Crushed ... 'I'm a member of the tin-can appreciation society' isn't an excuse for not recycling. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty
Another week, another survey suggesting that whilst most of us are concerned about climate change, few of us are actually prepared to do anything meaningful towards reducing our own emissions. In a nut shell, many of us are happy to wait for politicians or scientists to get us out of this hole rather than rolling up our own sleeves. We tend to suffer from what I call "little me syndrome" - what difference can we individually really make when set against this seemingly overwhelming problem and other people's intransigence to it.
When 3,600 people were recently polled by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about a quarter agreed with the statement: "It takes too much effort to do things that are environmentally friendly". A similar percentage agreed with the statement: "I don't believe my behaviour and everyday lifestyle contribute to climate change." Over half of those polled did say, however, that they never leave the television on standby overnight or leave their mobile phone chargers plugged in, and that they always switched off lights when leaving a room. Over 70% said they now recycle more (not that that's much of a revelation really given that we are all arm-twisted to do so now by our local authorities).
In others words, we don't mind doing the easy bits, but baulk at the harder things - using public transport more, flying less, being much more energy aware when heating our water and space at home etc.
As a result, the art of the excuse is getting more and more sophisticated. On the one hand, you've got those that don't or won't buy into this whole climate-change "con" for reasons of ideology, contrarianism or scepticism invariably based on a small handful of peer-reviewed papers that conveniently ignore the finding of thousands of others. So we are now all familiar with clever-clever ripostes involving terms such as "sunspots", "volcanoes", and "medieval warming periods". "Big government conspiracy theory" also seems to be getting an increasing airing, too, nowadays with this set.
And on the other hand, you have those that do accept that the actions of our species are impacting on the climate, but who don't feel their own attempts to reduce emissions will make a blind bit of difference: "but the Chinese are building two coal-fired power stations a week"; "but the Americans need to commit to reductions first"; "but rampant deforestation and cow farts are the big issues here", "but there are simply too many people on the planet". These all broadly fall into the wider category of "someone else needs to leap before I will ever consider doing so".
So, what's your favourite excuse, genuine or otherwise? (My own favourite is probably the issue of expense: achieving any significant energy savings in the home, for example, always seems to involve such a damn large, upfront cost.) Or what do you say to those that cite any of the excuses above?
