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Enviro-Narcissism

08 Aug

Suddenly we’re all Captain Planet? Because we allow the hotel to save money by not hiring as many employees to wash our linens?

We certainly do foster a culture of narcissism.

Posted from my BlackBerry.

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6 Comments

Posted in Culture, Politics

 

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  • nathan

    Really? I mean, can’t it at all be a good thing to conserve? I sure don’t wash my linens every day at home and I don’t need them washed every day while at a hotel either. The slogan is a little too self-congratulatory for my tastes, but at the end of the day I do think conservation is a good thing and ought to be promoted where it can…even if there might be profits attached to it.

    • @Nathan – I think it can be a good thing to conserve. Is it saving the planet?

      It seems that after water is used, it goes to a nuclear plant where the H20 molecules are split into Oxygen and Hydrogen, then the atoms are split, so they can never be used again. Water is NOT a reusable resource. We’ve only go so much, and by how much I flush my toilet every day, the earth is on schedule to have no water left by next June. Why is it so hard to find water on Mars? Because the Martians had their hotel staff do their laundry! We’re headed for that!

      So here’s the two problems I have with this.

      1. It’s not true. I’m simply not doing anything for the planet by not washing my clothes. Then planet has plenty of water, and once I use water, it is processed and returns into the water cycle, right? Now it may help the water processing plant to put less water down the drain, but the planet is ok. It may help the community in a drought to use less water, but the earth has been just fine handling droughts for millenia.

      2. It makes us worse people. The idea that I’m captain planet saving the planet by not washing my laundry doesn’t make us better people. I wrote about this before, here. A study published in Psychological Science shows that participating in this enviro-narcissism makes people more likely to lie and steal.

      Given that this is untrue and affects people in a negative way, I’m against it.

      I’m not against the hotel asking customers to have less laundry done. At minimum this keeps the hotel wage and water utility expenses down, which keeps rooms cheaper. I just wish they weren’t lying and making us worse people to promote this.

      I am not a hero, nor am I saving the planet by not washing my laundry. We’re fostering a cultural god complex, where everyone is being told they’re the winner, they’re the best, they’re the hero, they’re saving the world. It’s not true. It’s bad for us to believe this.

  • Rob Green

    I created or saved 3,000 species last year!

  • Since you’re helping to save energy and water, decreasing the amount of each the hotel is paying for, do they give you a discount on your bill?

    We stayed at a hotel once that had energy efficient climate control, they basically had a motion sensor attached to the thermostat, so when you were not in the room all day they didn’t waste energy cooling (or heating) the room. Sounds like a great idea, until you realize that you don’t move very much when you’re sleeping. Had to wake up every hour or so, overheated, and wave an arm or leg up in the air to turn the AC back on.

    • @Dan – We stayed in a hotel where I heard the AC come on when we entered the room, but I didn’t notice it turning off at night. We were in a heat wave at the time, so I probably would have noticed.

      I figure that if they had to hire more people and had higher utility costs, the room prices would have to rise.

      I’m all in favor of the hotel doing things to keep costs down, I just wish it wasn’t stroking our cultural god complex.

  • But only 71% of the earth is covered in water, i remember when we were kids, it was almost 3/4th covered!