Apparently, the term "carbon footprint" was popularized by the oil company BP over a two-decade, multi-million dollar marketing campaign in order to convince "ordinary people" to take a share of blame for environmental change, even if their impact is negligible compared to mass polluters like BP. After all, it is more difficult to blame someone else if you yourself feel like you are part of the problem.
Apparently, they are also behind all those "carbon footprint calculators" appearing everywhere.
TA compares this to a similar campaign by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch to "stop pollution" and recycle (these companies themselves are responsible for a majority of plastic waste and recycle hardly any of their bottles).
The article also mentions that even though most people severely cut their "individual carbon footprints" during the pandemic (especially by not flying and not driving to work), the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere is still 92% of 2019 and at the same level as 2010. That because the large climate polluters are releasing more than ever and cleverly shifting the blame for it to everybody...
I'm not sure yet which consequences to draw from this but the interesting part for me was that I myself had totally jumped on a hype train created by Ogilvy & Mather on behalf of BP without any idea whose ideas I was actually parroting when telling colleagues to "fly less and reduce their carbon footprint" etc. Certainly another lesson to be more critical of the thoughts and truths we all consider obvious and self-evident in everyday life.
Ideas do not become bad because their origin story. It's common form of "magical thinking" to make things pure or dirty by association. Greenhouse gas emissions are systematic issue and solving it should happen with government actions.
Two equally bad ideas:
* Consumers voluntarily altering their behavior will save the world.
* Companies voluntarily altering their behavior will save the world. Companies follow incentives. Moral blaming outside legal means is useless.
The correct way to solve systemic problem is systemic solution that changes incentives and does not rely on actors being "good boys and girls". Carbon tax, government regulation etc. Blaming corporations or relying on individual behavior is not enough.
Real solutions don't involve companies or individuals "thinking environment" in their daily activities.
Carbon footprint is useful, but only as an illustration.
While I agree with you on principle that "guilt by association" and "can't be true because the wrong person said it" is a currently popular but dangerously flawed and reprehensible concept, I say that's a red herring in this case.
There is no excuse whatsoever for BP to tell people they need to reduce their carbon footprint, at least not as long as BP's carbon footprint is still larger than that of an individual person and while BP is responsible for a large part of the carbon footprint of individual people at the very same time!
If companies like big oil (BP et al.) stopped polluting, if companies like Coca-Cola, Nestlé et al. stopped polluting, if big agribusiness and chemical giants stopped polluting, this whole thing would simply be a non-issue.
The actual consumer's part in this is so miniscule, and the part the consumer can actively and easily influence themselves is even smaller, that it borders on the ridiculous to equate the effect of "cutting your personal carbon footprint" to what really needs to be done which is large-scale industrial changes.
If no more plastic bottles are sold, all consumers will have zero bad impact in that space tomorrow. A good example are single-use plastic bags: Now that they are no longer sold or given out by shops in many places (or only at very high prices), the problem has almost magically solved itself on the consumer-side as well (people's trash contains much less single-use plastic bags, naturally).
Why ask the consumer to take the arduous step (which only a minority well ever follow anyway, as long as price and convenience are significant factors) to solve the problem by e.g. switching to expensive and heavy glass bottles (in the process btw expending more fuel for transport) if it is so much easier, straight-forward and common sense to change the problem at the root (i.e. the actual big companies causing all the issues)?
The only thing the consumer can realistically do is raise awareness about where the pollution actually happens and fight for political change to stop it. This is exactly what was meant to be prevented with that campaign by pulling the wool over everybody's eyes and distracting people from the actual cause and, more importantly, the actual responsible parties for pollution and climate change.
> If companies like big oil (BP et al.) stopped polluting, if companies like Coca-Cola, Nestlé et al. stopped polluting, if big agribusiness and chemical giants stopped polluting, this whole thing would simply be a non-issue.
I strongly oppose this is the type of argumentation for the following reasons:
(1) It's rhetorical and moralizing. It hides systemic causes.
(2) It hides everything actionable behind the word "If".
(3) It gives companies moral dimension. They don't have any. Companies follow incentives. first. Companies can sell bad business to other companies, but they never voluntarily wind down business because it's bad. They respond to costs from the regulators or taxes.
