carbon trace” as part of the global marketing campaign, even creating Carbon trace calculator So that people realize their own contribution to the emissions of the greenhouse. The idea was advanced as a way for each of us in order to keep his own house clean, but it allowed Big Oil to remain dirty.
So is the decision simply to transfer the guilt from a person back to the industrial sector, especially agribusiness and fuel companies?
“If people feel responsible, they feel less guilty,” says Kulberg. This can be a fairly fair calculation, but Culiberg – while it does not encourage people to suffer from guilt, – believes that this allows us everything is a little easy. “Anyone can point fingers at the fuel company and say that they are responsible,” she says. “But this position will not solve the problem of climate change. While we are maintaining our cars and flying around the world, fuel fuel companies will be in business, and we, thus, contribute to the problem. ”
Is the fault ever positive?
From -with emotions that feels so bad, the fault can bring a lot of good – this is one of our most adaptive features that help us observe a social treaty that binds us to behave well and not harm others. When it comes to climate change, this may encourage people to take measures.
“There may be guilt potential,” says GreenSpun. “If we care about something and feel bad from the harm with which we are an accomplice, this often makes us take mitigating actions.”
“It is normal to feel a little guilt, if it means that we are going to direct this feeling into action,” says Mikaela Barnett, engineer -builder and owner KnoxfillMass sales business that seeks to limit the use of disposable containers. “When the wine is not effective, when it consumes and paralyzes us.”
Read more: How to encourage more people to talk about climate change
This happens more than we might think. As Barnett wrote in 2023 Article for Behavioral scientistUnresolved environmental wine can lead people to the invasion of invasion of invasion, worrying about the thinner points of organic certificates, taking away their diet, abandoning most toilet supplies and even tormenting whether it is ethics to have children, adding another small body to the global weight of mankind.
Personalization of the environmental problem in this way can be a very good thing from the point of view of the industry – disconnecting heat from large companies and instead put it on consumers.
For example, as soon as the idea of a carbon trace entered the spirit “This is really erroneous. This does not mean that we should not try to contribute, and this can be useful to facilitate a certain level of guilt, but this also distracts responsibility from larger corporations that really bear responsibility. ”
So, what steps should we take?
At all costs, disposal. Drive less. Rethract your diet oriented on meat. None of this causes any harm, and all this – in its own small retail method – can help push the carbon needle tiny. It can also easily facilitate guilt. But do not stop there.
It is important to think about individual actions in the context of inspiring collective changes. None of us have the opportunity to form the world that the industry makes, but we are also not limited to our solo efforts. Barnett urges people to try to act in more systemic ways. Do not just compost your food, create a pilot program for composting in your community. Do not stop using disposable bottles with soda, encourage your workplace to install the Seltzer dispenser on the spot. Campaign for environmentally friendly legislators; Organize demonstrations of the Earth Day. Barnett founded Knoxfill after he tried to focus on “living as perfectly as I could, and scream at my husband at any time when he brought one -time plastic to our house, which was not really stable.” Currently, her company serves 7,000 customers, all of which come to the store for such a variety of products as turmeric, washing detergent and sunscreen, filling reusable bunker or bath containers and returning next week with the same containers for different products.
“The supply chain is round,” says Barnett.
These types of actions facilitate the burden of both your conscience and the planet. You alone are not responsible for the increasingly painful state of the Earth, and you alone are not responsible for its healing. But, according to both people and industry, you can help.
