Celebrities and lawyers: an environmental journey or climbing on a bandwagon?

There have been a lot of people starting on an environmental journey. Celebrities have discovered just how green their life styles are and are anxious to tell us about how climate safe they are. Lifestyle magazines feature articles, often with a compendium of famous musicians, models, chefs and people generally famous for being famous.

Reading about their climate change friendly measures I get the feeling that they are praising themselves for doing in some things what we all should be doing – recycling waste oil in the case of a celebrity chef for example as they climb into their four by fours.

It is easy for them to point to a particular part of their behaviour as eco praiseworthy, and the magazines and newspapers lap it up uncritically because these kind of articles sell the magazines and newspapers, but collectively and individually their ecologically correct behaviour does not amount to a hill of beans especially when compared to the parts of their lifestyles which creates tremendous ecological damage.

Of course, there is no mention of their flights in private jets, or their large environmentally harmful cars, yachts and other possessions and a whole host of other luxurious carbon creating lifestyle activities.

My own profession, solicitors, are getting in on the act. The Legal Sector Alliance has been formed to help solicitors by leading the fight against climate change. It was launched to a great fanfare but I confess that I find it quite hard to understand what the Legal Sector Alliance will actually be doing, beyond creating a talking shop and telling lawyers about recycling, low energy lighting and some other small measures which they should be doing in any event.

I do not think that any members of the Legal Sector Alliance will be actually putting their money where their mouths are, by, for example, refusing to ac for BP because of the environmental damage it is doing in Northern Canada or refusing to act for Marks and Spencer because of its over packaged produce which creates tremendous environmental damage.

If we all carry on like this I rather suspect that the whole environmental bandwagon will roll in the wrong direction, as we lose sight of the substance by concentrating on publicising behaviour as praiseworthy instead of recognising that such behaviour is not praiseworthy, but simply should be required and deviation from it should be condemned.

You should not praise a celebrity or a lawyer doing the right thing; it is a bit like praising someone for not committing a crime. I welcome all the celebrities and lawyers on the environmental journey but not if their motivation is self publicity, because that will turn a journey into a bandwagon which will arrive at the wrong destination.

I suppose that I should not expect environmental leadership from celebrities or lawyers; I do not wish to suggest that they have vacuous minds or are not genuinely concerned about climate change and the environment. I think they are as a whole but like most rich and powerful people think that the rules just do not apply to them. It is a bit like the two cabinet ministers who recently each bespoke their chauffeured cars to take them two hundred yards to the same place at the same time.

These politicians think that the rules don’t apply to them. “Do what I say, not what I do” is their motto. They could not share a car, let alone walk, and these people are supposed to be leaders. If we cannot see them behaving in an eco safe way, why should be expect it of politicians or celebrities?

This leaves, of course I fear to add, the ordinary person who wants to make an environmental difference. What should he or she do in the absence of leadership? The problem that everyone faces, including celebrities and leaders, is that eco safe behaviour impacts on any luxury that you may wish to enjoy.

A large polluting car is very luxurious; they can drive like a dream and you travel with prestige comfort and probably safer than a small lower polluting car. That choice only affects the wealthy; the ordinary person is usually pleased to have any car, provided it works.

What does an “ordinary” housewife think when she reads about celebrities and leaders falsely claiming to be eco safe? She is under pressure, for example, about using fewer plastic bags at the supermarket check out, but without there always being other facilities in place to help her. Why are there no paper bags there, to help her? In the much maligned United States many supermarkets provide brown paper bags (as well as someone to help carry them to the car).

Is she supposed to climb into her car for a journey of two hundred yards, immediately followed by her husband in his car?

For years now we have been told by the media to aspire to the lives of the rich and the famous, and now the rich and the famous are becoming self styled environmental leaders we must understand that it is a case of doing what they say, not what they do.