Isn't being hypocritical what makes us human?
We all live our lives by various woven together standards, be they religious, philosophical, metaphysical, conservative, libertine.
Me? I’m as Christian as Beth Hamilton. More heavily Calvinistic less evangelical but these differences are merely academic. I wander far from the path, egregiously, but that’s what makes being human very fun.
Hypocrisy!
Kelly Slater, fourteen time World Champ, is also not shy about broadcasting much of his belief structure. Pro healthy foods, clean living, yoga with various touches of conspiracy thrown in for flavor.
One of his primary stances is environmentalism. He loves Mother Earth very much and is not shy about lending a hand, or his name, to different planet first causes.
OuterKnown, his clothing label, makes a specific point of producing in a sustainable way. Buzzy but very admirable. He says:
I created Outerknown to smash the formula. To lift the lid on the traditional supply chain and prove that you can actually produce great looking menswear in a sustainable way…the last two years have been a huge eye-opener for me. It’s clear now just how challenging it is for any brand to put sustainability at the forefront of their business and I’m proud that we’re one of the few taking the lead.
Manufacturing creates massive waste and pollution and so to cut, where possible, helps but do you know what pollutes more grossly?
Air travel!
Nothing befouls like airplanes. They pump more CO2 into the air than almost anything. The New York Times called air travel our “biggest carbon sin” and FiveThirtyEight.com added, “Every time you fly you trash the planet.”
And so you can imagine Kelly Slater’s dilemma as he flew around the world in a private jet belonging to OuterKnown’s parent company Kering to check on his OK supply chain.
Flying private is far worse than flying commercial as it adds an almost unnecessary layer of pollutants on top of already critical levels. The Wall Street Journal reported that a passenger flying private contributes five times as much carbon-dioxide as a passenger flying commercial.
A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend was on this private jet with Kelly and said that he could not stop wringing his hands, fully aware of his gross duplicity. He told his friend who told a friend who told a friend who told me that Kelly spent all of his time trying to come to terms with what he was doing.
His wave pool, also, is a complete and utter ecological nightmare. The amount of power it takes to run that thing, no matter how it is sold to the public, is massive and serious. Rory Parker did a wonderful job of pointing out the inherent falsehoods in the fact that it is advertised as being 100% solar powered.
Still, I would like to ease Kelly’s emotional burden. It is so much better to have ideals and break them into a million little pieces then to be hopelessly pessimistic and droll. He should stop worrying about his casuistry and celebrate being all too human at least for a few moments in elevated life.
Don’t you think?
Promoting sustainability, healthy living etc and then flying in a jet-fuelled plane is not hypocrisy. It’s not as if Tesla are making planes (yet). Ok, a private jet is hypocrisy, a bit. But maybe he wrung his hands then put them into his pocket for some carbon offsetting? Add a little CO2, take away a little CO2? It’s not perfect, but it’s the best option we’ve got in a very imperfect system.
Nick Dee is back!
Forgot to tear apart his newly bought firewire and how he wanted sustainable and yet he didn’t even make his boards out of the timbertek…Also how sustainable is timbertek??
errrr
So, my little clique of bitter cunts, what’s to do? Kelly has opinions. He also has fame and riches thanks to unrivaled surf skills and his smooth handling of the chances they offered. Andy had fame and look at him. He died. Kelly didn’t. He grew. You say he shouldn’t have these opinions. Poor rich man, caught between destiny and the stuff he knows. You folk want him to … what? Shut up and live in that cave? Invest in shit and only shit because shit’s all he’s qualified to promote, due to his pile of gold? Ingest excess opiates and become your hero? Invest in an organic farm and shut tf up forever? Give the guy a break. Were you so blessed, what would you do? And please quit righteously denouncing any and all forms of ecological concern. You cunts need planet Earth as much as Kelly does and blaming him for being confused aint helping, either.
Dude needs to get his Ki in order
It looks like its going to be using the energy to create a chemical reaction that stores it, then when you want to use the energy the reverse chemical reaction releases it. There is also a problem where eco energy can cause overloading of the grid in extreme windy/sunny conditions which is why you see wind turbines etc turned off.
If every man on Earth was able to harness the energy of his daily masturbation routine it would replace the need for mice on wheels or nuclear power stations.
It would be like the scene out of the Matrix when he wakes up in the battery field but with a load of pasty dudes slowing sadly wanking.
Don’t tanned people jerk the gherkin?
I like to think of the environmental upsides of having a wave pool is like the upside of wet n wild opening in Sydney… All the packs of westies stopped coming to Bondi and leaving a monumental amount of shit on the beach hence offsetting the energy used to run the place.
Transferring energy that far is extremely inefficient. It’s the problem they have with solar power, they don’t have a way of storing the energy so it can be used when it’s needed. Unless the wave or solar energy is next to the city or town using it it’s pretty much a waste. I could geek on a little further but won’t.
What about using garbage? They used it to power the flux capacitor…..Fuck that movie and it’s broken promises
That’s about as environmental friendly as a surfboard made ivory and uranium. I never liked that movie, the professor always seemed like he’d be hiding the wrong kind of images on his computer.
Imagine if we could harness the bitterness and cynicism of BG commentators and use it for good instead of evil?
hahahaha
Jesus is Kelly…Kelly is Jesus.
