This is the gist of the mentality I have typically associated with my Pagan friends. It's not that they don't care, mind you. It's that--and this is not unique to Pagans--it's very easy to get wrapped up in the mentality of eco-friendliness without really acting on or even understanding where we are impacting the planet the most and how to combat that.
Just for starter's, I'm going to list a bunch of traits that are commonly found or promoted among Pagans. Stay with me, here:
- Nature worship.
- Worshiping outdoors.
- Love of being outside/camping.
- Worship of nature-oriented Deities.
- Honoring of the changing of the seasons.
I read an article recently that in a nutshell argued that Pagan environmentalism is going downhill because the consciousness we had decades ago is degrading in favor of consumerism and narcissistic use of technology, especially the tendency to have too much of our Pagan organizing be online rather than out in nature. There's definitely something to be said about the consumerism in the Pagan community (and I guarantee I'll talk about that a lot here), but it's a huge mistake to assume that going outside more, worshiping Gaia, being naked outside, and camping a lot make somebody an environmentalist. In fact, I'd argue that these actions make it very easy to be complacent about major environmental issues because we assume that we aren't part of the problem.
I went to Pagan Spirit Gathering last year, and in retrospect it was a very crushing reminder for me just how complacent I had gotten with the entire subject of the environment. This gathering is over 175 miles away from me, and at the time my only vehicle was a beat up Dodge truck that got 15 miles a gallon on a good day, which I drove there alone for almost three hours each way. The entire trip for me used well over 20 gallons of gasoline, and this sort of drive (and longer) was not an uncommon situation for festival-goers. But hey, most of them did stay the whole week and did not come alone.
While there, I witnessed many people doing the communing-with-nature thing and doing some reasonably eco-friendly things. There were a lot of vegetarians, many had brought organic snacks, there were people constantly reminding each other to use recycling bins, there was even a woman who collected rainwater for personal use.
And you know what? It was a fucking mess. Really, it was. The constant reminders to recycle led to so many people confusedly mixing too much non-recyclable stuff in the recycle bins, there was trash everywhere, there was loads of food waste from people trying to take too much fresh food for the length of their stay, and the dumpsters at the end were filled to the brim with perfectly usable camping supplies that people just hadn't bothered to bring along: tents that were decided to be too difficult to fold, chairs with minor scuffs on them, and so forth.
This led to a meeting-of-shame on the last day, with a few people lecturing the participants, some of whom were tearing up in the audience because as Pagans we want to have a deep respect for the Earth. The recognition that you are not being as environmentally friendly as you think you are is seriously painful.
The problem is that crying over already-completed environmental devastation does nothing in and of itself. It reminds me of people who pray over already-purchased scratch-off tickets. OK, it might galvanize some individuals, but keep in mind that this event took place in 2013, and from what I hear things haven't markedly improved since then.
And no, the Internet didn't do that. In fact, it's probably always been that way. It's ridiculously easy to completely ignore very obvious sources of environmental impact just by performing a few surface actions, maybe even ones that aren't that eco-friendly anyway (again, and I hate to have to drill it in so much, but just "being in nature" is not environmentally friendly). So we might promote recycling or buy organic vegetables but then ignore things like how much and what kind of meat we eat, how much we drive, and how much energy we expend promoting environment-preserving legislation.
The point here isn't that Pagans are environmentally unfriendly pond scum, but that we have just as long to go as everyone else and have no business hiding behind Gaia and Green Man as if these are inoculations against environmental criticism.
