I'll admit, I've never understood the idea of spending thousands and thousands of dollars on a huge, fancy wedding. When we tied the knot, my wife and I stood up in front of family and friends, and a local judge known to the family said the words, we both said "I do," and we were hitched. The most expensive item in the whole day was my wife's dress. I wore a suit I already had. Our friends showed up wearing whatever they felt appropriate. I did and do believe that it's the marriage, not the wedding, that's important. In the 34 years (as of last May) following our wedding, I think my wife and I have proven that.
But if a couple wants a big, expensive wedding, that's their business and nobody else's - unless someone else is paying for it, and I can tell you, having walked three daughters down the aisle, that's something that each family has to work out on their own.
But the notion of an "agenda wedding" is even odder than the notion of a "bridezilla" screeching at every perceived imperfection. A recent piece at Yale Climate Connections made some head-shakingly dumb suggestions for a "climate-friendly wedding," and they would seem to be taking the notion of an agenda wedding to an extreme.
The average U.S. wedding generates roughly 56 tons of carbon pollution. That’s over three times the amount the average American produces in a year and almost nine times more than the global average per person. In addition to climate-warming pollution, weddings generate a lot of food and single-use plastic waste — by some estimates, the average wedding generates 400 pounds of waste.
Of course, the illustration for the "climate wedding" piece depicts two women tying the knot - but that's a discussion for another day. Let's stick to the climate wedding notion.
First: Carbon isn't pollution. Carbon - let's presume they meant to say carbon dioxide - is the very stuff of life. Plants cannot survive without it. Life cannot continue without plants - without producers. So, it's not pollution. That's the first piece of egregious horse squeeze in this piece.
Second: It's trivially easy to get along without single-use plastic, but someone may just want to consider that in doing so, you're asking friends and family members to spend a lot of time after the wedding doing dishes, and when you add that to all the virtue-signaling already inherent in an agenda wedding, well, that may be a bridge too far.
Third: How does a wedding "generate food"? Wouldn't all these people be eating regardless of whether or not they are attending a wedding? Someone didn't think this through.
Read More: Al Gore’s 'Expert' Climate Predictions Fail Big Time
Godzilla El Niño Hype Exposed: NOAA Now Says Uncertainty Rules
There are other suggestions in the article. Some of the more egregious pieces of nitwittery:
Food is a big source of climate-changing pollution. One way to tackle this impact at a wedding is to reduce the amount of meat served. A vegan or vegetarian party cuts pollution the most, but even offering chicken instead of steak makes a difference.
Yeah, that way you can cut your guest list at the same time. I can pretty much guarantee that a meat-free wedding is going to cause at least a few participants to reply, "Yeah, no thanks, I'm not coming to a rabbit-food dinner."
But this one may be the worst:
Finally, as you go through this process, you can make an impact by talking about it! Share climate action commitments with planners, venues, guests, and with anyone who will listen. The best way to exponentially grow the impact of the climate action that you take in your life is to normalize it for other people.
Yes, by all means, annoy everyone involved. Annoy your family, your friends, your wedding planner, the caterer, the florist - harangue all of them with your climate scoldery. That's sure to get you the best service and the brightest participation!
Really, these people are that utterly oblivious to the niceties of human interaction.
Over at Master Resource, one of my favorite energy/climate commentary sites, author Robert Bradley Jr has some thoughts on this:
Okay, no skeptics invited or even considered for a “green” wedding. Just Doomers. And turning to some hard questions:
- Was it a beautiful day? Was the greenery notable? Why?
- Was it held under a wind turbine or next to a solar farm? If not, why not?
- How did the quests arrive at the wedding? Were the eco-sinful conflicted?
- Is “climate friendly” a real sacrifice or just an excuse to save money and exclude the politically incorrect?
More hard questions could be asked, such as whether dairy products were offered in the coffee or contained in the desert. But that is the small stuff. The big stuff is what to do if a critic of climate exaggeration were to attend or converse. And would such talk by one of the newlyweds in the future be grounds for separation or divorce?
Now, there's certainly nothing wrong with saving money. I've seen a few weddings wherein the participants and the families bragged - not complained, mind you, but bragged - that the wedding and the events around it cost an amount that would have made a pretty good down payment on a house. In these days when a lot of young families are giving up homeownership as a hopeless goal, that seems a lapse in judgment.
The political left in general and the climate scolds in particular just seem to want to suck the joy out of everything. But a climate wedding? In which the participants place the agenda, not only above the event, but above their interactions with the friends and family that should just be able to enjoy the day? That's a scolding bridge too far. Personally, were the wife and I invited to what was proclaimed to be a "climate wedding," we'd politely refuse. It's a safe bet plenty of folks would.
