The “no true Scotsman fallacy” is often used by, amongst others, opponents of environmental movements in order to discredit green arguments. The structure of the fallacy typically resembles “you can’t be x if you’re y”, with the goalposts of y becoming increasingly less and less attainable overtime. It’s biased, emotion-led and a form of gatekeeping. But I think it also demonstrates the ways in which philosophy and geography – particularly climate activism – are linked more widely. But what exactly does it mean to be an activist in a time where everything that you do has the potential to say more than just what you like, but what precisely it is you stand for?
Morality today is complicated; it is made up of deontology and consequences, intentions and context. Philosophers have introduced this idea to us through numerous thought experiments, few having any sort of easy solution. While these experiments can be useful for critiquing assumed knowledges and thinking about different perspectives, they can often lead us spiralling into a moral soup of outcomes. A similar thing can be said when trying to lessen our climatic impact. When we go into the supermarket, sometimes all we want to do is to buy a friend a gift. We don’t – and shouldn’t – expect to be funding billionaires unintentionally at the same time.
While we often will choose to mitigate whatever impact our actions have on the world, sometimes we are faced with two equally undesirable options. In such cases, this moral dilemma can, and often does, lead to cases of eco-paralysis. While this may seem theory-based, medical circles have seen increasing examples of where the distress of continually trying to find the best, most green outcome becomes less favourable than the alternative: stepping back. This is compounded by gatekeeping, either deliberate or implicit, that occurs within and outside of the activist community.
We need to always consider the individual contexts in which we make everyday decisions regarding the environment. Not everyone has the time to weigh absolutely all of their choices from the lens of climate crisis and this does not make these people bad activists. We need to be intersectional and, in our approach to others, know that everyone involved in mitigating the climate crisis is trying in their own way and dealing with things that often we can’t see or don’t understand. Even for those who can weigh their choices, we should realise that our method of decision-making will always be flawed, especially under the current system, and we should not judge ourselves or others as if we are infallible decision-making machines.
Gatekeeping climate activism risks leading more people into eco-paralysis and stepping away from activism altogether, just at a time where we desperately require enough people with the same vision to give politicians cover to act. We can’t afford in-fighting, especially when those who are benefitting from the current paradigm use it as a means to undermine and discredit green movements everywhere.
Compassion, though obvious, is something we can always improve upon. Our actions will always have unintended, unavoidable consequences but what we should focus on is the intention behind them. Moral philosophers have defined what it means to be good in a myriad of ways, many of them have created frameworks for us to follow to be “good”. Much like their definitions of good, however, these frameworks also are incredibly unique, but I suppose they all have one thing in common: they all want us to try. To try our best, in whatever way we can, and to keep going even if we make mistakes. I think the same should be said with climate activism, with our framework being compassion. Compassion is what we want the new paradigm to be driven by, so it is what we should lead with now. Helping each other is vital to becoming better activists in order to produce and sustain the paradigm shift we are all in so desperate need of.
Hannah Harrison, Fitzwilliam College, 2nd Year Geographer
Photo credits to: Daria Ghezzi (banner), Bridget Tiller
DISCLAIMER: THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OR OPINIONS OF COMPASS MAGAZINE AS A WHOLE OR THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY.