Let’s say I ride my green ten-speed bicycle to work tomorrow
morning rather than drive my third generation Toyota Prius. Does
that give me the right to steal your liverwurst sandwich from the
office fridge?
Well, that depends on whether I stop by the farmer’s market
on the way home.
(Stay with me. This will all hopefully make sense in a few
paragraphs.)
You see, stealing liverwurst sandwiches is just one example
of how ordinary rules don’t apply to green consumers. For years
we have been reading stories about “Gulfstream Liberals” who
leave muddy carbon footprints the size of a small African nation
all over our global living room floor. Who can forget the 2007
report that Al Gore’s vast Nashville plantation consumed 20 times
the energy of the average home, or the stories about eco-activist
Laurie David’s jaunts in her private jet between her east and
west coast mansions, (not to mention her citation by the
Chilmark Conservation Commission for paving
over protected wetlands on her Martha’s Vineyard
estate)?
It turns out these are not organic cherry-picked examples
of eco-hypocrisy. This is Green standard operating
procedure, according to a
piece titled, “Do Green Products Make Us Better
People?” in my new issue of Psychological Science.
University of Toronto researchers Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong
found that while Greens may sport a “halo of green consumerism,”
it is only to conceal their horns of self-interest.
The researchers asked about 150 subjects to play computer
games in which they could increase their money by cheating and
lying about it. Mazar and Zhong found that the greener shoppers
were more likely to cheat, lie, and steal than conventional
consumers. Later, subjects were told to take their spoils from an
envelope based on the honor system. Again, Greens were six times
as likely to take more than they earned. Finally, subjects played
a game where they were asked to share money with another player.
You guessed it: Green shoppers shared fewer dollars than
conventional shoppers.
THEOLOGIANS AND PHILOSOPHERS have been aware of this
phenomenon for millennia, sometimes calling it the “licensing
effect,” other times “moral balancing” or “compensatory ethics.”
Whatever you call it, it means the same thing: Greens believe
they have built up so much ethical capital with their
environmental good deeds that they have earned the right to
behave like strip miners on a bender.
This research reinforced the findings of a 2008
study that showed environmentalists were more likely than
others to take cross-country or international flights — flights
that consume the energy egquivalent of an entire Polynesian
country or one of Laurie David’s homes. A similar
study from Stanford University showed white Americans who
voted for President Obama were more willing than those who didn’t
to express racist opinions. The justification was the same. I
voted for Obama, therefore I am morally superior to you,
therefore I have so many ethical credits in the bank I can afford
to be a little racist.
Don’t expect environmental activists to see the slightest
contradiction in their words and deeds. When Laurie David was
confronted with these obvious examples of hypocrisy, she simply
replied that “no one is perfect.” What a great answer. Why didn’t
that guy piloting the Exxon Valdez think of that? The
media would have just shrugged and said, “Hey, Captain Joe’s
right! No one is perfect. Let’s go, boys, there’s no
story here…”
I know. Often, after one of my frequent rants, my
girlfriend will ask me: Well, what do we do with this? I seldom
have an answer for her. After all, I’m a kvetcher, not a
problem-solver. Besides, I like to think that most of the big
problems have no solution. If they had, someone much smarter than
me would have come up with a solution by now.
But if I don’t have an answer, at least I get to feel that
slight sense of moral superiority usually reserved for Greens. If
nothing else, whenever I see one of those smug Green scolds
shouldering her authentic Anya Hindmarch
“I’m Not a Plastic Bag” tote ($200 retail), I can feel a
little smug too.
And next time I find my liverwurst sandwich missing from
the office fridge, instead of going cubicle to cubicle asking to
smell everyone’s breath, I’ll just track down the owner of the
first generation Toyota Prius in the parking lot, the one with
the “Support Urban Agriculture” bumpersticker.
It’s a dead giveway.
