The planet doesn’t need us to be martyrs, I realized, but it could use some resilient, optimistic advocates who don’t burn out or become resentful along the way
On a Friday afternoon all I wanted was a little pick-me-up, maybe even a hint of glamour. I eyed my Dyson Airwrap blow dryer thinking how good it would feel to have a salon-styled blow out again. The shine, the volume, the bounce made me pull it out of its forced retirement. But as soon as I held it in my hands, a familiar pang of guilt hit me. This marvel of modern technology and giver of great hair was an energy guzzler of proportions that a climate worrier like me simply couldn’t deny.
It was no surprise that this changed me, but not entirely in the ways that I expected. I emulated Gandhian austerity, but this self-denial made me … prickly. The sacrifices were stacking up, and suddenly, it was hard not to resent everyone around me whose small indulgences collectively poisoned our planet, yet they seemed to go about their day and lives without so much as fretting over their carbon footprint.
As I eyed my Airwrap, I found myself to be a microcosm of the complex considerations that plague the problem I had been studying intensely. My desire for an evening of a vanity-fuelled bouncy blowout was a sinister exposition of my academic rigidity that preached a principled conscientiousness about anything and everything. The Kantian categorical imperative was my north star if I was to be a “real” climate advocate.
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