Toward Ecosophy

...it just hit the news that a Norwegian billionaire, Gunhild Stordalen, who bankrolled a big campaign to convince people to eat a mostly meatless diet to save the planet, spends her time junketing around with her friends to exotic places around the world in her own $26 million private jet. I don't happen to know exactly how many bacon cheeseburgers it takes to equal one of those flights, but I'd be willing to bet that it's a pretty substantial number. 

Now of course it comes as no surprise that some privileged person wants everyone else to change their lifestyles so that she doesn't have to; that attitude is far from rare these days. What I find encouraging, though, is that people are finally starting to point out the hypocrisy involved in this sort of thing. I quote one Christopher Snowdon at the Institute of Economic Affairs, who noted: 

“The hypocrisy of this is breathtaking.This is a campaign telling ordinary people they should be eating less than half a rasher of bacon per day for the sake of the environment, while the patron is flying people around the world in private jets creating one enormous carbon footprint. This is a classic case of do as I say not as I do."

And of course he's quite correct -- and until privileged environmental "activists" realize that they're not leading at all until they start leading by example, we're going to see a steadily growing number of people ignore everything the environmental movement is trying to say. As one of the great underground comics of the Sixties used to say, "Hear the sound of my feet walkin' drown the sound of my voice talkin'..."