The Bad Environmentalist
- Jasmine Ravel Schwam
- May 27, 2025
- 18 min read
Updated: Oct 27, 2025
by Jasmine Ravel Schwam
Prologue
There I was—cruising through thick LA smog in my Prius, feeling like a good environmentalist.
Then I moved to Isla Vista, and everything I thought I knew began to shift.
It was the summer of 2023, and I was excited to start my third year of college as an Environmental Studies student at UCSB. Thanks to Facebook housing pages, I found myself living in a house of 13 girls, the majority of whom were also Environmental Studies students.
UC Santa Barbara’s Environmental Studies program, founded in 1970, was one of the first of its kind, born from the outrage of the 1969 oil spill that blackened nearby shores. This disaster ignited a wave of activism that launched Earth Day and shaped a new era of environmental education. Today, the program sits on a bluff above the beach, where students study environmental issues just steps from nature preserves, bike paths, and the breaking surf. It’s the kind of place where people—even professors—wear flip-flops to lecture. It's a quiet reminder that here, learning and living are often the same.
Isla Vista is the neighboring town where almost all UCSB students live. There, I sat in the passenger seat of my friend Aidan's musty boy-car. I looked out the window, and it felt like I was watching the movie “Endless Summer.” Tan girls rode on their baby blue bicycles in cute bikinis. Guys walked around with their surfboard in one hand and the other brushing their wet hair out of their face. Everyone was sun-kissed and effortless. The streets smelled like salt and sunscreen. You could tell that their tan lines were permanent just from looking at the surfboards that leaned casually against porch railings.
After two years living here, I can confidently say that every day feels like summer, and growing up is completely optional. It’s a Disneyland, Neverland kind of life—true California living.
The community of Isla Vista, especially the block I was thrown into, is a living testament to climate-conscious action. One with compost collectives, bike paths, regular beach cleanups, community gardens, second-hand clothing sales, where many environmental action organizations thrive. I felt at home, yet simultaneously like a foreigner. I was vacationing in a different country, enjoying this experience, but I was unfamiliar with the social norms and practices.
It made me realize how much I had absorbed without question—how LA had quietly shaped my sense of what was normal.
Do I belong here? Am I good enough? Am I a hypocrite?
The way I practiced being what I believed to be an environmentalist was so minute in comparison to the practices of the people around me. They would never dare do some of the actions I have done.
This piece is an introspective look at my evolving relationship with environmentalism. It’s a journey shaped by self-discovery, doubt, and connection. It’s a reflection on how my beliefs and habits were challenged, and how, through conversations and community, I began to rethink what it truly means to care for the planet.
Am I a Good Environmentalist?
The Skate Shop
When I was 18 years old, I worked at a skate shop in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, a transient area of the valley with questionable safety. I was working with men ranging from 19 to 26 years old who were navigating harsh realities: legal issues, addiction, depression, and grief. I’d find them coming down from drugs in the bathroom, or hear about another friend lost to suicide. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what I was witnessing. I just knew there was pain. And underneath that pain, a deep resilience.
I was (and still am) sober, in school, and focused on treating my diagnosis. We had many differences, but what we did share was our mental health struggles—psychiatric meds, diagnoses, trauma. That was our bridge.
I'm good at small talk, so I was able to chit-chat with them despite how little we had in common. I usually ask questions, trying to break the awkward silence. One day, one of my co-workers ended up asking me a question for a change.
Vincent asked what I was studying in school.
I told him, “Environmental Studies.” He laughed.
“That’s so fucking stupid,” he said.
He was harsh and blunt and challenged everything I believed—he told me climate change wasn’t real, and, even if it was, it didn’t matter to him.
He said that environmentalism felt like another way he was being told he needed to be saved. And at the time, I had no language to respond. I was defensive, but deep down I knew he was alluding to something bigger; I just had yet to fully understand. To him, there was no point in my mission. There were many more important things to address.
I found myself stuttering, unable to answer his questions.
To me, the beauty, magic, and power of nature were enough to make me want to make it my life’s mission to fight for the earth’s health. But in that moment, I realized: love isn’t always enough.
At least, not if you can’t explain who it’s for—or who’s being left out.
________
I walked into my first environmental studies lecture hall. It was a sea of white people dressed the same, and I was dressed just like them. Copy paste, copy paste, copy paste.
Vincent’s words whispered in the back of my head—he was right.
He was an ass about it, and I think most people would’ve dismissed him for that. But, the hostility was something real. He wasn’t trying to be palatable; he was trying to be heard.
