Do You Think ‘Greenies’ Can be Smug Greenies?
I’ve been reading some articles recently saying that smug ‘greenies’ turn people off being green.
Well, that’s fair enough.
Or is it?
Are there smug ‘greenies’? Probably.
So I wondered, if I were in a social conversation in a group where people were discussing a TV series for example, and someone said “Oh, I don’t watch TV, it uses too much electricity, I read instead”, how would I feel?
Would that person fit into the category of smug ‘greenies’?
I suppose it would depend upon HOW the person said what they did. If their chin was in the air and they appeared to feel themselves superior to the general TV-watching masses, then I would be put off.
But what would I be put off by – his supposed greenness, or his superiority? I would probably conclude that the guy is an idiot and try to avoid him socially. Would it put me off living a green, eco friendly lifestyle? No.
Eco friendly living is a whole different issue to avoiding idiots.
Someone with multiple academic qualifications might come across as smug in a group of non-academics. Some people parade their wealth, and this can be perceived as smugness. Does their smugness stop me from wanting to earn money? No.
Are ‘Greenies’ Hypocritical?
Some people think that people who live an eco friendly lifestyle are hypocrites because they don’t always do absolutely everything in every aspect of their lives to be green.
It’s my belief that it’s difficult in today’s society to be completely eco friendly in every aspect .
Take my life as an example. I live on a tiny tropical island in the middle of a vast ocean. There’s not very much industry on the island, and that’s great, because our air quality is excellent. But it also means that we need to import things. Buying stuff that is transported across the world is not particularly eco friendly, but there’s not a lot of choice. If I want rice, or a bed, or a computer, it has to be shipped in. Does that make me hypocritical? I hope not. It makes me want to try harder in other areas to be eco friendly. Nearly all of us have that dilemma – no matter where we live, our global society is no longer set up to allow us to produce or get everything we need locally, nor to exist without consuming some resources.
Is that hypocritical? I don’t believe so.
Everyone does the best they can, with what they’ve got.
I remember as a child thinking that people who were overtly and obviously highly religious, must be much better people than the rest of us. I was quite shocked to discover that some highly religious people seem to sin as much as the rest of us.
If you try to live an eco friendly life, does it make you a better person?
Definitely not.
It simply means that you’re aware of environmental issues and want to make a difference in that area.
My opinion:
- Avoid people you consider idiots socially
- If those same idiots live an eco friendly lifestyle, don’t let it put you off being green. Just let it put you off being an idiot
- And don’t expect ‘greenies’ to be saints. Just normal human beings. Trying to do their best. Like everyone else.
There will always be those folks who make themselves feel better by putting others down, and some are “greenies” and some are not.Thanks for reminding us that it is the principle and not the person who is espousing it, that is important.
Sonya Lenzo
“Avoid people you consider idiots socially”
Clare, I loved that. Great advice, whether or not you think yourself green. Loved this article as you told some stories about yourself.
Thanks Mil!
Hi eco-expert!
This was a very fun and interesting article to read!
Yes, so many people can get confused with “being green” and being a “certain way”.
Always love your articles 😉
Muchas gracias, Eva!
Clare, I care about you and your cause. However, the title you chose for this post sounds really smug. Let me explain.
In your last post, you had a teaser that said “Are ‘greenies’ smug.” I was really looking forward to that post. But now you’ve changed that to:
“Do Smug Greenies Turn You Off Being Green?”
This is a loaded question, and you are implying that there can only be one right answer. The right answer is that “One should be green, regardless of the attitudes of the other people that are already greenies.”
It’s loaded, because what if you don’t want to, or can’t be green? What does that make you then? I’m guessing that makes you an evil polluting person. You’ve asked a black-and-white question with no room in the middle, and you’ve already implied the answer you wanted to hear, which is the correct one to you. That is the smug part that other people find repulsive.
In my opinion, the greenies seem smug because they don’t want any alternate opinions. “It’s my way or the highway.” If they would allow for other opinions and options, then I think the real cause would be improved.
For example, I view greenies as treating the symptoms of the problem, and not the cause of the problem. If a car is putting out volumes of blue smoke, the green thing to do is to prohibit the car from being on the highway. But that doesn’t fix the problem, it only masks a symptom. The real problem is “POVERTY.” It is readily apparent, that the person driving that polluting car is poor — that is the only car that they can afford to drive. It isn’t the rich people that are the big polluters, it is the poor.
That poor person now lost his car and means to make money. His solution is to go out and get another car that he can afford – which is probably only slightly better than the one he had. And now he’s going to drive it into the ground, and it is going to billow out more blue smoke until the greenies take it away from him again.
I’m glad you are willing to open up discussion about this issue. There are other solutions out there to the environmental problem, but it seems that the greenies don’t want to hear about them, especially if it doesn’t fit their world-view. It is when we allow for other solutions that things can improve.
