Disclaimer: Uncommon Sense is where I think out loud. The views here are my own — they don’t represent any organization, board, or business I’m affiliated with. Personal opinions, offered to be argued with.
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝘄𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝗰𝗸?
Somewhere along the way, “gives a shit about something bigger than himself” became an insult. Caring about animals, about the planet, about the voiceless — it got filed under soft, naive, tree-hugger, virtue-signaler — and a whole lot of people started treating basic decency like it’s a character flaw.
Think about how backwards that is. We’ve built a culture where the person who stops for the injured animal, who actually gives a damn that species are vanishing and the planet is visibly wounded in a dozen ways — that’s the one who gets the eye-roll. Not the person too self-absorbed to care. The one who tried.
𝗟𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗜’𝗺 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼.
I’m not talking to the people keeping the lights on. I’ve got friends in energy, in the pipelines, in mining — especially here in Alberta — and they work damn hard, they provide, they keep the infrastructure this whole country runs on standing up. Fossil fuels power the world we actually live in right now. That’s not up for debate and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
You can work that job. You can be proud of it. You can even think a lot of the climate conversation is hijacked, over-politicized, and drowning in weaponized nonsense — and you’d have company, because plenty of it is, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵.
There is a difference — a canyon of a difference — between “I disagree with the policy” and “let me talk down to anyone who cares about the world as if they’re stupid.” One is a debate. The other is just contempt dressed up as toughness. And it’s become so normalized that people do it without even flinching.
Here’s the truth of it: it costs you nothing to respect someone for giving a damn. Nothing. You don’t have to agree with them. You don’t have to join them. You just have to not be the person who makes caring feel like a weakness — because when you do that, you’re not being a realist or a straight-shooter. You’re just teaching everyone around you that the safe move is to feel nothing at all and a world full of people who’ve learned to feel nothing is exactly how you end up with the wounded planet in the first place.
So no. I won’t apologize for caring, and I sure as hell won’t stay quiet while people who care get treated like the problem.