If we want the environmental movement to work, we have to listen to voices like his. When I came to UCSB, I realized just how much of the conversation was missing voices like Vincent’s. This dude, who so many would write off, exposed a blind spot in the movement: sustainability that ignores inequality isn’t sustainability at all.
I now understand that the issues he was facing weren’t failures—they were symptoms of environmental racism, classism, and all the other overlapping “-isms” that shape access, health, and survival. Real sustainability isn’t about instilling love for the planet. It’s about addressing the conditions that keep people from even having the time or space to care.
It’s about fixing the conditions first. But love helps, too.
I want my perspective and experience of being a bad environmentalist to be heard.
A Disdain for LA
When I was looking for housing at UCSB, I lied.
Well, not exactly—it was harmless, a white lie. A half-truth.
I’m from the greater Los Angeles area, but that’s a vague label. I don’t live in the city. And I don’t live fully in the Valley. And I’m not quite in the canyon either.
My childhood home sits at the base of Topanga Canyon, just past its end, a few streets from Calabasas. I write Woodland Hills on official forms, but I went to school and worked in the West Hills/Canoga Park area.
I grew up in this liminal space between hippies, new money, and the 818 valley: all were very different worlds.
But when people ask, I say I’m from Topanga.
Why? Topanga is a compilation of:
It’s just cooler overall. Think…nature, Burning Man, gorpcore.
It fits the image I want to convey: not a typical Los Angeles girl but a rare granola girl in a sea of materialistic influencers.
When I tell my environmental studies peers I am from LA, it usually goes down like this:
“Oh… you’re from LA,” usually accompanied by a monotone voice and a sympathetic head nod. It is obvious they have a distaste, but they try their best to mask it.
But if I say Topanga, it goes down like this:
“Oh, you’re from Topanga! I heard it’s so pretty there, and a great surf spot.”
And then there are… the blunt ones:
“Oh my god, I haaaaaate LA.” The eye rolls hit a nerve in my neck.
So when it was time for me to post where I was from to the “Girls Isla Vista Housing” Facebook group, I listed Topanga—not LA.
I was attracting my target audience.
The Burning Truth
The reality is, Los Angeles is not as "city" as people think.
Los Angeles is the world's largest urban national park in the world. Spanning 153,075 acres, it protects a rich blend of Mediterranean-type ecosystems and coastal marine environments, home to more than 1,000 plant species and 500 animal species.
Over the past decade, Los Angeles has faced several severe wildfires, including the Woolsey, Bobcat, Eaton, and Palisades fires, which destroyed over 16,000 structures, claimed at least 29 lives, and caused more than $50 billion in damages. These fires have devastated air quality, harmed ecosystems, and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents. Climate change is fueling these disasters by creating hotter, drier conditions; prolonging fire seasons; and turning vegetation into highly flammable fuel. For environmentalists, this escalating crisis demands not only climate advocacy and ecosystem restoration but also bold efforts in urban planning, public health, and inclusive community resilience.
________
I was a freshman in high school when the 2018 Woolsey Fire broke out. At the time, my fear was dismissed by the upside that I was able to miss school, and the orange skies felt more fascinating than frightening. I didn't understand the gravity of the fires, even as the air quality worsened, ash filled our pools, and flames fried the hill next to the high school.
It happened again.
Only a couple of miles from my childhood home, the 2025 Palisades Fire erupted in the Santa Monica Mountains.
The sky turned an eerie, apocalyptic orange, casting our neighborhood in an unsettling, end-of-the-world glow.
It scorched over 23,000 acres, destroyed 6,837 structures, and claimed 12 lives, making it the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history and the third-most destructive in California's history.
When the Palisades fires erupted, my dad sprang into action, evacuating to a nearby hotel and hanging "No Trespassing" signs to deter looters from targeting our empty home. Between our frequent phone call check-ins, he cleared debris from the intense winds and removed dry plant litter that could easily ignite around our property. Amid this turmoil, our house became a refuge for irreplaceable belongings—including twelve boxes filled with cherished memories and our close friend's father's ashes, symbols of lives upended by the encroaching wildfire.
The lingering fear that a single drifting spark could reach our street haunted my family and me.
Everything is wildly interconnected, no matter how detached we feel from one another, no matter how distracted we are from reality, and no matter how separate we feel from real life events.
This makes me want to be a good environmentalist.
________
I spoke on the phone with my friend Meena, also an environmental studies student from Los Angeles and one of my peers from Santa Monica College. Her community was completely burned down by the Eaton Fire (a separate blaze that was burning at the same time as the Palisades Fire, just on the other side of the San Fernando Valley). As we reflected, we talked about a phenomenon we’ve both noticed in Santa Barbara: the environmentalist’s fear of the city. Our conversation went like this:
"I feel like people in my class say, 'We need to go into cities and figure out how to city plan,' and it's like, you're scared of the city," I said. "They're scared to go into the places where pollution actually is. You want to solve climate change? Start here."
