{"id":30524,"date":"2018-02-05T07:03:51","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T12:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30524"},"modified":"2018-02-05T07:03:51","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T12:03:51","slug":"climate-strange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30524","title":{"rendered":"Climate Strange"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Climate Strange<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

The eco-obsessed often get labeled as weirdos — even by their peers. Weird, however, is looking better and better.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Alec Mitchell doesn\u2019t like praise for what he\u2019s doing. Not for loaning out reusable coffee mugs at farmers markets, nor running a compost collection service on a bike, nor renting out dishware at events to discourage disposable plates. Mitchell spent months sleeping in a tent on the beach to conserve housing-related resources. He never, ever gets in a car.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat job!\u201d so many would say. \u201cYou\u2019re doing such wonderful work!\u201d<\/p>\n

But the cars and the disposable coffee cups don\u2019t seem to diminish, so the praise feels meaningless. \u201cYou try and you try and you try, and you don\u2019t know what you can do, so you do what you can,\u201d he told me over the phone. (We had to plan the call in advance, as Mitchell does not keep his cellphone on unless he knows he needs to use it, to conserve battery life.)<\/p>\n

Why keep it up? Why be such a weirdo? What can you possibly change?<\/p>\n

Even within the environmental movement, there\u2019s a fraught and often ugly debate over people like Mitchell, who radically change their lives to fight climate change. Critics say they are wasting their time and scaring away the critical audience of the unconverted. Major voices in the climate movement are dismissive of the choice<\/a> to, say, forego a major flight. Why sacrifice, they chide; focus on what matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Mitchell has also worked on the kind of systemic change that many environmentalists would criticize him for distracting from. He\u2019s volunteered for habitat restoration, worked at the local recycling facility, run for local office, knocked on doors for voter registration campaigns. He\u2019s just upset <\/em>that for so much talk about wanting to fight climate change, most people don\u2019t reflect it in their daily lives.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate Strange The eco-obsessed often get labeled as weirdos — even by their peers. Weird, however, is looking better and better. Alec Mitchell doesn\u2019t like praise for what he\u2019s doing. Not for loaning out reusable coffee mugs at farmers markets, nor running a compost collection service on a bike, nor renting out dishware at events […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9219,4609,5287,141,9181,18349,15759,4608],"class_list":["post-30524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-behaviour","tag-change","tag-climate-activism","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-movement","tag-eve-andrews","tag-grist","tag-systemic-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30525,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30524\/revisions\/30525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}