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Shame! Shame! Shame!

Shaven heads, naked bodies, ringing bells, and chants of Shame! will not stop climate change. In fact, I think that sequence from Game of Thrones is evidence that most public shaming is either retributive or self-aggrandizing. Either way, the travel shaming movement is fundamentally misguided.
As Seth Kugel quotes in the New York Times:
“The more we try to change other people’s behavior — especially by making them feel bad — the less likely we will be to succeed,” Edward Maibach of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University told me.
He does get at the heart of the matter later a moment later:
Instead — whether it’s global climate change or local vacation rental laws — the biggest impact a person can have comes from pressuring governments to address travel-related problems on a large scale. Likewise, so does engaging friends and family in conversations about those policies, and supporting research, advocacy organizations and candidates who take your issues seriously. Compared with that, your summer trip is small, if unorganic, potatoes. [emphasis added]
Like many writers on the subject, he does then attempt to end on a positive note about personal choices. This looses the thread entirely. How do we pressure governments? How do we support research, advocacy, and committed candidates? Most importantly, how do we rewire the machine that created this problem to start seeking solutions with the same inexorable intensity?

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