Is Your Carbon Footprint Important?

By Tyler W.

 

Solar panels, vegan meat, and electric cars. Though these things may seem different, they’re all used to reduce one thing: carbon footprint. A carbon footprint is the amount of [carbon] emissions a person or group releases into the atmosphere within a given period of time (usually a year). The term was created as part of bp’s 2004 advertisement campaign that promoted the reduction of carbon emissions into the atmosphere and the curtailment of one’s carbon footprint.

At first, this ad campaign might seem to have good intentions; everybody loves keeping the environment clean! Ironically, bp doesn’t. bp is a big oil company that has released 374 million metric tons of CO2 in 2020 alone, which is equivalent to the carbon footprints of 62,300,000 people combined. And with new expansions into Mexico and increasing CO2 emissions, bp’s last concern is the environment.

        The ad campaign also promoted individual action, one of which was the reduction of a person’s carbon footprint. It provoked the thought that a person can individually impact climate change. Again, that isn’t true either. According to OWID 2020, if a person devoted their entire life to offset their own carbon footprint, it would only compensate for 1.12 seconds worth of emissions from the Global Energy Sector. An entire lifetime without oil, meat (production of meat causes carbon emissions), and (non-electric) transportation to offset carbon emissions is wasted in a brusque 1.12 seconds. An ordinary person can’t make even a scratch in the global CO2 emissions.

So, one question remains unanswered: why did bp create this advertisement campaign? Simple: to veer the blame for climate change off of them and onto consumers. Guess what? The strategy worked. The phrase began to spread like wildfire, and many other oil companies started using the term too as they realized the strategy bp was using worked like a charm. And here we are now, where the phrase is plastered onto billboards, posters, shirts, and ads. bp’s 2004 advertisement campaign was a highly successful piece of deceptive advertising that allowed oil companies to be omitted from the blame for climate change.

The COVID-19 pandemic also proves that consumers aren’t responsible for climate change. Due to the pandemic, carbon emissions [from consumers] were at an all-time low in 2020. There was little to no driving and transportation, and overall less climate-based activity.  Yet CO2 emissions only dropped by 7% that year, according to the L.A. Times. This highlights the fact that consumers are not responsible for the global CO2 emissions; it’s actually the producers. 7% is still an exponential amount (a drop of roughly 2.6 billion tons), but road transport decreased by 50% in 2020, so in theory, we should be seeing much more of a drop. This accentuates the fact that consumers don’t play a large part in climate change; instead, other factors such as agriculture, deforestation, and energy production in buildings and industry play the biggest role, as the said sectors make up more than 60%.

In reality, the term carbon footprint was a phrase coined by big oil companies to shift the blame of climate change off of them and onto you, which let them off the hook for climate change at the same time. By doing this, oil companies can produce even more emissions without backlash, as people are too caught up in their own emissions to notice. This is further backed up by the fact that almost 3/4ths of emissions come from the energy sector. They made it seem like climate change is your fault, but in reality, it’s not.

We need to stop being manipulated by what energy companies say about climate change and your carbon footprint. And as the energy sector has a carbon footprint of  96,000,000 people combined, individual action will not do anything to abate climate change. It’s collective action that counts. True, climate change is a big problem, but it will take more than one person to solve it. And collective action starts with you. Start supporting politicians who care about climate change and the damage that oil companies are doing to the environment, and spread the truth about carbon footprints to the people around you. Though it may seem as if climate change is unstoppable, we can stop it. We will only progress in the battle against climate change if we stop being manipulated by the people who cause it in the first place and work together.

 

 

*¹ Carbon Footprint (or any emission type) is usually measured in CO2e, or carbon dioxide equivalent. This is used to group all the types of emissions (methane, etc.) into 1 standardized unit of measurement(CO2).

 

            *² bp stands for British Petroleum.

 

            *³ IMPORTANT (especially to Mr. Bad Website Creator): according to bp itself, it is grammatically correct to lowercase the first letter of bp at the beginning of a sentence, after a period, or wherever it would be natural to have an uppercase first letter.