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As a sidenote: "Carbon footprint" as a concept is mostly about industry gaslighting consumers. The original intent was to divert attention from industrial polic

by fsloth 4y ago

As a sidenote: "Carbon footprint" as a concept is mostly about industry gaslighting consumers. The original intent was to divert attention from industrial policy to consumer choice. Unfortunately the consumer has very little choice all in all as our economy runs on fossil fuels and individual choice matters very little [0]. "Carbon footprint" was originally invented by the public relations agency Ogilvy & Mather for BP as a concept to divert attention from industry to individuals. https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sh... That's not to say that public pressure is not a good thing. It is. But the actual causal effect it has for a better future is in the form of creating political sentiment. Individual carbon economy is mostly about promoting a political sentiment via signaling. But generally it's a fools errand trying to scientifically balance your "carbon footprint" since this was not an engineering concept to start with. If it makes you feel good to plant trees do it! Trees are awesome. Buying less stuff you don't need is also always good I think. For example I use my cell phones until something irrevocably gives up and drive my current car as long as possible (generally making a new car is always more resource consuming than driving the current one I think). [0] For example Vaclaw Smil "How the world really works" discusses our fossil fuel based economy at length

lucb1e 4y ago
Ah yes, the obligatory "we don't have a responsibility, that's just a BP invention from the 90s". It's always the evil bigcorps, of course. I don't know whether BP falsified the evidence here, but everything kinda points towards that it really is the consumers that drive demand. > generally it's a fools errand trying to scientifically balance your "carbon footprint" How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that? > If it makes you feel good to plant trees do it! Trees are awesome. But if the "you" in this sentence is being made to feel good for the wrong reasons, isn't that dishonest? Shouldn't we be looking at what is actually effective use of your money, and not let people fall for feel-good tree planting only for them to find out ten years down the line that their hard-earned money went into /dev/null and they should have done (and could have been told about) something like meat reduction or solar panels instead?
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > Ah yes, the obligatory "we don't have a responsibility, that's just a BP invention from the 90s". It's always the evil bigcorps, of course. They didn't say that. > How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that? The individual action here is minor. Market pressure can work but only in certain circumstances. They already suggested working on political sentiment, since laws can do a lot here to tax or force certain methods. > But if the "you" in this sentence is being made to feel good for the wrong reasons, isn't that dishonest? Shouldn't we be looking at what is actually effective use of your money [...] I'm pretty sure the person you're responding to is also an advocate for effective use of money, specifically by focusing on the wider changes and not focusing much on the carbon footprint concept. But you don't have to spend all your money on improving the world as much as possible.
- belorn 4y ago
  > How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that? The simple answer is to vote, and if you can spare the time/money/effort to go and become political active. Removing coal/oil/natural gas plants won't occur without political will. We need political will to build out rail infrastructure, regulating air/boat fuels, changing subsidies for fossil fuels into emission free alternatives, prioritize bike/pedestrian infrastructure, and so on. Right now we had politicians in EU voting that natural gas is "green", driving primarily by a specific political party in Germany, and now the same people are turning on coal and oil power plants. Societal change need to start with replacing people in power that view fossil fuel as a tool to be used rather than something that should be left in the ground. No individual action can get near to undo the damage that those politicians are doing by allowing fossil fuels to be burned.
  - Paradigma11 4y ago
    Gas makes sense as a reliable backup power generation if you are intent on building wind/solar. This is still a net positive since hopefully you dont need that much and its better than currently used coal/oil. Ofcourse if you get your gas from a not so friendly imperialistic autocrat who decides to go full in on military territorial expansion and uses gas as a economic weapon you are screwed and need to do whatever you can and is necessary.
avgcorrection 4y ago
Correct. It got to the point where BP couldn’t just straight up deny man-made climate change. So they had to point the finger at someone else.
morsch 4y ago
The article claims that a PR campaign "popularized" the term "carbon footprint" in 2000. That's pretty vague and I'm not going to dispute it. The article doesn't claim BP coined the phrase. In German, it's more common to refer to an ecological footprint, its usage which goes back to at least 1992, and it wasn't coined by a PR company, but by very straight laced environmentalists. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/095624789200400212 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/095624789200400212
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  Ecological footprint is where BPs spinoff/appropriation comes from.
mistrial9 4y ago
this is not the whole story -- a Swiss do-gooder in the San Francisco Bay Area had a "Carbon Footprint" project running for quite a while (still?) .. he was nerdy and sincere. His close staff certainly were sincere. If there was someone taking Oil money, they didn't show it.
- Schiendelman 4y ago
  Plenty of well meaning people want to do better personally and don’t realize that they’re shifting the discussion to a damaging frame. It happens all over politics!

