According to a new study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, those who are concerned about climate change are more likely to support federal policies, yet it’s the skeptics who say they do the most, personally, to help the environment. This apparent hypocrisy has been welcome news to the deniersphere, which has excerpted Pacific Standard’s coverage of the study all over the place. The study suggests “moral licensing” may be at play to explain why the environmentally-concerned reported lower levels of public transit use, recycling and other sorts of relatively minor actions.
We’d like to suggest a simpler explanation, a hunch one based on our experiences with deniers and their indifference to the truth: they lied about their pro-environment actions, inflating their rates so that they look better. After all, if they’ll lie to themselves about the threat of climate change, they’ll have no problem lying to the researchers to make the alarmists look bad. And on the other hand, those most concerned about climate change are going to recognize how trivial the personal activities are, given the massive systemic changes needed to address the problem.
Like with other alarmist hypocrisy charges, the fact is is that everything we can possibly do as individuals is important but won’t be enough to solve the problem. But solving the systemic problem means creating public policy at the highest level. Right now, corrupt actors at the federal level are actively making the problem worse to appease their industry friends.
Speaking of Pruitt, over the weekend, Axios reported on the sad state of affairs in Pruitt’s EPA. Paranoid and isolated, Pruitt has sequestered himself to the point that apparently even his political appointees have to scan twitter to find out what he’s up to, as he only seems to talk to a handful of twenty-something staffers. (At least reporters can take solace in knowing that Pruitt hides calendar from his own staff, too.)
“Everyone's miserable,” a source told Axios, referencing all the bad press leaks about bad press leaks, wave of staff departures and unprecedented level of secrecy at the agency. “Nobody talks. It's a dry wall prison."
This dour outlook isn’t exactly the sense you get from recently retired EPA security chief Nino Perretto, who recent coverage has portrayed as the enabler for Pruitt’s lavish expenditures under security pretenses. In exclusive “interview” by Koch operative Michael Bastasch, Perretto is given twenty minutes to try and explain why all the bad news about Pruitt is just made up by an angry ex-staffer and really everything is fine and Pruitt is a totally normal administrator just like ones in the recent past. But past administrators haven’t racked up an impressive 15 investigations into their unethical, corrupt, and potentially unlawful activities--especially not in just a year of service.
Maybe to handle all these investigations, maybe just coincidentally, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General is hiring a new Criminal Investigator.
If you’re qualified, definitely consider applying, and you can hopefully help achieve the sort of systemic change the climate concerned know is necessary by moving Pruitt out of his drywall prison, and into a real one.
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