Trustwordiness

So this is a rather clever issue advertisement by Patagonia. The primary text reads as follows:

We're all screwed
So don't tell us that
We can imagine a healthy future
Because the reality is
It's too late to fix the climate crisis
And we don't trust anyone who says
We need to demand a livable planet
Because we don't have a choice

Then comes the punch line (in case you haven't already guessed it): "Now read this bottom up."

To be sure, there's something of a straw man argument there. I'm not aware of any prominent faction in the anthropogenic climate change debate that says that no action should be taken because it's already too late. And while the day might come that it's too late to do anything to prevent the impacts, there will always be a constituency that advocates that some or another action will prevent the impacts from worsening. So I'm not sure who they're channeling with the "It's too late to fix the climate crisis" line.

But the line that caught my attention when I first saw this was "And we don't trust anyone who says." It sums up a lot of cultural and political debate in the United States rather nicely. It's also points to one of the fundamental problems of mindset that make cultural and political debate in the United States so fraught.

Being incorrect about something is not the same as being untrustworthy, and there are no words that may only be spoken by a liar.

If someone were to tell me "we need to demand a livable planet," that, in and of itself, is not reason not to trust them. Personally, last I checked, the planet was quite livable (even if the climate in my apartment can be difficult to manage), and I'm not really the demanding type, but demanding that the damage be mitigated, even if it can't be rolled back seems reasonable. Likewise, if someone were to tell me that "it's too late to fix the climate crisis," that also isn't sufficient reason not to trust them. After all, it might very well be too late. I'm not an atmospheric scientist. I can't even look at the sky and make consistently accurate predictions of what the weather will be like in an hour. That statement alone is no reason to presume that the person saying it is being duplicitous.

But therein, lies the rub. The climate debate (or shouting match, depending on one's viewpoint) has a fair number of people for whom certain statements or beliefs are taken as ironclad proof of an interlocutor's stupidity, credulity or ill-intent. And once someone has been deemed insufficiently intelligent or sensitive, it's considered legitimate to simply write them off and tainted by the wrongthink that lies at the heart of the problem.

Of course, this likely isn't what Patagonia had in mind. I presume that they hoped to spur people into thinking differently, and making different choices concerning their purchasing habits. After all, the thrust of the ad is to give clothing a longer life, and thus reduce the demand for new clothing, and the materials needed to construct it. But, the overanalyst in me came across their advertisement, and well, started overanalyzing it.

Repairing social trust isn't Patagonia's job. Selling clothing is. And while they took a detour from that mission to opine about what the public might do for the planet, they also pointed out part of the reason why the public isn't doing all that it can; the habit of making determinations of trust via ideology.