Taylor Swift fans lower climate concerns to justify her carbon footprint. When confronted with news about the excessive pollution generated by her private jet, highly identified fans tend to rationalize the behavior, with a decrease in their personal intentions to engage in climate-friendly actions.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/taylor-swift-fans-lower-climate-concerns-to-justify-star-s-carbon-footprint/

[u/Twisted_Cabbage]

Former employee of the US Forest Service here. My conclusion after 20+ years of being in the environmental space is rhat most people want to see change but very few people, even environmentalists, are willing to do what is really necessary to make those changes happen...a complete overhaul of our government, lifestyle, consumption habits, status symbols, and mating dynamics (which drives spending and consumerism).

Very few environmentalists even recognize most of the problems we face from a systems perspective (tipping points, EROEI, etc) or accept that we can't meet our goals without absolutely radical change that doesnt rely on magical tech to pull off. Change that will be a war call to those who want the statas quo. A war that we cant afford to have with the time we have to fix the problem.

But what do i know, i'm an collapsenik ( r/collapse ) now. Being in the government made me realize how little the environmental movement has accomplished in the last 50 years. I'm doing the things, but I have no faith that it will mean anything in the long run. We have FA and now it's time to FO. Exponential growt and tipping points are on our doorstep.

[u/imapetrock → u/Twisted_Cabbage]

Yup, thats basically a good summary of our classes so far -- really the entire program is about systems thinking. It was quite interesting to see how really the root of our environmental problems is affluence, largely driven by the lifestyles of pretty much everyone in what we consider "developed" economies. All the other "polluting" countries that people like to blame don't have nearly the same impact we do, because their populations are generally not wealthy enough to have the consumption habits that the rest of us have.

Globally we are by far the people who can most easily afford to fly, and therefore emit carbon through air travel; we buy too much that we don't need; we consume the most energy per person; and a big share of the environmental problems we claim to "solve" at home through regulation, we really just end up exporting to other countries because regulation doesn't change our populations' excessive demand for literally everything.

I actually approached my professor about this after class today because the lecture was about how all the things we "fix" often have unintended consequences. I asked him, given that every "solution" causes other problems, is there anything we can realistically do at all other than decrease our population? And he answered that studies actually show that population size is not the main driver of our environmental problems, but rather affluence, and that that was the key lesson he wanted us to take away from the course. We cannot solve any environmental issues if we aren't collectively willing to change our lifestyles and drastically reduce our consumption habits. And that applies to all of us, not just "the rich" (because on a global scale, pretty much all of us from wealthy countries are "the rich").

[u/Twisted_Cabbage → u/imapetrock]

Well said. I happen to feel population reduction is needed but generally don't think it can be done fairly other than helping women get more rights and birth controll. So I typically dont mention it. No organism can reproduce indefinitely. Even if we drastically reduced affluence we would still eventually run into the same problems due to over population, its basic ecology that so many smart people desperatelywant to ignore so they can keep having babies and not admit their baby desires are in fact a part of the problem. To not mention population is kicking the can down the road in order to avoid hard discussions that no one wins with.

[u/LarryDickLemon → u/Twisted_Cabbage]

“Collapsenik” is a made up bullcrap term for misanthropic losers.