> The actual consumer's part in this is so minuscule,
Every sale from these companies translates directly into end consumption (private individuals or the government). Fhe final goods flow trough companies.
Companies and individuals are different sides of the same equation. Nestle responds to competition and demand. People favor cheaper price over less pollution.
> fight for political change to stop it.
This is the only way. You must tax and regulate negative externalities or consumer demand for cheap products creates companies that pollute.
4 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 21.9 ms ] threadTA compares this to a similar campaign by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch to "stop pollution" and recycle (these companies themselves are responsible for a majority of plastic waste and recycle hardly any of their bottles).
The article also mentions that even though most people severely cut their "individual carbon footprints" during the pandemic (especially by not flying and not driving to work), the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere is still 92% of 2019 and at the same level as 2010. That because the large climate polluters are releasing more than ever and cleverly shifting the blame for it to everybody...
I'm not sure yet which consequences to draw from this but the interesting part for me was that I myself had totally jumped on a hype train created by Ogilvy & Mather on behalf of BP without any idea whose ideas I was actually parroting when telling colleagues to "fly less and reduce their carbon footprint" etc. Certainly another lesson to be more critical of the thoughts and truths we all consider obvious and self-evident in everyday life.
Two equally bad ideas:
* Consumers voluntarily altering their behavior will save the world.
* Companies voluntarily altering their behavior will save the world. Companies follow incentives. Moral blaming outside legal means is useless.
The correct way to solve systemic problem is systemic solution that changes incentives and does not rely on actors being "good boys and girls". Carbon tax, government regulation etc. Blaming corporations or relying on individual behavior is not enough.
Real solutions don't involve companies or individuals "thinking environment" in their daily activities.
Carbon footprint is useful, but only as an illustration.
There is no excuse whatsoever for BP to tell people they need to reduce their carbon footprint, at least not as long as BP's carbon footprint is still larger than that of an individual person and while BP is responsible for a large part of the carbon footprint of individual people at the very same time!
If companies like big oil (BP et al.) stopped polluting, if companies like Coca-Cola, Nestlé et al. stopped polluting, if big agribusiness and chemical giants stopped polluting, this whole thing would simply be a non-issue.
The actual consumer's part in this is so miniscule, and the part the consumer can actively and easily influence themselves is even smaller, that it borders on the ridiculous to equate the effect of "cutting your personal carbon footprint" to what really needs to be done which is large-scale industrial changes.
If no more plastic bottles are sold, all consumers will have zero bad impact in that space tomorrow. A good example are single-use plastic bags: Now that they are no longer sold or given out by shops in many places (or only at very high prices), the problem has almost magically solved itself on the consumer-side as well (people's trash contains much less single-use plastic bags, naturally).
Why ask the consumer to take the arduous step (which only a minority well ever follow anyway, as long as price and convenience are significant factors) to solve the problem by e.g. switching to expensive and heavy glass bottles (in the process btw expending more fuel for transport) if it is so much easier, straight-forward and common sense to change the problem at the root (i.e. the actual big companies causing all the issues)?
The only thing the consumer can realistically do is raise awareness about where the pollution actually happens and fight for political change to stop it. This is exactly what was meant to be prevented with that campaign by pulling the wool over everybody's eyes and distracting people from the actual cause and, more importantly, the actual responsible parties for pollution and climate change.
I strongly oppose this is the type of argumentation for the following reasons:
(1) It's rhetorical and moralizing. It hides systemic causes.
(2) It hides everything actionable behind the word "If".
(3) It gives companies moral dimension. They don't have any. Companies follow incentives. first. Companies can sell bad business to other companies, but they never voluntarily wind down business because it's bad. They respond to costs from the regulators or taxes.
> The actual consumer's part in this is so minuscule,
Every sale from these companies translates directly into end consumption (private individuals or the government). Fhe final goods flow trough companies.
Companies and individuals are different sides of the same equation. Nestle responds to competition and demand. People favor cheaper price over less pollution.
> fight for political change to stop it.
This is the only way. You must tax and regulate negative externalities or consumer demand for cheap products creates companies that pollute.