Some environmental activists occasionally use the argument that poverty is ‘no excuse’ for not going green and denounce discourses putting forward social conditions as unduly exculpatory. Employing participant observation among middle-class activists mobilising to diffuse environmental lifestyles in socially diverse suburbs near Paris (France), the article explores their relation to the working class and examines the consequences of their endeavours on local class relations. It describes the tension between their goal of mainstreaming environmental reflexivity and the stubborn existence of material inequalities and constraints. While their efforts are configured by a moral economy of environmental responsibility which assigns an undifferentiated moral obligation to consume sustainably to all individuals, they make sense of social differences by drawing on culturalist representations of poverty and folk social theories. These sense-making practices enhance rather than alleviate attributions of blame against working-class people and contribute to reinforcing the activists’ dominant symbolic position.

一些环保主义者偶尔会说，贫困是不走向绿色的“没有借口”，并谴责以社会条件为由而过度讨价还价的言论。本文在动员起来以散布环境生活方式的中产阶级活动家中，在巴黎附近的法国（法国）附近进行参与者观察，从而探讨了他们与工人阶级的关系，并考察了他们的努力对当地阶级关系的影响。它描述了他们将环境反射性主流化的目标与物质不平等和约束的顽固存在之间的张力。虽然他们的努力是由环境责任的道德经济构架的，这种道德经济赋予了无差别的道德义务，以可持续地向所有个人消费，他们通过利用贫困的文化主义表征和民间社会理论来理解社会差异。这些明智的做法增强了而不是减轻了对工人阶级的指责，并有助于加强维权人士的主要象征地位。