Carbon Shame: What is the role of shame in Climate Action?

Watch this first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX0kwVLPmD4

Corporation or the Consumer
In fifty years time, when we are sifting through the rubble, trying to figure out resposibility for the destruction of Civilisation 1.0, we’ll resolve the most relevant chicken-or-egg question of our time: was it the consumers or the corporations? It is a question that haunts those many minds wondering why are we heading towards climate catastrophe with reliable knowledge of what awaits us and the full control of the levers to stop, and yet do nothing.

Ultimately, the corporation vs consumer answer will arrive in the form of proportionality. And with it we will have figured out what blame lies at the feet of the average citizen of the developed world. We will have to wait till then to discover the final number but what is crystal clear today is that because everything we consume has a carbon cost, in manufacturing and transportation, this answer will not be zero. This is to say to some extent we are all to blame.

Of course civilisational collapse is far from predestined. We still have an ability to affect the outcome. It may seem simple for you to begin to consider your purchasing habits and develop a new mode of living within the economy, one that could drastically reduce your carbon footprint. Collectively, such a decision could help steer the world away from climate catastrophe. A paper, shows the power of action en masse within an economy: for example, U.S. could have met its proposed CO2 reduction specified in the failed 1997 Kyoto agreement merely by reducing its yearly hours of work to full-time European levels.

But things are never so simple. Society is an aggregate that hides competing streams and fragments. In our present society many identities are bound up in what they buy. What’s more, there are few tools at society’s disposal to counter the ubiquitous and exquisitely tuned influence of advertising, all of which urge us to consume more.

As human beings we are supremely adaptable and therefore malleable, especially over the medium- to long-term. It is no coincidence that we have arrived at a climate crisis after seventy years of spectacular evolution of advertising and marketing industries, that have made into an art-form exploiting every indiosyncracy of the human psyche toward a single, ecological disasterous goal. What’s more our necessity to unlearn consumer behaviour, arrives at the very moment that advertising is more precisely targeted and tightly woven throughout our lifestyles than ever. What chance do we have?

Some is the consumer’s
One tactic to counter consumers’ inertia on consumption is to fight fire with fire. That is, to deploy advertising and marketing campaigns with the aim of saving the planet. This is already being done to some success. But it is not a fair fight. Globally, advertising is forecasted to be a $563 billion dollar industry for 2019. Only a tiny tiny portion is spent on any public service annoucements - which means the vast majority is engineered to influence people to buy and therefore increase carbon emissions. If there was ever a statistic to explain our current predicament it would be that.

Furthermore so much advertising is ingeniously engineered to slip below our conscious radar, to manipulate our insecurities and influence us to buy what we wouldn’t normally. The lapse in judgement is momentary, its effects temporary. And so advertising is a poor fit for fighting climate change because it requires a long concerted effort against the most inert structure in history - the status quo.

Yet increasingly advertising is supposed to simulate feelings that usually come from social interaction (hence why at this moment of fragmented demographics ‘influencers’ have become such a giant and much ridiculed market). How about bypassing advertising and going back to basics? That is, to influence society by using the tools and devices found within society itself.

One such tool is shaming. We are currently living in a shame averse society which is understandable. This is because shame is a powerful and deeply negative emotion, historically deployed for social control and coersion, used to shame those for things they cannot help, causing lasting hurt and pain, even trauma.

Yet we are living in exceptional times that will directly impact future generations for centuries. Historically when society has had a moral awakening and enacted change, shame at the injustice of the present course was a vital factor in causing it.

So if climate change really is the “great moral challenge of our generation” why would would we not attach shame for failing this moral test - especially when the consequences are potentially so catasrophic?

It’s all your fault
First of all there has been a deep reluctance within the climate action community to aportion responsibility to ordinary people. Instead guilt is heaped on sociopathic corporations and corrupt politicians. Indeed, they deserve the largest share of the blame but not all of it. The decision seems as much strategic as humanitarian in that it would alienate support for the climate movement.

Indeed once begun, shaming and morality could spiral out of control and create a form of climate puritanism - that is trigger a feedback loop in which human behaviour tries to be more and more virtuous. You see this with regards to diet - how many people become vegans or vegetarians and then project their morality outwards and judge incessantly. In a modern individualist and fragmented society like ours there always exists a critical mass of people and an arena to trigger a backlash. The example of a BBQ next to a vegan’s house in Perth.

You can already see how easily a backlash can occur when shame and guilt are at play. This is already happening such as ICEing - where Internal Combustion Engine cars blockade electric charging stations. Then a backlash to the backlash. In this case in Croatia - electric cars blockaded a petrol station after petrol cars had blockaded a charging station. This is a dangerous escalation when you consider where it might end.

Because nothing is more fun than taking down a holier-than-thou person from their pantheon of moral rectitude and to let them know en masse that they cannot judge.

Yet we are running out of time and ideas. Science, journalism and activism have all failed to affect any meanginful change on the climate issue. At the core of that failure is the fact that, within our society, awareness alone is no longer a potent catalyst for action. Statistics and timelines don’t sing, they mumble. A movement needs drama and a sense of moral righteousness. No wonder then that the single voice that rang out above all others was that of a diminutive Swedish girl who dared to shame those in power who spoke but did nothing. It was a voice that resonated because it dared to moralise the issue of climate change - something unthinkably dowdy a decade ago.

Because we are failing collectively and individually and that failing is a moral one. As nations feel shame for the blights on their history we deserve to feel shame for the catastophe that is slowly unravelling before us. There is a very important caveat - wealth, privilege and there guilt are not spread evenly. Overwhelmingly it is the wealthy among us that are responsible for carbon emissions. Yet often shame is a blunt instrument and thus any shaming should take into account individual’s capacity to change and their failure to do so.

This is not to overstate the helplessness of people within the system. This argument has been used time and again to absolve us of guilt for climate change. The truth is our entire way of commerce is based on choice and collectively has put us on the path to calamity. With our choice as consumers comes the responsibility for making descisions. For those in a position to change but unwilling to do so they should feel shame, and should be made to feel it by a society who they are helping to bring about the end of. It would be shameful not to.