#i promise if there is a conflict between able bodied enivornmental activists and disabled people

[wild-at-mind]

Why are some online people still carrying on an imaginary crusade against the eeeeeevil environmental activists who salivate at the thought of banning all the plastic in the world so disabled people who need it can’t use it? I assumed everyone understood the plastic drinking straw ban to be a very token gesture by governments, as in ‘ok we will ban this one plastic product to try and look virtuous’ and instead of being like ‘this is a token gesture to distract from how governments are not doing anything about these massive environmental issues’, people went ‘FUCK these environmental activists for demanding the plastic drinking straw be banned!’ It’s weird because online people are normally pretty good at spotting that kind of distraction tactic by governments and corporations. When it comes to where the idea for the ban actually came from, I had a look because I didn’t know, but had a feeling it wasn’t any of the big lobbying groups. Sure enough the issue was apparently originally raised by a 9 year old in the US. With all respect to that kid (who is an adult now), it does seem like the kind of thing that would get picked up by the press as a cute story and turned into policy.

It is a shit situation to have to bring your own plastic drinking straw around everywhere you might have a drink, I sympathise greatly. And I’m not saying no individual activist has ever been shitty about this, or not understood why a disabled person might need a plastic drinking straw. But in my experience, environmental activists don’t really talk much about individual plastic products, or do much about it beyond making their own choices to use refill shops etc, if they are able to do so. Generally the hot button debates are things like: nuclear power, yay or nay? Kind of bigger picture stuff, you know?

I was so surprised that the online consensus was that environmental activists were out to destroy everything disabled poeple need. I kind of worry that bystanders, who are not involved in IRL environmental activism and are not disabled themselves, will just assume that this is the case. I really, really do not think that it is, and also like with my post about JSO I want to caution against the idea that any change will be bad for social justice reasons...no. What we actually need to do is have a system where people use things according to their need. If only disabled people drove cars along the road outside my house, my lungs would not be in the state they are. (The pollution grime collects thick on my windows.) Imagine if we had a trust system, where only people who needed to use something we may someday have a very limited supply of used it, and people who had other options that were slightly less convenient used those? I don’t know if such a thing is possible in the society we currently have, because of the way people are, but I can dream. But you see how you can get into a trap of thinking ‘changing something could be bad so we should change nothing’. The all or nothing approach is the problem.

#environmental activism #greenwashing #disability access #single use plastic #i promise if there is a conflict between able bodied enivornmental activists and disabled people #it is completely possible for it to be more of a 'let's talk about how to get around this' thing #for one thing- many disabled people are also environmental activists #my group has several disabled members