Whether intentional or not, holding climate professionals to unrealistic standards is a tactic which delays effective climate action. It slows down climate action by redirecting responsibility and foregrounding low-impact solutions.
Whether intentional or not, holding climate professionals to unrealistic standards is a tactic which delays effective climate action. It slows down climate action by redirecting responsibility and foregrounding low-impact solutions.
Absolutely. People who don’t argue in good faith won’t argue in good faith. Responding to such people in public is not about convincing them - it’s about swaying the audience listening to your conversation.
The people we want to convince are the people who want to argue in good faith, who care about understanding reality and doing the right thing, and who aren’t climate experts themselves so have to choose what experts to trust.
Those people are actually swayed by those bad faith accusations of hypocrisy - and can be swayed back by proof that you (or whatever climate professional is under attack) is not a hypocrite and is making a good faith effort to do the right thing.