She replied, "It's not glamorous [in Los Angeles] to be an environmentalist. And in a place where it's so gorgeous all the time, it's easy. You just enjoy nature."
But while nature does exist in LA, there is truth to the stereotypes, hence why I lie.
The traffic is miserable, the consumerism is disgusting, the pollution is suffocating, and people are superficial… sometimes.
I remember driving into Silverlake, a neighborhood close to downtown LA, and noticing the skyscrapers being embraced by a thick layer of greyish smog. I have never noticed this before because I had never known any differently. But, since moving to Santa Barbara, I know what a true, clear sky looks like.
It made me realize how much I had accepted without question, and how the smog, the sprawl, and the pace of LA had warped my sense of what was normal. Mistaking convenience for intention, routine for purpose. The city had trained my eyes to overlook the gray skies, the plastic waste, the constant noise. I was in a haze.
But maybe that’s the lesson—how easily we absorb our environments, how deeply a place can shape identity without us even realizing it. How the environment shapes perception, and how easy it is to lose intention.
I used to think of the smog as just part of the skyline, the traffic as just part of the soundtrack. But distance gave me perspective, and perspective gave me questions. What parts of myself were mine, and what parts were just reflections of the city I came from?
I still defend LA—not because it’s perfect, but because it taught me how to look closer. To understand that love for a place can coexist with critique. That beauty and dysfunction can live side by side. And that environmentalism isn’t just about saving the planet—it’s about waking up to the systems we’ve normalized and deciding which ones are worth carrying forward.
Leaving LA didn’t mean leaving myself behind—it meant learning how to see myself and my city more clearly. (Ironic, right?)
The truth is, I used to think I had to escape LA to become a “real” environmentalist. But I’ve learned that leaving isn’t the same as growing. LA didn’t hold me back—it showed me what needs to be challenged, and what’s worth protecting. My identity was shaped by the city’s contradictions, and now I carry both its flaws and its lessons. That’s what environmentalism means to me now: not purity, but presence. Not perfection, but perspective. Saving what I consider to be my environment.
Abalone Badges
The summer before I moved to Isla Vista, I went to a flea market in the San Fernando Valley. It was a hot day, creeping up to 100 degrees; the asphalt was boiling by 10 a.m. Even though it was still morning, Kiki (my best friend from home) and I were already sweating under the blazing July sun. We wandered the maze of tables, searching for clothes and accessories. A jewelry stand caught my eye, specifically a flamboyant pair of abalone shell earrings.
I bought them immediately. They dangled from my ears, each one holding seven shimmering abalone discs. I never needed to announce myself; the jingling of the earrings did it for me. They were my most extravagant piece. I loved them.
The earrings became more than jewelry. They became an icebreaker with the girls I met in my new college town.
“Oh my god, I looooove your necklace!”
“Your rings are so cute!”
We would admire each other’s hands and ears in a mix of jealousy and wonder.
“Where did you get them?”
“Oh! I made them!” (In true sustainable fashion.)
I had my ticket into 68 block (the part of IV where it seems all the ES majors live). I was dressed in uniform.
As I built my community, I could spot an Environmental Studies major from a mile away. Shell jewelry was the badge.
The Environmental Studies Dress Code wasn’t just a style—it was a subtle manifesto that consisted of second-hand clothes, natural materials, and worn-in gear. Sustainability wasn’t just something we studied: it was stitched into our sweaters and dangling from our ears.
I wore my badge proudly. It was a reminder of nature’s magic, beauty, and my purpose.
________
But then I looked at myself in the mirror. I wore shell jewelry but didn’t surf. My hiking boots weren’t broken in. My pothos plants were very dead.
________
Over the rest of the summer, our jewelry tarnished from salty seawater, necklaces tangled in our hair, and earrings were lost in the waves during our ocean swims. Everything felt fragile —not just the jewelry, but the ocean ecosystems we were learning to protect.
Not only were abalone shells a philosophical reminder; they were an ecological symbol of our community. Abalones are indigenous to Santa Barbara. They thrive in the kelp forests and rocky crevices that line the coast. The rocky coastline and abundant kelp forests offer the perfect conditions for abalone, which cling to hard surfaces and feed on kelp.
