Good-feeling token environmental gestures substitute for and delay real change

Evidence

However, given the increasing scale of ecological destruction, substituting token gestures for genuine lifestyle changes accomplishes too little too slowly. Moreover, halfhearted measures can instill a sense of complacency that defers the adoption of more fundamental changes. Some practices have unintended harmful consequences. For example, people prefer their cars to public transportation but take comfort in powering their cars with biofuel additives—which, as we have seen, imposes hardships on millions of people who can ill afford rising corn prices. As we also have seen, the contribution of biofuels to reducing carbon emissions was greatly exaggerated because of the large amounts of energy needed to convert plants into biofuels. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2955

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the vault’s mechanics of rationalization: small self-exonerating gestures functioning like moral disengagement’s euphemistic labels that let people maintain a good self-image while harm continues.
• SEED: Angle: ‘virtue signaling as moral disengagement’ — how token pro-environment acts follow the identical psychological script as other morally disengaged behaviors.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2955