Produced by | Tiger Sniff Youth Culture Group
Author | Downton Don
Editing, title image | Slag County
This article was first published on the Tiger Sniff Youth Content public account "That NG" (ID: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the faces, stories and attitudes of today's young people.
This summer, I went to participate in a mountain clearing activity, and after a 14km hike, I cleaned up a lot of non-degradable garbage, and felt a great sense of accomplishment, and posted it on Moments.
But unexpectedly, my mountain clearing activities attracted ridicule from some friends: they felt that spending money to pick up garbage was a deception, and environmental protection itself was a huge conspiracy, just to make people spend more money, and asked me why I should be environmentally friendly?
Out of the circle of friends, I found more such voices on the Internet, which can be summed up in one sentence:
Environmental protection is a conspiracy.
When I was a child, we were often reminded on TV and in textbooks to conserve resources and protect the environment.
I still remember the picture of Mother Earth in tears, which reads: "Don't let my tears be the last drop of water on the earth." "In those days, environmental protection was a natural moral responsibility, as if everyone could save the earth by saving water, electricity, and sorting garbage.
Time has passed, and the development of the Internet has complicated this once irrefutable concept.
Sometimes the discussion about environmental protection is political.
The most representative may be the interview between Ding Zhongli and Chai Jing in CCTV's "Face to Face" program.
Academician Ding's sentence in the program: "Are Chinese people?" It's all people, so why do we need to reduce emissions? Although it talks about the right to development, it has become a slogan in the hearts of some netizens denouncing "environmental hypocrisy".
You don't need to work hard, just click on a related video casually, and you will find a lot of questioning voices on the message board:
Calling for environmental protection ignores the development needs of developing countries and is a complete double standard.
United States controls carbon emissions, and we have to rely on people's noses.
...
This rebellion against environmental protection is not only macro, but also micro, and it has even sparked class anger against injustice.
In the eyes of many people, environmental protection should be a major event of collective human effort, but the current situation has become that the poor are low-carbon, and the good is low-carbon.
On the one hand, we promote that we want to be environmentally friendly, and on the other hand, there is an endless stream of news about celebrities flaunting their wealth and abusing resources, such as the Kardashian family's report of 870 tons of water per month, which has sparked public dissatisfaction, and the faucet is not turned off 24 hours a day in order to beautify the courtyard.
There is more than one public figure who has made the public angry, including Charles III, who has long been known as an environmental advocate.
Ironically, in 2020, when giving a speech on reducing carbon emissions from aviation, Charles opted for helicopter travel – experts estimate that Charles's transportation activities generate 2.5 metric tons of carbon emissions and cost up to 12,000 pounds (about 110,000 yuan).
This disparity always creates a sense of unfairness – the perception that 97% of people refrain from living in order to waste the "rich 3%" who occupy most of the planet's resources:
"We save money every day, do we save money so that the rich can squander?"
In addition to the battle of ideas, the problems caused by environmental protection are also the disputes of lifestyles.
As the news of radical events from extreme environmentalists became more and more common, a feeling of being forced to protect the environment intruded into people's lives in an offensive way.
In the past, a prominent environmental group, Extinction Rebellion, staged protests in places like London, repeatedly blocking public transport and even spilling famous paintings to draw attention to climate change.
Far from winning more people's sympathy, this radical approach has made many ordinary people resistant to environmental protection. For some, environmental protection should be a life choice, not a moral obligation to be forced.
Extinction Rebellion官网
These quarrels, debates and reflections are played out on the Internet every day, and as the volume of people rises louder and louder, there is always a feeling that environmental protection seems to have become a spurned doctrine and a rotten concept.
But is that really the case?
Countless complaints about extreme weather on social media and research reports from institutions show that people around the world do not reject the concept of environmental protection - according to the data of the 2023 PwC Global Survey, 80% of consumers are willing to pay a high premium for environmental protection.
So what is it that makes the environmental protection advocated when I was a child become what it is now?
This "disagreement" is not so much hypocrisy and anger at environmentalism as it is an interrogation of an entire system by an increasingly intelligent consumer:
Is it worth the premium I have to pay for environmental protection? If environmental protection is really the cause of all mankind, then why should it be a money-making business?
This sentiment is not unfounded, as the concept of eco-friendliness does bring real business benefits to brands.
As early as 2021, Bill ·'s book "Climate Economy and the Future of Humanity" mentioned the term "Green Premium", which simply means that when we choose environmentally friendly goods or services, we usually need to spend more money than traditional products.
This premium is due to the fact that eco-friendly products require the use of more expensive raw materials, higher technical standards, or stricter environmental certifications in the production process, resulting in increased costs.
The book gives an example to explain the green premium: the average retail price of jet fuel in the United States in recent years is $2.22 per gallon, while the average selling price of advanced aviation biofuel is $5.35 per gallon, and the green premium is the difference between the two, which is $3.13 per gallon, or more than 140% premium.
