Climate hypocrisy and environmental integrity
Valentin Beck
First published: 18 May 2023
https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12522 1 INTRODUCTION
Climate change poses an existential threat to the world's ecosystems and to human societies. In order to slow and eventually halt global warming, governments, firms, and civil society must enact radical structural change in order to minimize greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use. Cynicism, pessimism, and defeatism are currently prevalent, however, and threaten to undermine the cooperative spirit needed to achieve a low carbon economy. Climate change denial has played a major role in feeding these destructive attitudes. Since the discovery of the greenhouse effect, the fossil fuel industry and a network of powerful allies have utilized every imaginable tactic to promote business as usual and to foster political inaction. For decades, they have sown doubt and misinformation about global warming, its causes, and its dangerous impact (Oreskes & Conway 2012). In response to widespread acceptance of the proof of anthropogenic warming, these actors have adapted their strategies beyond outright factual denial. One alternative strategy is shifting the public debate to individual morality (Lamb et al., 2020; Mann, 2021), emphasizing how individual lifestyles are inextricably intertwined with the environmentally profligate status quo, and thereby demoralizing the citizens of top emitting nations. The charge of hypocrisy is prominent in such demoralization efforts. It is leveled against climate scientists and activists, pro-environmentalist politicians and their supporters, “eco-celebrities”, or simply “the elites”, who are alleged not to practice what they preach, as they lead energy-intensive lifestyles.
If this charge were advanced only by agents who attempt to delay climate action, one could dismiss it by pointing to their own immoral activities. Instead of doing these lobbyists the favor of discussing the charge in earnest, one could change the terms of the conversation and redirect attention to the damaging effects of climate denial, and to feasible and urgently needed institutional decarbonization measures. The discursive constellation is more complicated, however, for two reasons. First, the accusation of lifestyle hypocrisy has long been a recurring theme in the general debate on climate change. It is not only discussed by those who are cynical about the prospects for individual and political climate action (such “climate cynicism” is not necessarily strategic). It is also considered by many who reflect, in good faith, on questions of individual morality and integrity in relation to climate change—such as how to reconcile our prosperous way of life with the imperative to leave a habitable world for future generations. Second, the accusation often takes another form, namely when governments or politicians are criticized for actions that contradict their proclaimed concern for climate change mitigation. This second variant of the hypocrisy charge can also be leveled with different motivations: by advocates of effective climate action, but also by cynical disinformation campaigners who intend to sow division and doubt about such action. The discursive variability of the climate hypocrisy charge means that a solid understanding of its relevance is needed.
In recent years, empirical studies have begun to shed light on various discursive references to climate hypocrisy (see Gunster et al., 2018; Schneider et al., 2016) as well as on the frequently stark discrepancies between green rhetoric and the real world actions of governments (Stevenson, 2021) and of fossil fuel companies (Li et al., 2022). This article complements such approaches with a systematic philosophical analysis, by focusing on the precise conceptual delineation and normative evaluation of climate hypocrisy and adjacent varieties of ecological inconsistency. Such conceptual and normative work is needed, as the meaning and significance of hypocrisy is generally not well-understood. This is partly because even classical references to “hypocrisy” such as those in the bible do not explicitly denote a unified phenomenon, but point to a group of loosely related inconsistencies. Accordingly, everyday accusations of hypocrisy are often framed in vague terms. Their normative relevance is also frequently left unstated. The same is true for climate hypocrisy. A systematic conceptual and normative approach can clarify matters. I present such an account here, arguing that different instances of climate hypocrisy and related ecological inconsistencies are differently problematic depending on how detrimental they are to an agent's attainment of environmental integrity.
