Evidence of Environmental Guilt and Shame

Chapter 2 compiles evidence for the existence of environmental guilt and shame in the contemporary Western developed world, particularly the United States, from blogs and discussion boards; environmental self-help books and memoirs; broader indicators of cultural trends including comics, TV shows, newspaper articles, marketing studies, and counseling programs; and the few academic studies of the topic. I demonstrate that environmental guilt and shame are commonplace in parts of contemporary U.S. American society, particularly among middle- and upper-class environmentally conscious people. People feel guilt and shame about a wide range of daily activities including their choice of grocery bag, food, and transportation. People experiencing these moral emotions often do so both as individuals and as parts of a collective whether family, community, nation, species, or sometimes diffuse collective (i.e. “industrialized people”). Confessions of and responses to environmental guilt and shame take a religious cast as people confess their wrongs, ask for help in changing their actions, and particularly desire assistance in dealing with the existential ramifications of their actions, and subsequently shape their individual and collective identities.