Not at all, but I am saying that a large fraction of the most visible people who are very publicly evangelizing for it do. If the movement can't convince its evangelists to make the significant lifestyle changes they are demanding of everyone, why would you expect others to adopt them first?
I am half convinced that Greta Thunberg was given a lot of media attention because they finally found someone evangelizing for the cause (with enough political connections, etc) who was actually willing to lead by example.
The idealist in me agrees, but the pragmatist in me does not.
The idealist in me believes that everyone do their part and lead by example. I’m not a vegetarian, so I’ve already failed that test (spouse is though, so I’m reducitarian by default). But I do walk a lot, and have only driven 65k miles in the last 19 years (same car—best environmental thing you can do is not even buy new cars). Pragmatically, my impact is minimal.
Celebrity X hopping around on a private jet speaking for and convincing people to make environmental decisions on a national or planetary scale probably has more impact than me, even if they themselves are worse. And I begrudgingly admit that.
IMHO there is a fault in this way of reasoning, please let me explain.
People who are very visible, tend to:
- Have more impact about what they say, because they reach a big population group and some people identify with their reasoning. (lets call it the elon effect)
- Have a lot more money than average.
Following your reasoning, what these wealthy people say would be almost always be the wrong thing to do, since those people have more money and hence spend more, and hence consume directly or indirectly more energy. Hence they pollute a lot more than average, at least indirectly by buying expensive things that create pollution by their manufacturing.
If those people would say the right thing (e.g. poluting less is better), you wouldn't take them serious. And your conclusion would be polluting less is not better or at least we should not take that advice for granted, because of who said it.
I'm not saying that they lose their right to an opinion because they are not paragons of virtue. I'm saying that these wealthy people make no attempt at all to mitigate their environmental impact while telling you to essentially pay off their carbon bill. Elon Musk is not alone in taking his private jet on 10-30 minute flights for trips that could easily have been done in a car. Bill Gates has a gigantic unmitigated environmental footprint, for example.
Generally, you would expect people with more wealth and status to be focused on preserving that status. Part of that project is (ostensibly) preserving the world. If Bill Gates does not think that mitigating his own carbon footprint is important for the preservation of his fortune (including several seaside mansions, apparently), I doubt it's important for any of us in the preservation of our futures, despite what Bill Gates is saying about it. This is an example of the phenomenon of revealed preference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference) - you can learn a lot about what Bill Gates actually thinks by looking at what he does rather than what he says.
For the record though, I do think that what these wealthy people say is almost always the wrong thing to do in general. Wealthy people are known for giving bad advice on how to get wealthy, for example. Because some of them run their mouths a lot, they are also generally known for not being smarter than the average person outside of their area of expertise. Because I'm picking on Bill Gates, go ask anyone at the WHO or the CDC about their opinion of Gates' level of expertise on vaccines and disease prevention - it's not high.
Also, wealth and publicity are kind of correlated, but not that significantly. Bernard Arnault famously rarely says a word in public. Larry Ellison is very private. You probably haven't heard a word from Steve Ballmer, the Bettencourt family, or Larry/Sergei. The people who speak a lot about social causes are the ones who are trying to build a brand around those causes. You get a lot of famous actors worth single-digit millions (thanks to reckless spending habits) speaking about climate change, for example, while also not opting to adopt any green habits themselves. I'm picking on them too.
EDIT: I'm picking on rich people too much. You see the same behavior in politicians, too. They are completely unwilling to risk their political careers to make meaningful carbon impacts, and instead do inane things like banning plastic straws. That suggests to me that their level of concern is about at the level where someone would ban plastic straws: they want to do visible and silly things to placate the activists, but don't really think the issue is serious.
Thanks for clarifying how you see it. I'm thinking about the documentary 'an inconvenient truth' of last century. If people/politicians would have listened and gave it a serious thought and started to act upon that, in stead of saying 'you consume a lot of energy, so don't tell us what to do', I think we would be better off, the greener technology would have taken off say, 30 years earlier.
I am half convinced that Greta Thunberg was given a lot of media attention because they finally found someone evangelizing for the cause (with enough political connections, etc) who was actually willing to lead by example.