I got to know my housemates through little day trips and adventures in nature. There’s a farm just a little north of UCSB. It’s privately owned and closed to the public, but my friends and I innocently trespass, hunting for bigger, shinier badges. Skylar, my roommate, calls it “treasure hunting.”
To get to the spot, you walk through tall trees, down a private road, and through lush ferns. The sun beams shine through, kissing the tops of our heads and warming up our hair.
We found the empty abalone shells hidden in the crevices of the sewer’s exit, and they winked at us as we tiptoed through the filled tide pools. We stumbled and slipped over wet rocks, collecting whatever caught the light.
We had good days and bad days, but either way, it didn’t matter because we were there together, outside. On those good days, we came home with a wealth of gorgeous, shiny, colorful abalone.
Nature was generous today. We each laced a jump ring through one of the abalone shell’s holes and ran a black cord through, finally fastening it with a clasp around our necks.
Matching!
Whitney, a small local jewelry business owner, told me, “I wanted to honor the ocean—to use the things she gave me: shells, stones, little pieces of beauty—and give them a second life.”
Her words capture something deeper—people’s experiences with the ocean, and the urge to hold onto that feeling forever. That’s why we wear these badges. Jewelry from the sea is like a friendship necklace for environmentalists—a quiet, shared promise to care.
________
While this tradition is heartwarming, it can also feel exclusionary and deterring. Even within the community, people like me sometimes feel alienated by how superficial it can seem. The badges— the abalone rings, the shell necklaces, the effortlessly earthy aesthetic—signal that you’re a “nature girl,” someone who belongs. But it's almost culty how much everyone clones each other. You have to conform to the image to be taken seriously as an environmentalist, and it can feel more like an aesthetic than an ethic.
I had a conversation with one of my old housemates, who is the heart that beats the blood of local environmental initiatives, related to my frustrated feelings of being an outsider. She is Tess McCormick, UCSB senior studying Environmental Science and President of Surfrider. She put words to what I’ve been feeling:
“I think at UCSB there's a really wide range of environmentally aware people, and it becomes a competitive environment. I think that there's a lot of pressure to be the crunchiest or be the ‘hippiest.’ And you are really shunned from the community if you don't do some things.
It almost seems like it has less to do with the environmental conservation aspect, but it has way more to do with the way that you hold yourself. It's like if I shave my armpits as a girl, then suddenly I'm not allowed in. It has so much less to do with what you're trying to do to impact the environment.
So I feel like that's something that I've struggled with at UCSB.
Because people are so quick to judge how you impact the environment based on what you look like. And it's like you're not a true environmental conservationist if you don't surf avidly or if you don't do all of these things, which is ridiculous because there's so much more to environmentalism.
It's not like it doesn't feel like a welcoming space. It's not like someone can just walk in with no knowledge of the environment and be like, ‘I'm really interested in trying to get into environmental or marine conservation.’ UCSB is not an open space for people to explore that.
It feels very competitive in a realm that you would expect would be the least competitive. You think of environmental conservationists as this welcoming body of people that just want to make the world and the environment a better place.”
People who you would think are the most pristine may not be as “good” environmentalists as you think.
But still, I’ve always felt like I’m getting it wrong.
________
At UCSB, it often feels like being an environmentalist is the default. Sustainability isn’t just encouraged—it’s expected. But embedded in that expectation is a privilege that often goes unacknowledged: the privilege of choice.
I recognize that I’m extremely privileged. I have a loving family and food on the table. UCSB has also given me access to incredible resources. While my family supports me as much as they can, we’re not the most financially comfortable, which is why I qualify for need-based support. I receive EBT, go to the food bank, receive scholarships, and have access to excellent health insurance through the UC system.
Nonetheless, I am still in a different financial bracket than most of my environmental studies peers. They come from families that are a lot better off than mine. At least it comes off that way. You never know what is really going on in someone's life.
When I first arrived at UCSB, I didn’t know about all my resources yet, so I headed to the 99 cents store to get the basics like laundry detergent.
I returned home, plastic bag and Gain detergent in hand. I then got a gentle yet condescending lecture on how the 99-cent store is bad for the environment: how its products are full of harmful chemicals, how most of them end up in landfills, and how the store itself feeds into cycles of overproduction and waste. I nodded, half-embarrassed, half-defensive. I wanted something affordable. I hadn’t thought beyond the price tag.
These weren’t the only fleeting comments I got.
Since I’m from LA, I had forgotten how to ride a bike. One of the girls asked, “Why do you drive everywhere when you can bike?” She didn’t mean anything by it, but it still stung.
And then—perhaps the silliest comment of them all.
