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To target Greenpeace's flying director is to miss the point
To target Greenpeace's flying director is to miss the point
It's easy to set green against green, but the charity's problems run wider and deeper than one person's travel plans
Zoe Williams The Guardian, Tuesday 24 June 2014
'To be entirely untainted by the flaws of civilisation, you would have to live outside it: off-grid, deep green, breathing some other air.' Illustration by Belle Mellor
The problem with Pascal Husting is that he looks more like a person who flies to work than he does an employee of Greenpeace. In fact, he's both – Greenpeace's international programme director was exposed this week as a plane commuter – and that's what has fired another torpedo into the scull of the environmental movement. What, exactly, is the point of a campaign whose top brass cannot bring themselves to eschew the very behaviour they're campaigning against?
Yet if there is one thing more depressing than a world-class environmentalist flying from Luxembourg to Amsterdam as a commute, it's how easy it is to set greens, deep greens and green-leaners against one another. The best way to never be a hypocrite, and to always stay consistent, is to deny climate change, and have no agenda on anything beyond self-interest. There's always a chance you'll fall foul of sexual morality, which is the only kind you will still admit into debate, but in every other realm, ethics need not trouble you. Indeed, the more ardently you pursue your own interests, the more persuasively you live your own values. If, on the other hand, you have ambitions for large-scale change and believe things could be significantly better for vast numbers of people, you will always fail fully to embody your own hopes.
It won't necessarily be by flying. You might buy your kid some trainers in Primark, or buy yourself clothes you don't need; you might eat meat. You might sometimes drive when you could take public transport, or take public transport when you could cycle. It will always be possible for someone not just to critique your choices, but also to critique them on the same terms, using the same measures, as you critique the choices made by society.
To be entirely untainted by the flaws of civilisation, you would have to live outside it: off-grid, deep green, breathing some other air. This, however, would diminish your impact, because you would de facto be excluded from public life. The territory is knee-deep in the squelch of compromise, and nobody likes to dwell on this more than the people to whom the fact of climate change is in itself distasteful.
I have sat in meetings while people from rightwing newspapers laugh at a Green politician getting a taxi home from a midnight TV interview...
It's easy to set green against green, but the charity's problems run wider and deeper than one person's travel plans
Zoe Williams The Guardian, Tuesday 24 June 2014
'To be entirely untainted by the flaws of civilisation, you would have to live outside it: off-grid, deep green, breathing some other air.' Illustration by Belle Mellor
The problem with Pascal Husting is that he looks more like a person who flies to work than he does an employee of Greenpeace. In fact, he's both – Greenpeace's international programme director was exposed this week as a plane commuter – and that's what has fired another torpedo into the scull of the environmental movement. What, exactly, is the point of a campaign whose top brass cannot bring themselves to eschew the very behaviour they're campaigning against?
Yet if there is one thing more depressing than a world-class environmentalist flying from Luxembourg to Amsterdam as a commute, it's how easy it is to set greens, deep greens and green-leaners against one another. The best way to never be a hypocrite, and to always stay consistent, is to deny climate change, and have no agenda on anything beyond self-interest. There's always a chance you'll fall foul of sexual morality, which is the only kind you will still admit into debate, but in every other realm, ethics need not trouble you. Indeed, the more ardently you pursue your own interests, the more persuasively you live your own values. If, on the other hand, you have ambitions for large-scale change and believe things could be significantly better for vast numbers of people, you will always fail fully to embody your own hopes.
It won't necessarily be by flying. You might buy your kid some trainers in Primark, or buy yourself clothes you don't need; you might eat meat. You might sometimes drive when you could take public transport, or take public transport when you could cycle. It will always be possible for someone not just to critique your choices, but also to critique them on the same terms, using the same measures, as you critique the choices made by society.
To be entirely untainted by the flaws of civilisation, you would have to live outside it: off-grid, deep green, breathing some other air. This, however, would diminish your impact, because you would de facto be excluded from public life. The territory is knee-deep in the squelch of compromise, and nobody likes to dwell on this more than the people to whom the fact of climate change is in itself distasteful.
I have sat in meetings while people from rightwing newspapers laugh at a Green politician getting a taxi home from a midnight TV interview...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/25/greenpeace-flying-director-green-charity
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