The concept of ‘sacrifice’

16 August 2019

Human activity is destroying the environmental systems that support our very life and progress. In the words of sustainability educator Kevan Coyle, “we are cutting out the legs from under us”.

Is this the very definition of irrationality? And why have we so helplessly succumbed to it?

It’s well understood that a major contributor to environmental degradation is economic growth. But nations have been unwilling to sacrifice their own economic benefit for the sake of the environment, even though their very economic success depends on the health of the environment and its natural resources. Across the globe, we’ve continued to burn fossil fuels, deplete the ozone, overfish the seas, and clearfell the forests, ransacking the resources on which we depend. It’s an absurd situation, and a classic example of the ‘tragedy of the commons’: nobody wants to compromise their own economic wellbeing knowing that others might not do the same. Nobody is willing to make the necessary sacrifices – or so goes the frequent lament.

But that word ‘sacrifice’ deserves some close examination, according to conservationist Carl Safina. He takes issue with the popular framing of sustainability as requiring personal or collective sacrifice:

“Of all the psychopathology in the climate issue, the most counterproductive thought is that solving the problem will require sacrifice. As though our wastefulness of energy and money is not sacrifice. As though war built around oil is not sacrifice. As though losing polar bears, ice-dependent penguins, coral reefs, and thousands of other living companions is not sacrifice.

As though withered cropland is not a sacrifice, or letting the fresh water of cities dry up as glacier-fed rivers shrink. As though risking seawater inundation and the displacement of hundreds of millions of coastal people is not a sacrifice—and reckless risk. But don’t tell me to own a more efficient car; that would be a sacrifice! We think we don’t want to sacrifice, but sacrifice is exactly what we’re doing by perpetuating problems that only get worse; we’re sacrificing our money, and sacrificing what is big and permanent, to prolong what is small, temporary, and harmful. We’re sacrificing animals, peace, and children to retain wastefulness while enriching those who disdain us….

Dysfunctional values married to catastrophic leadership has led us to the place you go when you are made to believe solution is sacrifice, and that sacrifice for a just cause is not noble but, rather, out of the question. The moral density of this social climate is wafer thin.”

Political scientist Bruce Jennings agrees. “For too long the story line has been about sacrifice, deprivation, and elites who want to confiscate—rather than improve—existing ways of life”, he says.

But for Jennings, the issue is not merely that talk of sacrificing convenience, lifestyle or consumption overshadows the far greater sacrifices of our ever-degrading natural life-support systems. No, for him there’s a more pragmatic issue: Framing strategic measures in terms of sacrifice is politically ineffective. “For many years”, he says, “the mainstream climate change strategy in policy circles has been to alter the economic calculus of carbon intensive behavior through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, which has worked in the past to curb other kinds of air pollution. But this approach has not fared well politically.”

And Jennings goes on to quote journalist David Leonhardt: “Climate change may be an existential crisis, but in their day-to-day lives, many people are more worried about the problems created by the most obvious solution [carbon pricing] than by climate change itself. Which helps explain why climate activists have recently begun to change their political strategy… Rather than broadcast the necessary sacrifices, as taxes and cap-and-trade schemes do, the alternatives [i.e., clean energy mandates and subsidies] try to play them down and instead emphasize the benefits of less pollution.”

Climate and ecological restoration need to have wide appeal, in the interests of protecting humanity, other sentient creatures, and the entirety of the natural world. We can’t ignore how environmental strategies are popularly perceived. The language we use needs to communicate that necessary system change is desirable rather than bothersome. A benefit, and not an encumbrance. A comfort, and not a sacrifice.

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