I was on my way to the 6th floor and pressed the elevator button for my ride up. The girl I was with told me that using the elevator was one of the biggest emission producers on campus. Out of environmental consciousness and social obligation, I faced the stairs. I was panting by the time we got to the top. Moving forward, any time I met her in the library, I would take the elevator to the 5th floor and then walk up to the sixth floor so she wouldn't know the crime I committed.
The Brandy Melville Incident
Brandy Melville—a notorious clothing brand known more for practicing fast fashion, perpetuating racism, and encouraging body shaming than for their actual products—is one of the most shunned stores among my environmentalist peers.
But it was not always thought of like this. When I was in middle school, there was nothing I wanted more than to buy a Brandy shirt. I remember going to the mall with my friends in 2015 with the $10 my mom gave me for food; instead, I spent it on the cheapest thing I could find in the store. I would always ask the girl who rang me up, my celebrity, for as many free stickers as she was allowed to give me. I put the stickers everywhere so everybody would know that I, indeed, was a “Brandy girl.”
Brandy Melville was born during the early years of Instagram, setting an expectation of being “aesthetic.” Their image was an effortless, cool, minimalist girl, usually skinny and white. She barely wore any makeup—she was a natural beauty. We all wanted to be her.
As the years went on, Brandy Melville’s dark deeds came to light, so much so that HBO streamed an exposé documentary titled Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion.
Fast fashion is a term used to describe the rapid production and consumption of clothing to keep up with increasingly fast trend cycles. This cycle creates massive environmental harm through water overconsumption, toxic dye pollution, microplastic shedding, and the production of over 11 million tons of landfill waste annually.
So, we know Brandy Melville is bad.
Yet I stopped at the sight of the Brandy Melville storefront on the corner of State Street.
Most of the clothing I own is secondhand, thanks to the glorification of thrifting when I was in high school. But I like some Brandy Melville clothes. They carry simple basics that fit well, are cute, and don’t stretch my college budget too far. So, I occasionally shop at Brandy Melville.
I knew shopping at Brandy Melville was wrong, and my greatest fear was to be caught red-handed by my new friends. I didn’t want them to think that I did anything bad for the environment. And anyway, I shouldn’t, I am an environmentalist after all.
I peered up and down the street looking for any familiar faces before I dared to step into the store. I saw no one.
Phew, all clear.
The store was familiar, I knew exactly what I wanted and where to find it. I scanned the color-coded piles of folded shirts and found a black T-shirt with a wide V-neck, cropped but not too cropped, just right. As I walked to the register, I was drawn to a set of silver hoops. Without thinking, I added them to my transaction.
I walked out of the store with my new stuff in their signature bag. I succumbed.
The guilt poured over me. I felt like a bad environmentalist.
I pulled into my house’s four-car driveway, black Brandy Melville bag in my passenger seat and trash cans to my left. I crumpled up the paper bag and stuffed it under the cardboard in the recycling bin.
I looked both ways, making sure no one saw my sin: I just committed one of the worst crimes an environmentalist could commit.
Then, in my room, I cut the tags off the shirt and hid it under other trash. No one could know.
Someone asked me where I got my shirt. Flustered and ashamed, I quickly said, “Oh, I thrifted it.”
Convicted of: Fast Fashion.
________
It felt like anytime I did less than perfect, I was asked, “Aren’t you an environmental studies major?”
These subtle judgments made me question my identity. I had decided I was a Bad Environmentalist.
The Effort of Perfection
When I looked up the definitions of Good and Bad in Oxford dictionary, I was surprised:
Good: to be desired or approved of.
Bad: of poor quality or a low standard.
Environmentalist: a person who is concerned with or advocates the protection of the environment.
Good and bad are words we use to judge and classify one another. They’re boxes with neat little labels that cover up complicated stories.
For a long time, I tried to fit into the “good environmentalist” box, checking off all the visible markers. But the more I tried, the more I felt like an impostor. My story didn’t fit. My habits weren’t always perfect. My past didn’t match the narrative.
And that’s the point. We need to meet people where they are and have open conversations about bridging the gap between identity and environmental action.
I went into this project trying to debunk these labels, but according to the dictionary, removed from the social ideologies we attach to environmentalist identity, I already qualify.
When you are a Bad Environmentalist, you are still an environmentalist, whether you set or fail to meet the arbitrary standards.
So, guess what—I’m neither a Good nor a Bad Environmentalist! I am just an environmentalist.
The reality is, environmentalism isn’t about being good or bad—it’s about radical authenticity.
My story is messy. It’s full of contradictions, compromises, learning curves, and quiet shifts. But this story is mine, and I am good enough.
Trying your best is true perfection.
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