Tim Van Milligan
Thanks Tim for taking the time and trouble to write your detailed comment, I appreciate it! I’m glad you’ve opened up the discussion on smug ‘greenies’ as I think it can be a fairly widely held belief, and that’s why I blogged about it.
Whew! That was quite a battering from you!
OK, let’s have a look at the points raised.
I changed the title for SEO reasons (there aren’t a lot of people Googling “are greenies smug”!), I didn’t read anything into the title other than slightly better SEO rankings. I certainly don’t see it as a loaded question with only one right answer. Quite the opposite. I recognise the problem that ‘greenies’ can be perceived as smug, and I am concerned that that perceived smugness might cause people to focus on the smugness instead of the message. That’s why I blogged about it, to highlight the issue, but certainly not to ‘force’ people into an answer. That’s not what I believe, and regular readers of my blog know that I try to find win-win options and easy solutions to reduce our impact. I also don’t agree that my question is black-and-white. People aren’t either “green” or “evil polluters”, in the same way that I don’t believe that people are ALL “good” or ALL “bad”.
I’m sad you think ‘greenies’ in general don’t want to listen to alternatives. There probably are some who don’t. I guess some Democrats won’t listen to a Republican, and vice versa. There are extremists in all areas of life, and those few give the rest a bad name.
I’m very confused about why, when talking about a car belching smoke, you say that “the green thing to do is to prohibit the car from being on the highway”. Why is that green? No one wants to sit behind belching fumes in a long traffic jam – it’s just a health hazard. I don’t believe that ‘greenies’ have made a poor person lose his car and his means to make money. If a car is not road-worthy, it shouldn’t be on the road – this applies worldwide, irrespective of ‘greenies’, it’s not a green issue, it’s simply health and safety.
Do the poor pollute? Absolutely! News programmes are full of shots of squalid, dirty living conditions, ghettoes and shanty towns surrounded by litter and dirty water. (Think refugee camps, South American ghettoes and African or Indian squatter camps and shanty towns).
What about those of us who don’t live in poverty? Let’s call us “the rich” simply to differentiate us from “the poor”. We don’t see litter in upmarket neighbourhoods. Do the rich litter less? Perhaps, perhaps not, I don’t know for sure. But we also have people to clean up, with regular rubbish collections. We have more space – larger homes with gardens destroy larger areas of natural land per person than a ghetto. We have good quality roads in suburbs and much nicer houses – which consume more resources to build. We have all the ‘mod cons’ – such as air conditioning and appliances and big fridges – which consume resources to manufacture, transport, and use. We drive larger cars – they may not belch smoke, we can afford to have a more efficient vehicle in good working order, but we still use a lot of fuel as well as more resources to create our luxury. We consume fossil fuels to generate the electricity we use. We buy stuff, use it once and throw it away. Poor families re-use what little they have, nothing goes to waste – I see this first-hand on a regular basis. (And Sonya made exactly that comment about Costa Rica). We consume food from far away so it has to be transported, and eat huge quantities of meat which have to be grown in bulk (land use, animal feed, methane). The poor can’t afford much meat and so eat food with a lesser impact. We demand more and more ‘stuff’ at cheap prices, so this ‘stuff’ is manufactured abroad where costs are cut and factories pollute, and then transported to our door.
We often talk about the ‘population problem’ in the world today – and blame it on people in Africa or India having large families. And it’s true. People in developed countries have fewer children on average. But we also live longer on average and have less infant mortality. A child born into a rich family will get considerably more resources than a child born into a large family in poor circumstances. A rich child will have more space (larger family home), more toys, more food, more clothes, more electronic goods, be driven around more and receive more presents than a poor child. A poor child will pollute his local environment, certainly. But in general, the rich pollute more than the poor. We can, and we do.
But you know what? I think this discussion is getting sidelined. Because this sort of discussion often leads on to “well I work for a living, whereas the poor get welfare for doing nothing, and I pay my taxes so I’m entitled to do what I want”.
See how easy it was to get off green topics and onto a whole other debate about welfare and taxes, and all the emotions associated with that?
And so, I return to my point in the blog – it would be foolish to let people who are smug put you off helping the environment.
Nothing more, nothing less.
I can only hope that perhaps a mis-reading of my blog post was involved – it is not and was not my intention to offend anyone.
Thanks again Tim.
You’re right – most of the time it’s HOW the person says what they say, not actually what they say.
I think smugness is oftentimes a sign of insecurity or low self-esteem or hiding something. Like the person who doesn’t watch TV b/c it uses too much electricity? My second thought would be “I wonder if she can’t afford the electricity or can’t afford a TV. Or maybe can’t get TV reception in their neighborhood, or maybe TVs get stolen frequently in their neighborhood and it’s safer to live without one.” Guess I’d have a hard time believing the electricity green story. Plus I’d be curious about how many other things she has plugged in in her house, like how many computers?
Cynical maybe, but I think people act smug when there’s something they don’t want the audience to know.
Peggy
Great page!