The simplified narrative often goes like “Younger generations have trouble buying houses because they spend money on coffee”, instead of “… because salaries haven’t kept up with housing prices”. Too often, ordinary people are being guilt-tripped by *facts* like that you need 7600 liters of water to make one pair of jeans — or that watching Netflix for half an hour emits the same CO2 as driving 6 kilometers. The Dutch word of the year 2019 was ’shame’, as in ‘flight shame’ — because ordinary people choose to fly to the Mediterranean for their holiday.
Too little focus is on big corporations being responsible for 71% of global Co2 emissions. Yet we keep writing lists about ‘things YOU can do for the environment‘, like using reusable water bottles. This is all a massive red herring.
It’s rarely about big corporations buying up real estate, or paying almost nothing in taxes, managers driving Porsche’s, or previous generations sitting on their pensions. We target the end of the line: younger generations, immigrants, ordinary people going on a holiday — because like birdshit, this hate flows downwards.
