How My Sugar Baby’s Dedication to Environmental Activism Changed My Habits

Wondering whether the right sugar relationship can really change hearts and minds? Let’s take a look at how Dee and Greg found common ground over carbon footprints.

Dee, sugar baby, 24

When my parents kicked me out of the house the day after my 18th birthday, they made it very clear that it was because my activism was driving them crazy. They couldn’t stand the militaristic way that I made them reduce their water consumption and set up a compost in the backyard, and had just about five different recycling bins (because it’s not just trash or recycling, people, that’s how recycling ends up in landfills.)

The final straw, I think, was that I was constantly arguing with my older brother about whether my efforts were really making a difference. He was always so quick to tell me that individual actions made absolutely no difference when big corporations and billionaires were making the decisions that mattered. I told him he was a coward and that the worst thing we could do was just to lie down and do nothing. He called me a hippy. I used his protein powder for mulch in the backyard garden. He convinced our parents to kick me out.

When I asked where I was supposed to go, my parents literally had the audacity to say, “I don’t know, find a commune.”

So, I was on my own.

The next few years, I’m not gonna lie, were tough. I couch surfed for a while until a friend of mine offered that I move into a shared apartment with her and another roommate. I was sad not to have access to any kind of garden space, and my roommates quickly nixed the idea of having a small compost in the kitchen. So, my activism was limited to what I could do outside of the house: community gardens, protests, town cleanups, things like that.

For work, I got hired at a marketing company, which did kind of feel like selling out. I was working for an NGO in environmentalism, to be fair. But I was still living my life staring at a screen instead of, like, chaining myself to trees that were about to be cut down or protesting outside of Congress. I kept having to remind myself that I had to make a living in order to be able to live on the planet that I was trying to save.

Over time, I could feel that inner flame start to fade. I wasn’t being paid that well, and I was overworked. I stopped spending my free time at rallies and the community garden. I stopped trying so hard to live a zero-waste life.

I was in this kind of autopilot mode when I met Greg on a sugar dating website. Now, how did I make the jump, you might ask. One of my friends had noticed how much my personality had kind of tapered off, and she was trying to get me to try new things that might rekindle my inner spark. She had recently started going on sugar dates and thought that maybe I would get a kick out of it, too.

“If you’re so worried about the wealth gap,” she told me, “Why not even the playing field by finding a rich guy who will share his? Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to convince him to give up his private jet and save the planet.”

I know, it sounds kind of hypocritical of me to become a sugar baby. Like, I should have been against these wealthy men. But the reality is, my hippy, radical lifestyle wasn’t paying the bills. I was just about ready to ask my family if I could move back in with them as long as I would promise not to talk about carbon footprints ever again. At least not to them.

As it turns out, I wouldn’t have to do that. And although I wouldn’t get Greg to give up his private jet, he would help me save the planet. I’ll let him get into the details about how that happened.

Greg, sugar daddy, 49

I know what younger generations think about a guy my age and with my income. They assume that I don’t give a second thought to the environment. They think that I’d always choose greed over being green. That I’m evil.

But the reality is obviously more nuanced. I care about the planet, and I believe in conservation. I get a lump in my throat when I watch nature documentaries. And, I donate to environmental causes. I’m not heartless.

But, listen. I also have meetings with clients on three continents, and I get to those meetings on a private jet. I tend to eat expensive, imported sushi with people who are important to my business dealings. I buy myself new phones, laptops, and cars because I like those things and because I’ve worked hard to enjoy them.

And I can say, honestly, that I didn’t really think much about the environment beyond that until I met Dee.

Dee was adamant that she wanted our first meeting to be a walk through the botanical garden. And if things went well, then we could grab drinks at a bar nearby.

I thought it was kind of inconvenient, and I wasn’t particularly looking forward to getting sweaty walking around the garden in the heat of the late afternoon. But I got over that pretty quickly when I realized that Dee was beautiful and in her element. She was especially passionate about the parts of the garden dedicated to the local natural ecosystem (she couldn't care less about exotic orchids and pools of water lilies). I was fascinated to hear that she could identify all of the butterflies and birds in that part of the garden.

I don’t know. There was something pure about that first meeting. I like a sugar baby who has interests and can teach me new things.

Over drinks afterwards, the conversation turned towards her love of environmental activism, and this was the first part of the meeting that felt a little bit tense.

“I just want you to know,” she said, “That I’m someone who speaks my mind. I know it can be kind of annoying, but I’m really pissed off about what rich guys like you are doing to the environment without having to deal with any of the consequences.”

Maybe a different man would have walked out. But I’m a pretty patient person. I wondered where this conversation would go if I let her talk herself out. So I just nodded and told her to go on.

After a few more minutes of her listing out her bullet points (water usage by big tech companies, monoculture farming, fast fashion, etc), she finally started to lose some steam.

“You don’t have anything to say,” she challenged me.

“I’m just taking it all in,” I said calmly.

After a little while longer, as we were finishing up our second round of drinks, I said, “You’re clearly very passionate about this. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t risk potentially offending someone who is interested in paying you an allowance for your company. I mean, you had to know it would be a risk to come in swinging like this. But I hear you, and I actually admire your passion. I wonder if you’ll do something for me. I’d like to hear suggestions you have for me that I could do to make a difference. They have to be real suggestions; you can’t just tell me to call up my friends in the government and have them stop fracking. Real, personal suggestions.”

And that’s how Dee and I started finding common ground with her environmental activism. To be sure, I had to manage her expectations a lot. She wanted me to start flying commercial; that wasn’t going to happen. But sure, I could fly first class for local meetings that were scheduled far in advance. She wanted me to cut ties with a certain multinational company that is well-known for questionable environmental practices. I told her that also wasn’t going to happen, but that I could tell my friend at the company how I really felt when we were off-the-record.

And perhaps most importantly, there were suggestions that Dee made for my personal life that made me feel pretty good, actually. She convinced me to install solar energy in my home. She cooked me vegan food. She helped me find clothes that were sustainably made (and actually looked better than the suits I was wearing before).

Sure, I never went to a rally with her. But I felt like I was playing a part in making sure that Dee was safe and taken care of so that she could do some of the messy activism stuff that I couldn’t.

Are we single-handedly saving the planet? No. But we’re taking baby steps in the right direction, and I like taking those steps with Dee.