In 2007, climate superstar Al Gore was riding high.
2007年,气候超级巨星艾伯特·戈尔风头正劲。
He had released his blockbuster documentary An Inconvenient Truth a year before and was now walking up onto the biggest stage in Hollywood to accept an Oscar.
一年前,他发布了轰动一时的纪录片《难以忽视的真相》,现在他正走上好莱坞最大的舞台,接受奥斯卡奖。
Through his film, this politician-turned-climate-advocate shook the world with images and facts on a changing climate.
通过他的纪录电影,这位政治家出身的气候倡导者用关气候变化的图像和事实震惊了世界。
Urging transformation, he ended his film with a call to action: “are you ready to change the way you live?”
他敦促变革,在影片的结尾呼吁大家行动起来:“你准备好改变你的生活方式了吗?”
But with praise for the movie and the ecological awakening of some, came the vitriol and backlash of many others.
但在这部电影得到好评以及一些人获得生态觉醒的同时,也有许多人进行抨击并强烈反对。
Gore is by no means a political or environmental saint, but this backlash didn’t use the darker side of Gore’s past to discredit him.
戈尔绝非政治或环境圣人,但这种强烈反对并没有利用戈尔过去的阴暗面来诋毁他。
Instead, his critics operated on shame and guilt.
相反,他的批评者们利用了他的羞耻和内疚。
They attacked his lifestyle.
他们攻击了他的生活方式。
With the revelation that Gore’s gas and electric bills at his Nashville mansion were “20 times higher than the US average,” pundits and conservative journalists took Gore to task for this apparent contradiction.
随着戈尔在其纳什维尔豪宅的煤气费和电费被爆出“比美国平均水平高出20倍”,专家和保守派记者指责戈尔明显言行不一。
Articles like this and this, smeared Gore on the basis of hypocrisy– attempting to discredit his message on climate change because he couldn’t walk the walk.
像这样和这样的文章抹黑了戈尔,基本上都在指责他虚伪等等--试图诋毁他在气候变化问题上的启示,因为他光说不做。
But this was 2007, the realization that our future climate will be radically different was only just settling into the public conscience.
但这是在2007年,公众才刚刚意识到我们未来的气候将截然不同。
Surely this shaming and hypocrite-bashing has gone away since then, right?
在那之后,这种羞辱和伪君子抨击肯定已经消失了,对吧?
Wrong, if anything, shaming individual consumption habits has only gotten more intense.
错,对个人消费习惯的羞辱变得更加强烈了。
“So it's hard to believe that someone who cares as deeply about the fate of the Earth could personally own a home that burns that much electricity.”
“所以我们很难相信,一个如此关心地球命运的人,居然会拥有一座耗电如此之多的房子。”
“You owe your lifestyle just as much to oil as the rest of us.”
“你的生活方式和我们其他人一样都离不开石油。”
So today, I’m going to push back on this narrative.
所以今天,我要反驳这一说法。
This is the story of climate hypocrisy and carbon guilt.
本期视频要来谈谈气候伪善和碳内疚。
Why it’s so pervasive, how the fossil fuel industry weaponizes it, and why this bag of apples might help us feel a little more at peace with our ecological contradictions.
聊聊为什么它如此普遍,化石燃料行业如何将其变成了武器,以及为什么这袋苹果可能会帮助我们在面对生态矛盾时更加平静。
This summer, I flew, multiple times.
今年夏天,我坐飞机出行了,而且是好几次。
As someone who cares deeply about avoiding the worst of climate chaos, this ate me up inside.
作为一个非常关心避免最糟糕的气候混乱发生的人,我的内心深深地被这件事折磨。
How could I, a person who urges climate action, turn around and spew tons of jet fuel into the atmosphere.
我,一个呼吁采取气候行动的人,怎么能转身把成吨的航空燃料喷到大气中呢?
I felt guilt for my actions and shame that I was a flawed climate advocate.
我为自己的行为感到内疚,并为自己是一个有缺陷的气候倡导者而感到羞愧。
But, this is the reality of living in a neoliberal world where, as Matt Huber writes in Climate Change as Class War, “individual behavioral change sometimes appears to be the only meaningful option to ‘do something’ about climate change.”
