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Comment by BrandonMarc | Hacker News Reader

People hate hypocrisy. Greta may be innocent, but her helpers buy far, far more plane tickets than us - her target audience.

Scratch most environmentalist attention-seekers, and you'll find hypocrisy. Look at Prince Harry.

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I really don’t enjoy when this form of argument comes up, because it strikes me as both lazy and extremely unlikely that the speaker puts the same conditions on his own conduct.

I think you can both fly on planes and believe we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels dramatically. You can both believe that we should pay more tax to fund public services while not donating additional income to the government. You can work for Amazon while thinking they should pay their workers more. You can believe that the way the food industry treats animals is awful without being a vegan.

In my opinion, being a complete paragon of virtue is not a prerequisite of having an opinion on what would make the world a better place.

I don't think that's the case at all, the "hypocrisy" is just an excuse for their opposition to her message.

We all live in this system, and she's not advocating for living outside the system, she's advocating for changing it.

Nobody is advocating for everybody stopping flying tomorrow. We're advocating for developing technology so that within a few decades we can be carbon neutral.

> Nobody is advocating for everybody stopping flying tomorrow.

Have you heard about flight shaming? Some aren't just advocating for it, they are trying to enforce it.

Flight shaming is great, and we should all feel guilty when we fly, but that doesn't mean we stop tomorrow.

> but that doesn't mean we stop tomorrow

Sure, sure. So trying to enforce it doesn't mean you'd argue for it? Sorry, that doesn't compute. It's fine to argue for it, btw. But claiming that "nobody does that"? Come on, that's nonsense.

> Nobody is advocating for everybody stopping flying tomorrow.

You should read the Green New Deal. Not tomorrow, no, but one goal is to make flying infinitesimally rare.

She sailed across the Atlantic in an 18m carbon-neutral boat, but that still isn't enough for some people. Sheesh.

And the crew had to be flown to New York to sail back, resulting in more emissions than if she had flown there.

People just can't stand such hypocrisy.

They are doing work that hopefully will result in manifold more benefit than boycotting a plane ride. If they don't fly they can't attend conferences, mobilise people, etc. What do you want them to do? Stop using computers and phones while they're at it?

It's the same reasoning of the classic "you defend socialism yet you buy products made under capitalism, oh my what a hypocrite".

> What do you want them to do?

Set a personal example.

I respect Ed Begley a lot for adopting a small carbon footprint lifestyle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Begley_Jr.#Environmental, house tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV3uedeCKj4

It's much more inspiring than just talking about it while polluting more than the average person.

> the crew had to be flown to New York to sail back

I'm pretty sure the crew decided to fly back not because of her but because they wanted.

I happen to have heard an interview with one of the sailors who was on the ship with her in the radio. He said that they took her there and they would have also done it with out her. He additionally added: Greta is not responsible for anything we do outside of taking her across the Atlantic.

The whole discussion is – frankly – quite ridiculous. Anybody who likes to lead it should really sit down, pause and really ask themselves what they are doing and why.

There is really only one compelling reason that comes to my mind why one would find the motivation to critizise environmentalists online for not beeing environmentalistic enough: their actions make you feel bad for some reason. You want the bad feeling to go away, so you find a explaination why they are bad. But it turns out the world still thinks they are good. Now you are in a bit of a problem. So you go online and try to change the world.

Only: it might be better for you and everybody around you if you instead went and tried to change yourself. This is of course much much harder, but lying to yourself about your own motivations has also it's costs..

> their actions make you feel bad for some reason.

Not at all. I already live a very spartan life and my carbon footprint is well below of most people who go around lecturing others on sustainable lifestyle. Eg, in the past 12 months, I have traveled zero miles on fossil fuels.

The class of professional globetrotting climate activists is so unbearable because they are among the worst polluters, yet spare no energy looking down on others for not doing enough.

> because they are among the worst polluters

[citation needed]

Another thing: this isn't an issue where it is soley about personal carbon footprints. It is nice to do something on a personal level, but we are in deep fucking need of big political measures. Don't get me wrong, I cycle everywhere. I don't own a car, the wood that I own makes my carbon footprint negative – but that isn't going to save the planet, because only very few people are lucky enough to even be able considering adopting such a position.

So if we critizise people who professionally lobby for stricter climate measures, I fear we should show them how to do it better or remain silent. Armchair experts and all that jazz.

Yes, she did that. Her entourage of assistants weren't on the boat. They flew back and forth, several times. Therefore the whole endeavor had an undeniable net-positive carbon footprint.

Could you clarify who you refer to when you say her 'helpers'? At present, the comment reads as rather generalised slander.

Commercial air travel pales in comparison to industrial CO2 output. It’s definitely something, but even if all air travel stopped it would barely make a dent.

That doesn't make the message wrong.

People don’t make purely rational decisions, especially for ‘saviors’ and especially when it’s about respect.

Sadly, that means that there's no means to convince them. If she'd done it in a rubber dingy and swam back across they would have rejected her on other grounds.

This would have been a PR stunt all the same, though.

Ok, so just exactly who will these people listen to about the climate crisis? Because from where I'm sitting, no messenger is ever going to measure up to this exacting standard of personal purity.

We saw this 15 years ago with Al Gore, too. Who cares if he's right, he lives in a big house!

The guy is explaining to us poor fuckers how we should turn off the faucet while brushing our teeth, yet travels the world 24/7 between his private jet and his SUV? Sure, sounds totally honest and convincing.

People hate anyone else telling them what they should be doing, even if they are correct in doing so. The fact that it's a young girl is even more threatening for many adult men.

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