Pirate's Cove

Despite the yammering of eco, these people are not environmentalists. They are climate cultists masquerading as people who care about the environment. And utter nags to boot

Are you an eco-hypocrite?
Recycling. Electric cabbing. Not eating meat. All in a day’s fighting back for Samuel Fishwick. Well sort of. Welcome to the conflicted life of a London climate helper

The only thing worse than an eco hypocrite is realising you are one. ‘Think of the turtles,’ I said to my friend at a Dulwich pub last December, impounding her plastic straw with the punctilious sanctimony of a teacher confiscating a pea shooter, then showing her the viral video of a sea turtle struggling as a 12cm plastic straw is dislodged from its nostril with a set of pliers. That friend and I haven’t been for a drink since.

Insufferable twits. You can bet it was that friend who stopped all future activities.

Still, I considered sacrificing my social life for sea life a noble cause, driving this plastic straw amnesty with zeal. I wrote newspaper articles about the damage caused by the surfeit of single-use plastics in the marine environment, tweeted about it vigorously and stored the fruits of my enforced cull in my rucksack. Then, one morning, nursing a hangover, I tried one of those paper alternatives that suck all the joy out of a McDonald’s milkshake, reached for one of the plastic straws in my confiscated collection and relapsed. What a sucker.

When it comes to taking an eco-cheat day, I’m in illustrious company. Prince Harry devoted a chunk of the Vogue September issue, guest-edited by his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to espouse their determination to be kinder to the planet by having only two children. But he then drew widespread condemnation for reportedly boarding a private jet to Google’s climate camp in Sicily, alongside A-listers Leonardo DiCaprio and Katy Perry (the last leg of Harry’s journey was apparently by helicopter). Dame Emma Thompson, the actor and inveterate campaigner against climate change, rallied Extinction Rebellion activists from atop a pink boat in Oxford Street — prompting a backlash when it transpired she’d flown 5,400 miles to attend. ‘Unfortunately, sometimes I have to fly,’ she told the BBC, ‘but I don’t fly nearly as much as I did because of my carbon footprint and I plant a lot of trees.’ Extinction Rebellion demands we reach zero emissions by 2025, long before the Government’s promise of 2050. Inevitably, we are falling short.

What’s this we stuff?

Bradbrook points out that figures from climatologist professor Kevin Anderson show that 50 per cent of emissions come from 10 per cent of the population — so the burden should fall less on the individual than the state. Yet a climate of eco-anxiety is taking a toll on mental health. Caroline Hickman, a teaching fellow at the University of Bath and member of the Climate Psychology Alliance, who has been a psychotherapist for more than 20 years, says it’s imperative that we’re more forgiving. ‘That whole drive to perfectionism is worrying, particularly when it’s around young people. We’ve already got an epidemic of self-harming, body dysmorphia and eating disorders in young people, and we don’t need something else to feel bad about,’ she says.

It’s a nice cop out, blaming “the 10 percent”, but, really, so few do anything beyond token steps in their own lives. Maybe they wouldn’t fee so nutso if they practiced what they preach.