by fsloth 4y ago

lucb1e 4y ago

Ah yes, the obligatory "we don't have a responsibility, that's just a BP invention from the 90s". It's always the evil bigcorps, of course. I don't know whether BP falsified the evidence here, but everything kinda points towards that it really is the consumers that drive demand. > generally it's a fools errand trying to scientifically balance your "carbon footprint" How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that? > If it makes you feel good to plant trees do it! Trees are awesome. But if the "you" in this sentence is being made to feel good for the wrong reasons, isn't that dishonest? Shouldn't we be looking at what is actually effective use of your money, and not let people fall for feel-good tree planting only for them to find out ten years down the line that their hard-earned money went into /dev/null and they should have done (and could have been told about) something like meat reduction or solar panels instead?

Dylan16807 4y ago
> Ah yes, the obligatory "we don't have a responsibility, that's just a BP invention from the 90s". It's always the evil bigcorps, of course. They didn't say that. > How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that? The individual action here is minor. Market pressure can work but only in certain circumstances. They already suggested working on political sentiment, since laws can do a lot here to tax or force certain methods. > But if the "you" in this sentence is being made to feel good for the wrong reasons, isn't that dishonest? Shouldn't we be looking at what is actually effective use of your money [...] I'm pretty sure the person you're responding to is also an advocate for effective use of money, specifically by focusing on the wider changes and not focusing much on the carbon footprint concept. But you don't have to spend all your money on improving the world as much as possible.
belorn 4y ago
> How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that? The simple answer is to vote, and if you can spare the time/money/effort to go and become political active. Removing coal/oil/natural gas plants won't occur without political will. We need political will to build out rail infrastructure, regulating air/boat fuels, changing subsidies for fossil fuels into emission free alternatives, prioritize bike/pedestrian infrastructure, and so on. Right now we had politicians in EU voting that natural gas is "green", driving primarily by a specific political party in Germany, and now the same people are turning on coal and oil power plants. Societal change need to start with replacing people in power that view fossil fuel as a tool to be used rather than something that should be left in the ground. No individual action can get near to undo the damage that those politicians are doing by allowing fossil fuels to be burned.
- Paradigma11 4y ago
  Gas makes sense as a reliable backup power generation if you are intent on building wind/solar. This is still a net positive since hopefully you dont need that much and its better than currently used coal/oil. Ofcourse if you get your gas from a not so friendly imperialistic autocrat who decides to go full in on military territorial expansion and uses gas as a economic weapon you are screwed and need to do whatever you can and is necessary.

avgcorrection 4y ago

Correct. It got to the point where BP couldn’t just straight up deny man-made climate change. So they had to point the finger at someone else.

morsch 4y ago

The article claims that a PR campaign "popularized" the term "carbon footprint" in 2000. That's pretty vague and I'm not going to dispute it. The article doesn't claim BP coined the phrase. In German, it's more common to refer to an ecological footprint, its usage which goes back to at least 1992, and it wasn't coined by a PR company, but by very straight laced environmentalists. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/095624789200400212 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/095624789200400212

avgcorrection 4y ago
Ecological footprint is where BPs spinoff/appropriation comes from.

mistrial9 4y ago

this is not the whole story -- a Swiss do-gooder in the San Francisco Bay Area had a "Carbon Footprint" project running for quite a while (still?) .. he was nerdy and sincere. His close staff certainly were sincere. If there was someone taking Oil money, they didn't show it.

Schiendelman 4y ago
Plenty of well meaning people want to do better personally and don’t realize that they’re shifting the discussion to a damaging frame. It happens all over politics!