但是,这就是生活在新自由主义世界的现实,正如马特·胡伯在《气候变化作为阶级斗争》中所写的那样,“个人行为的改变有时似乎是对气候变化‘有所作为’的唯一有意义的选择。”
The environmental movement, especially in the Imperial core, lives with the contradiction of understanding the extent of the climate crisis while also living highly polluting lives.
环保运动人士,尤其是帝国核心地区的环保运动人士,既了解气候危机的严重程度,又过着高污染的生活,这是很矛盾的。
This contradiction breeds guilt and ultimately shame.
这种矛盾滋生了内疚,最终让他们感到羞耻。
And rhetorical tools from anti-climate camps add fuel to this fire of self-doubt.
反气候阵营的话术对这种自我怀疑火上浇油。
This study examined thousands of op-eds and articles across a variety of global newspapers and found that conservatives use hypocrisy in two distinct ways to muddy the waters of climate action.
这项研究调查了各种全球报纸上的数千篇专栏和文章,发现保守派会用两种截然不同的方式,利用伪善羞辱扰乱气候行动。
And the most prominent device of the two is to channel what researchers call “individual lifestyle outrage.”
而这两种方式中最突出的一种就是引出研究人员所说的“个人生活方式愤怒”。
This is the rhetorical tool used by Al Gore’s critics after the release of Inconvenient Truth.
这正是艾伯特·戈尔的批评者在《难以忽视的真相》上映后使用的话术。
It’s a process of discrediting that comes in three stages.
这个抹黑过程分为三个阶段。
First, critics inflate their target’s emphasis on individual and moral action.
首先,批评者会夸大他们的目标对个人和道德行动的重视。
“They demand we change; they demand, you you know, eat less meat; use less fuel.”
“他们要求我们改变;他们要求我们少吃肉;少用燃料。”
Next they invoke class differences and inflate transgressions to frame the person they’re critiquing as out of touch.
接下来,他们会援引阶级差异,夸大行为失范,称他们批评的人脱离现实。
“He's got a 2.5 million-dollar house in Nashville with a 30,000-dollar utility bill.”
“他在纳什维尔有一栋价值250万美元的房子,水电费账单高达3万美元。”
And finally they position the behavior or action as a consequence of personal choice.
最后,他们将这些行为或行动定位为个人选择的结果。
“Because you're guzzling and burning up the atmosphere with your TV and you don't want to admit it because it makes you look like a hypocrite.”
“你会消耗汽油,也会看电视,对大气层造成伤害,但你不想承认这一切,否则你会看起来很虚伪。”
In this way, conservative writers and pundits don't need evidence.
这样一来,保守派作家和权威人士就不需要证据了。
They can discredit any facts, calls for structural change, or collective action by claiming that these activists don’t back up their messages in their everyday life.
他们可以声称这些活动家在日常生活中的行为与他们的话不符,以此来抹黑任何事实、呼吁结构性变革或集体行动。
While I do think it’s important to call attention to and dismantle the luxury emissions of the ultra-rich, outrage over lifestyle hypocrisy has quickly slipped into shaming people for the emissions that they need in order to live.
虽然我确实认为呼吁人们关注并消除超级富豪的奢侈排放很重要,但对生活方式伪善的愤怒很快就演变成了用生存必需活动产生的排放羞辱他人。
Al Gore certainly can cut down on some of his emissions, but the key here is that’s not really the point of this hypocrite blame game.
艾伯特·戈尔当然可以减少一些排放,但关键是,这并不是这场伪君子指责游戏的重点。
The goal of critics is to distract and obstruct what people like Al Gore are saying about the science.
批评者的目的是转移重点和阻挠艾伯特·戈尔这类人对科学的看法。
This invocation of individual lifestyle hypocrisy has become so effective and ingrained, that this research survey found that respondents were much more likely to not trust a climate scientist if they had a large carbon footprint.
这种对个人生活方式伪善的指责已经变得如此有效和根深蒂固,以至于这项研究调查发现,如果一个气候科学家有很大的碳足迹,受访者不信任他的可能性要大得多。
So, when it comes to climate change, claims of hypocrisy are shockingly effective at dismantling credibility and stymies action.
因此,在气候变化问题上,伪善的说法在瓦解信誉和阻碍行动方面具有惊人的效果。
Which is part of the reason why the fossil fuel industry loves to focus on individual change.
这也是化石燃料行业喜欢关注个人变化的部分原因。