The celebrity eco-crite – the multimillionaire one-per-center who lectures and finger-wags at us hoi polloi to change our evil, planet-killing ways – from the luxury of a carbon-spewing international flight, or one of their multiple, sprawling mansions dotted about the globe – is a grim fixture of modern politics. And with good reason: as the climate alarmists love to keep reminding us, we have to “be the change we want to be in the world”.
Unless, of course, you’re a virtue-signalling lefty celebrity. Then your fellow lefties will defend your hypocrisy to the hilt. When actress Emma Thompson was caught out spending tens of thousands of dollars on an ultra-luxurious trans-Atlantic flight, guzzling beef carpaccio and champagne, just days after lecturing the rest of us to stop flying and eating meat for the sake of the planet, leftist journalists rushed to her defence.
But much as her defenders try to fudge it, the fact remains that Thompson had tub-thumped for the zealots of “Extinction Rebellion”, an extremist group whose bedrock demand is zero carbon emissions in just five years. These fanatics are absolutely clear: no one is exempt. “We openly challenge ourselves and this toxic system – leaving our comfort zones to take action for change”. That’s pretty unequivocal. Superglueing yourselves to roads isn’t enough. Everyone, but everyone, has to give up carbon-emitting luxuries. Especially international air travel.
If you’re going to shake your famous little fists for this cause one day, and then almost immediately indulge in one of the most expensive, carbon-intensive activities imaginable – not for any good reason, mind, just for your own selfish indulgence – then yes: you deserve to be pilloried for being one of the world’s greatest hypocrites.
But lefties and celebrities are above the standards of us mortals.
Thompson tried to pass her elite indulgence as just one of those little hypocrisies, donchaknow? “We’re often involved in situations where we will be hypocritical, but if we don’t address [climate change] we are failing our children and our grandchildren”.
And there’s the rub: sure, we’re all hypocrites in our own little ways, but there’s inconsistency and then there’s grand, stinking, dishonest, fraudulent, sanctimonious hypocrisy.
If Thompson, like all her privileged little chums, really cared about “our children and our grandchildren”, then no sacrifice would be too difficult. That’s the whole message of the Extinction Rebellion zealots. These loonies really think that we have just a few years to save the very planet from mass extinction. Anyone who really believed such a calamitous proposition wouldn’t dodge around it. It’s one thing, after all, to figure that, well, you really ought to lose weight, but… ooh, go on, just another biscuit won’t hurt. But it’s quite another to say that you have a life-threatening peanut allergy, but, hey, satay is just too damn tasty.
Celebrity environmentalists and their media cronies whine about being picked on, but they wouldn’t be such easy targets if they weren’t such stinking hypocrites, so damned often.
Not just ultra-wealthy luvvies, either. Previous research has shown that people who are the most ostentatiously ‘green’, in fact tend to have the most stupendous carbon footprints. Partly it’s because ‘green’ living is mostly the preserve of the rich. It’s easy to advocate ‘renewables’ when you don’t have to worry about paying the electricity bill. Worse, these privileged elites seem to think that, just because they drive a luxury EV and put out their recycling bins, they’re entitled to reward themselves with regular overseas air travel.
Oh, but it’s just so hard to live carbon-free, they whine. Even for us rich slebs. Well, no it’s not.
In fact, it’s the people with the resources who have the most options. People in the developing world can’t afford expensive (not to mention unreliable) solar and wind power. Ordinary people in the developed world can’t afford EVs that cost more than a luxury car. Middle-class people install solar panels because they can afford them (usually courtesy of poor peoples’ taxes). Most importantly: even the richest people can afford to not jet all around the world, spewing tons of carbon dioxide every time. No one makes them buy fleets of cars, planes, boats, let alone collect mansions like swap cards.
Celebrities have every opportunity to live up to their high-falutin’bullshit. They just choose not to. Like Ancien Régime monarchs, they surround themselves with carbon-intensive opulence while they lecture the rest of us to eat carbon-neutral, organic cake.
They absolutely deserve to be dragged through the public square in the tumbrils of opprobrium for their stinking hypocrisy.