Wait I think that photo is doctored
No falsehoods here friends…
it’s the backlighting that gives it away
Fuck I hate this sort of all-or-nothing argument, so because he gives a shit about the environment he’s required to live in a cave and forgo any sort of carbon production? I like plants and animals better than probably 95% of you kooks reading this, but unless I’m living like a Bangladeshi I’m not allowed to have that opinion?
It would be one thing if he said “airplanes are ruining the environment, people shouldn’t use them” then kept jetting everywhere in his private Cessna. But he didn’t. All he did was start an overpriced menswear company that actually does appear to produce products with less environmental impact.
Just because he says he cares about the environment doesn’t mean much. I care about the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest, but I’m doing nothing about it, hell I might be inadvertently hastening it. Let’s face it, he does more environmental damage “than probably 95% of you kooks reading this”
I care about the destruction of Brazil more than probably 95% of you kooks reading this but I’ve done fuck all about it.
Yeah I would probably agree, I just have never seen him be much of an environmental “preacher” as some have said. Just because he created a company that appears to produce environmentally-friendly clothes for Malibu wannabes, everyone jumps all over his personal carbon footprint (as atrocious as it likely is). Maybe it’s just leftover hate from the Outerknown price tag scandal.
I guess it’s like Patagonia, personally I applaud the company for a lot of the work it does to make products more sustainable, even if so many customers are some of the biggest poseurs you’ll ever meet, and I never buy any of the gear myself.
95% of us kooks make up 95% of the kooks that do fuck all about it. That other 5%? They work for OK.
Isn’t Kelly a chem trail believer? Hmm.
per capita, they can’t touch American pollution. we do most of the world’s coke too,
Plus China produces all the shit we buy and use, so really those are our emissions and pollution as well
Plus the American economy is held up by oil so if everyone went green it would be totally fucked.
hypocrisy is the greatest luxury
I work for a solar company. Started out on the one of the roof-install crews making 10 bucks an hour (with a legit college degree) for the first 3 months, then 12 an hour for the rest of the year to get to where i am now designing the fuckers, and i can tell you straight up that those solar panels he has are not doing shit for that wave. Maybe running his houses at night, the garages too, but as far as the wave, unless he has over 250 panels (which i doubt), his solar claim is horseshit. Hell, even with 250 he couldn’t even power that whole thing.
he’d need an array the size of a couple football fields to make one wave an hour. its simple math. bet he won’t tell ya how many amps those motors draw but pushing a heavy plow through a couple hundred yards of standard density water still takes tremendous force. his invention helps landlocked would-be surfers, not the environment. he should change the motto to: rich as possible while still able to hold onto the Whole Foods shoppers (“environmentalists”)
“To be or not to be” eh? I don’t see what’s wrong with occasionally being sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. Surely agonized internal torment is part of the fun!
This whole “it’s okay for me but not for thee” thing is very tiring.
Did we not see the OK video of Kelly and Shane (the newly minted BeachGrit contributor) flitting around the South Pacific in a small airliner carrying just the two of them?
So clearly that didn’t bother him so I wonder why this did?
Again…I don’t care if he flies private…if I could you bet your ass that I would. In fact, being in the aviation business, I think it’s great, Makes it more accessible for the punters like me!
Maybe Kelly should be less preachy and more surfy but if he wants to get preachy I recommend the store front churches on Francis Lewis Boulevard in Queens. They’ve got the preaching shit down pat.
If you can’t walk the walk, don’t talk the talk! Honestly, flying all over the world chasing swells and then claiming to be an environmentalist! If us surfers weren’t so stupid you could say he was insulting our intelligence!
It might be cliche but the only lid Kelly blew off with OK was my cock-sucking checkings account. I legit am the person who doesn’t look at a price tag, goes to pay, sees the beanie is $100 and tries to play it cool like I knew all along because the counter girl is a soft 7 and I haven’t had a root in months.
where do you find OK stuff at retail?
I don’t think you do? It was more an example of being an irrational person in a public setting. No one here can honestly say they haven’t awkwardly bought overpriced stuff with instant buyers remorse attached simply because of a small moment of social anxiety! …Right…?
Does the same thing apply to marriage?
i have a backbone so not really
Sounds like your backbone takes up the space usually reserved for the sense of humor
I gave a girl a back bone this morning.
NOICE
Last week I paid €35 for a pair of Crocs for my kid because my wife a) told me to b) misread the price tag. Double buyer remorse with a side order of henpecked regret.
Eat some shrooms and get your ego in check. No amount of social shame is worth a $100 dollar beanie, every time you look at it you will be reminded of what a cuck you are and that will further instill the shame.
fuck that, for $100 you should get a hard seven, sign of a decent labor market though
I hate this argument. Yes, everyone is a hypocrite: you, me, Kelly Slater. Him fretting over being one does not absolve him of the impacts inherent to his hypocrisy. Having said that, maybe it’s his Look-at-me-Messianic “activism” or “advocacy” that really most bothers me…
Of course I agree. There is no absolution in fretting. That’s why I say don’t fret!
Nuke the whales!
Think of the water displaced by those fuckers! Get rid of the whales and the sea levels drop and saves the world.
Yeah, I get that’s what you suggest at the end, but that information, about him fretting, was presented to create sympathy for his predicament, rather than to cast him as merely a snake oil salesman, no?