"For your soy schnitzel, forests are also cleared". Why BE GREEN editor-in-chief Alexandra Zykunov no longer talks to climate deniers. A rant.
Same old, same old: I'm sitting at a family celebration. We chat, the children play. What's new And so with you? I haven't bought clothes from popular brands in two years, I tell them. Not heroic or challenging at all, just by the way. That was my strategy until recently: To tell exciting, sustainable things to people who have little or very little to do with the climate crisis, but to be a bit stupid so that you don't get over-educated. Especially appropriate if you want to teach old white men as a young woman, of course.
"Aha. And then on your Mallorca vacation you go by train, right?" Is asked and smiled at tea. "Mallorca has nothing to do with my clothes," I say, rolling my eyes inside for the billionth time. "Besides, personal trips are not the problem anyway." – "Yeah, how does it fit right?" I hear then, smile politely and ask myself whether I should go out immediately or later. I decide for: neither. I've talked to so many times, with uncles, aunts, family members, sellers or waiters, sometimes understanding, sometimes enlightening, sometimes angry. It usually worked: nothing. At the next get-together, the carousel turned from the front – and I just felt sick.
"You have to endure that," I kept reading in the feeds and magazines. "The dialogue is important." But is it really? Do I actually have to endure it if articles or YouTube videos are held up in front of me as counter-arguments, in which politicians express their slogans about climate, refugees or mine, disguised as opinions Uterus?
We often have to take people's concerns seriously. What worries should that be? That they can no longer fly on vacation, so not three times a year? Or that they can no longer afford to buy meat – every single day? But no, I understand, take fears seriously, okay. But I also ask myself: Who actually says that this is always the best? A person with anxiety disorders is also not helped if you give their fear always and everywhere. If you are advised to change the street side in front of each spider. Or when I nodded a colleague with a compulsory cleaning duty in the hand of a disinfectant every morning. Or "concerned citizens" may be invited to political talk shows because of their fear, although their content is mostly self-made madness.
In any case, I no longer want to understand the sentences of these people, no longer invalidate their arguments dripping with conspiracy theories. Maybe that's childish, maybe the opinion of the climate crisis deniers will only get stronger if I don't speak to them. But what about my opinion? What if she's getting weaker just because I'm talking to them? Because that's exactly what is happening. I am tired, so terrible, terribly tired. To always come up against the same sayings. Against this "forests are cut down for your soybeans" or "the garbage problem is in Asia, not in Germany". I'm tired of wasting my energy on itto educate them, keep asking them numbers instead of using my resources to sign up for the next demo or start a petition. There would be a thousand more meaningful jobs.
I did the opposite with facts – that they believed me even less. And at some point I understood why
Because I'm saying it now: your counter-arguments are just stupid. Yes, stupid! And deliberately. Sure, I could now say "uninformed" politically correct. And before the big outcry comes: I am not talking about those who may have problems with poverty, discrimination or illness that are completely different from climate protection. I am very well aware of my privileges. But I mean exactly those who, as I know, are healthy and wealthy. Those who could get information. To whom I would like to say: There is a nice little invention called a search engine. Read a little bit there.
Honestly: We are all grown up. I am no longer there to pay off the negligent lack of information of others or to relativize their total failure in argument with "We have different opinions". Or, worse, explaining the difference between a reputable website and a fucked up conspiracy portal. Because that's what I mean by deliberately stupid: If you give the latter more confidence or even knowingly surf these pages, then my politically correct facts-Bla-Bla will go past your ass anyway. Or probably not even there.
And now we come to the last point, why I no longer speak to those who deny climate change: At some point I simply understood that my figures, no matter how solid, will not help in this fight. Why? In a study a few years ago it was shown why, with emotional issues such as vaccination, political attitudes or the climate crisis, with numbers, neither progressive AfD voters nor Trump fans nor climate deniers can get ahead: Because these topics are highly emotional, our attitudes towards them have been deeply rooted in us for years and, in case of doubt, we have aligned our everyday life, our professions, yes, our circles of friends with them. If facts like this suddenly come into play from someone like me that would shake this conviction, the inner conflict would become so exorbitant, so violent, so destructive (one would have to doubt or even change half a life) that the brain is protected from this overload protects itself – by pulling the walls in your head even higher. Instead of thinking, it gives the mouth the command to ramble about something like "lying press" or "the numbers are surely fake".
At some point I just understood that my numbers, no matter how solid, would not help in this struggle.
And there at the latest, at the latest at the moment, neither the persuasive nor the convinced can be helped. Backfire effect The whole thing is called: Although you wanted to get people with facts, you do the opposite. Since you can only submit the interpersonal divorce. That's just what I don't want in itself. Because – this is also the truth – it is very easy to speak of climate ignorant idiots. But what if these "idiots" are your own parents? Or the uncle, the cousin, the sister-in-law, the best friend? Do you break with them? Do you cover them with abusive names, pull themselves and their hair and swear never to speak another word to them? Maybe yes. Mostly not. At least not me. Because apart from the climate issue, I am also attached to my relatives, my friends or even unteachable daycare mothers. They are wonderful, helpful, loving people. They only find it more important that Greta should first be treated before she makes pupils around the world washy.
So what am I doing? I plan to stop talking about politics at the next family gathering. No longer about refugees and only about the weather. Oh no, it doesn't work. Well, then only about the food. Oh no, it doesn't work either. Maybe then we'll just sit there and be silent. At least until I take off my sweater and the words "GRETA" appear on my T-shirt in a legible manner. The truth is also: I can not. I want to, but I just can't let it go. I cannot accept it. Again, so. Ring – fucking – free!
Arguments against regulars' bullshit:
"CO2 has always existed"
Cons: Soils and oceans emit much more CO2 than humans, true. But this part is absorbed by nature, everything is in balance, like a scale. If something is added to one side (through coal, oil, etc.), the scales tip over. The balance is in the bucket.
"Human influence is not proven"
Cons: There will never be a hundred per proof. Here, however, the principle of exclusion applies: there are no other scientific reasons that could otherwise explain the change.
"There used to be climate changes"
Cons: Yes, but it was different back then. Changes in the climate before and now are two completely different pairs of shoes.
More tips against idiotic theories in the book "Instructions for Contradiction" by Franzi von Kempis.
Who writes here: Alexandra Zykunov
Rethinking moment:
Ever since she read the banal sentence, “Cows don't give milk because they're cows. They give milk because they are mothers, "she tries to avoid milk products for the most part.
Worst fail:
She doesn't like to cook and unfortunately orders a lot of food to go.
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