When Ignoring the News and Going Hiking Can Help You Save the World: Environmental Activist Strategies for Persistence

Social movement research has long examined why activists persist. Little attention has been paid, however, to how persistent environmental activists use personalized strategies to cope with challenges. This article draws on data from 30 in-depth interviews with long-term environmental activists to shed light on this understudied phenomenon. The interviewees point to a number of strategies they use to mitigate the challenges they experience in their activism:(1) they have a self-care practice, primarily in the form of spending time in nature; (2) they adopt various personalized orientations, such as bracketing or ignoring structural environmental challenges, focusing on what they can control, deciding that they have no choice but to persist, focusing on long-term outcomes, and being realistic about the possibilities of change; and (3) they integrate work, activism, and life balance by shaping their careers and sense of life purpose around the environment. The article concludes with a discussion of whether these strategies are generalizable beyond the environmental movement.