The Scam of Environmentalism

In this thought-provoking discussion, we analyze the disingenuousness and ineffectiveness of much environmentalist activism. We argue the movement is frequently performative, serving more as a cultural identity than driving real change.

Many proposed lifestyle sacrifices around plastic usage and commuting fail to meaningfully impact emissions at scale. We see Germany's Green Party as an egregious example, increasing carbon reliance on coal due to aesthetic policy preferences.

Ultimately we contend environmentalism resembles a religious culture focused on moral posturing over pragmatism. Some tech interventions merit attention, yet visions of voluntary collective austerity seem doomed. Preparing for adverse climate impacts could better ready society.

[00:00:00] And one of the great ironies... Of having the Green Party in the ruling coalition, uh, and in previous ruling coalitions, is they have systematically dismantled a lot of the relatively low carbon sources of energy that the Germans have had, nuclear, natural gas, in favor of coal and especially lignite.

So under the Greens, because of Green policy, we've seen an explosion. Uh, that will last decades in German carbon emissions. So, if you are in Germany and a little bit of electrons comes in from wind or solar, that has to be fed into the system regardless of what the price point happens to be. And if you've got a lignite facility that you're leaving on... Because it takes more than 24 hours to spin that thing up and down, and when the sun goes down or the solar goes away, the light that has to be there to keep the light on?

Well, you don't count the electricity that it generates during the day. You only count the solar and wind. .

If you actually count what power is generated and [00:01:00] what is used, when it is used, you're talking only about 10 percent green.

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Malcolm Collins: It is this level of disingenuousness, this level of not at all fighting for anything that you would actually be fighting for. If you cared about the things you said you cared about, it makes me have such a high level of animosity.

Towards the movement.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I love you, Simone, and I am excited for our topic today, because it's where you started your career.

Do you want to talk about your early career?

Simone Collins: Absolutely. Being raised in super progressive Silicon Valley, I was determined to save the world By doing the most obvious thing, saving the environment because that's what really needs our help. And flowers, the flowers, the flowers are very important. And so I, I looked at what I thought would make the most impact.

I felt like

Malcolm Collins: Actually, before you go further, I'd love you to explain why you thought saving the environment mattered. Like, what about the environment was like intrinsically good?

Simone Collins: Well, it was sort of the, an [00:02:00] availability heuristic problem. Everything around me was the environment is, is falling apart. In my science classes, we talked about environmental damage and pollution and climate change.

And then of course, like in the news, it was a big issue. So it was just, in terms of like problems in the world that need to be resolved, it was the environment. Interestingly, actually, it wasn't human suffering. It wasn't starvation. It wasn't disease. And those are like really big issues that I would expect progressive groups to really care about.

Very Evoked set. I had been told, in fact, That in the past parents used to tell their children who were not eating their dinners. Don't you know, there are children starving in China, but that no one does that anymore, which kind of implied that, like, there weren't children starving anywhere anymore. So that's the closest I got to awareness of starvation.

And hardship outside. So

Malcolm Collins: you started this first

Simone Collins: career. Yeah. So I decided to go into environmental business because my understanding was that changing, [00:03:00] like dealing with environmental problems through the public sector was ineffective. You created this degree, right? Yeah. So I went to the Georgia Washington university.

Because they had a good undergraduate business school. I didn't want to wait until graduate school like that. That was a waste of time because academia, even then, even then I knew academia was a waste of time. And I created a sort of custom major using graduate classes in environmental business that they had.

And then I, I started I volunteered and interned. at environmental nonprofits. I worked at the American Council of Renewable Energy. I worked at Earth Day Network, which is the nonprofit that basically administers Earth Day and Earth Day festivals, but then provides year round curriculum and all sorts of other stuff.

I extensively interviewed with people who worked as environmental consultants or environmental specialists within organizations or who worked as lobbyists for the environment. And of course, then I also took my, my classes and the more I learned, the more I was like, Oh my God, this [00:04:00] entire industry is a complete scam.

The, the people that I interviewed who worked in the space basically said, I deeply care about this. Don't do this because my work makes absolutely no difference and I'm not making any difference. And then of course I, the most meaningful thing for me was studying historical geography, sorry, historical geology.

And learning that. We are not the first organ, organism to cause climate change to significantly alter the climate of our planet. That many other organisms before us have done this. . I mean, you can't study like the fossil record and like all of the past, like errors of, you know, the natural climate and everything without discovering that. And so like learning that too, was just. Like, wait a second, guys, the understanding was that climate change, bad humans, unusual for causing this must stop it.

And then what I had learned was, was climate change, normal [00:05:00] humans, not unique in doing this and can't stop it. jUst like that was, it was, it was deeply because if you do care about this problem, you know, you should be planning around it. And we don't see a lot of that, at least performatively, people are talking about how do we handle migratory crises?

How do we, you know, how do we handle the fact that people are still buying coastal properties in a way that's going to lead to death and lots of destruction? You know, how do we, how do we prepare for the inevitable climate change that is going to happen?

Malcolm Collins: Simone, I want to, I want to pull on something you said, that this is a scam, what specific parts of it do you feel are the most disingenuous? I'm assuming you think that like the earth is getting warmer and that like there is a lot of climate destruction happening and a lot of species are going extinct. That is all

Simone Collins: happening. Yes. Okay, continue.

Pollution is bad and all these other things are really bad. However, The efforts that supposedly are supposed to be addressing this are not making a difference. They're not making a difference. They're not, they're not making the [00:06:00] problem better. They are just raising money and getting attention and not

Malcolm Collins: really doing.

That's the really important thing to know here is that the climate change industry is an industry and that the people in it, or at least from your, your interviews, when you were thinking of going into it, regretted their life choices, but they didn't feel they had any options left to them.

Simone