We can see more practical examples in our lives, some brands have launched "sustainable fashion" series of products are indeed expensive, and the price is far higher than ordinary goods, and even the price of eco-friendly bags is more than ten times more expensive than traditional plastic bags.
Packaged as eco-friendly products are also selling faster than traditional products, with data released by WGSN showing that the former are selling 270% faster than the latter.
What's even more frightening is that the premium consumers pay for environmental protection does not pay as much as they want.
According to a Google survey, 58 percent of business executives admit to "greenwashing" in their companies. Greenwashing refers to exaggerating or fabricating the environmental benefits of one's own products.
Perhaps the best embodiment of this is the artificial meat that was once all the rage.
At the time, meat analogues were the star of the eco-friendly solution, with claims that it would reduce CO2 emissions from livestock farming.
But research from the University of California, Davis, found that the carbon emissions of meat analogues can even be four to 25 times higher than that of regular beef, far exceeding expectations.
As more and more stories like this become more and more common, consumers lose patience and confidence in environmental protection.
Looking back, we can glimpse some traces in some research reports.
According to Bain & Company's 2023 Global Sustainability Report, 23,000 consumers around the world are willing to pay an average premium of 12% for environmentally friendly products, while the average premium for environmentally friendly products in the United States is as high as 28%.
Notably, the report shows that while 50% of consumers say sustainability is one of their top four shopping criteria, a whopping 75% of consumers said they misjudged or didn't know when asked which of the two products had a higher carbon footprint.
The lack of trust in companies is also evident: only 28% of consumers trust large companies to produce truly environmentally friendly products, compared to 45% of consumers who trust independent small businesses.
When consumers' enthusiasm for environmental protection is repeatedly exploited, but the actual environmental improvement is not visible, the environmental pressure borne by ordinary people gradually turns into a polarized resentment, which is the inevitable development of things.
Even more worrying is the fact that the environmental debate has coincided with an era of economic decline.
Over the years, the well-known climate crisis warnings and environmental slogans of "save the planet" have often been a little overwhelmed when it comes to wallet problems.
But in those developed countries after the epidemic, consumers' focus has shifted from environmental protection to the cost of living.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects inflation to remain difficult to return to normal levels by 2025, meaning that cost-of-living pressures will not abate in the short term; According to a 2023 WGSN report, the global level of the circular economy has fallen to 7.2% from 9.1% five years ago.
From these data, it is not difficult to see that while people know that the climate crisis is looming, they also find that the economic downturn has made the environmental premium more and more unaffordable.
But this is not only a problem that consumers can solve, but a challenge that the whole system needs to face.
For example, the "zero-waste" lifestyle of Kamikatsu Town, a small village in Japan, may be a solution that fits the current environment.
Known for its "zero-waste" lifestyle, the village has been promoting waste sorting and recycling since 2003, and there are no landfills and incinerators in the village, and all residents are required to sort garbage according to 34 categories and deliver it to the garbage station in person, with the goal of achieving 100% recycling by 2024.
Maybe everyone hears garbage classification and thinks it's something, I've heard about it, it's not unusual. However, the model of Kamikatsu does not require consumers to bear additional costs:
For example, in terms of recycling, there is a recycling shop in the town, where residents of Kamikatsu Town can exchange idle old items for free; There is also an iconic building in town, a zero-waste brewery built from recycled waste; The dining room inside is also made of discarded bottles, with colorful chandeliers hanging from them.
Thanks to this circular economy, they have taken recycling to the extreme, and to put it bluntly, it is a good deal – so much so that local residents continue to practice three principles to this day:
Throwing garbage into the mountains is a crime.
No waste, just misplaced treasures.
The finer the classification, the more renewable resources there are.
Because the environment has been greatly improved, carbon dioxide emissions have been reduced, and the environment of Kamikatsu Town is getting better and better, with clean water, fresh air, and almost no pollution.
This unique living environment, combined with the local hot springs, attracts a large number of tourists. In addition, the hot spring hotel in Kamikatsu Town is heated by burning recycled biofuel, which can save about 80,000 US dollars per year.
So it's not so much that people hate and no longer trust the environment, but that they hate injustice.
Economic crises, class narratives, and international disputes are like a vampire vine that grows and wraps up, wrapping and obscuring the real problem, making it distorted and unrecognizable, so that when people try to bring it up, they are always influenced by it. As a result, the focus is lost, and the multiple crises of the moment are further complicated.
The old ticket can't get on the current ship, and today we talk about ESG, environmental protection, and change because of this. When faced with more pressing and brutal problems, the whole world looks to a solution that is more practical and concrete than slogans and morals.
And for individuals, we should believe that environmental protection is never a conspiracy. Regarding the problems it raises, I don't think anyone understands the urgency of the climate crisis better than the average person who needs to commute for a living. The increasingly hot and dry weather and the unusually heavy rain are proving one thing to us - as the saying goes:
The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.
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