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Yes, Actually, Individual Responsibility Is Essential to Solving the Climate Crisis
(www.sierraclub.org)
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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In 2005, fossil fuel company BP hired the large advertising campaign Ogilvy to popularize the idea of a carbon footprint for individuals.
BP oil company pushed the idea that our individual carbon footprints matter so that everyone can share the blame of what the fossil fuel industry has done.
Don’t fall for it. Only corporations pollute enough to matter. Only corporations can provide alternatives to fossil fuels. Only corporations can make a meaningful reduction to greenhouse gas emissions.
The most significant difference individuals can make is to create political and legal pressure by voting and protesting.
Well can also stop giving them our money. Reduce consumption of their products through alternatives and overall reduction. We can also divest our investments away from funds that include their shares.
I’m not saying to do nothing as individuals.
Just pointing out that the fossil fuel industry paid a marketing team to push the idea of individual carbon footprints for a reason.
100 companies have been responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That means that the remaining 29% of emissions are shared by all the other companies and consumers. Even if you split that remainder evenly between all other companies and consumers, that’s only 14% all emissions being caused by consumers and it’s probably more likely in the single digits.
This is why the fossil fuel industry pays a marketing team to get the public focused on their individual carbon footprint. So you’re focused on the less than 14% of the total emissions instead of the other 86%
Those 100 companies are fuel producers making fuel that everyone else burns. By that metric my gas company is responsible for 100% of my gas-based greenhouse emissions.
I hate how often that study gets misused.
Why wouldn’t they be responsible for the emissions from the fuel they provide? The fossil fuel industry has entrenched themselves and made it as difficult as possible to not use their products. Even to go so far as to influence how our cities are built.
I'd love to not use any fossil fuels but I can’t afford solar panels or a heat pump so I have to either burn gas or my family freezes to death. I have to get my electricity from coal because my family can’t survive without electricity.
I don’t have a choice because of the choices made by the fossil fuel industry.
If the providers are to blame for all emissions and the consumers are free of responsibility, then all consumption is equal. If Exxon is the responsible party, then the guy buying the gas guzzler to stick it to the libs is the same as the guy driving a hybrid, as neither is to blame for their emissions.
I understand choosing comfort over living in a cave or dying, obviously, but that doesn't mean we're free of any and all blame. Any time a new climate report comes and it's worse than the one before I understand that my existence and choice of comfort played a part in it . I don't just go "oh that Exxon, smh" and carry on guilt free.
No one said consumers are free of all responsibility.
No one said “oh that Exxon, smh”.
Trying to fix climate change by reducing individual carbon footprint doesn’t work because there are a lot of people that:
don’t have the luxury of being able to not use gasoline or solar.
Don’t care
It requires 100% of the world population to take it upon themselves to do the right thing just to fix the smallest part of the problem.
Fixing it with voting/protest reduces emissions for everyone. The rich, poor, industrial emissions, commercial emissions. All emissions.
This is what I'm trying to get across to you here. You've posted the same notion multiple times in this thread. The consumer share isn't the smallest part, it's most of it. All the oil we extract serves to make products, transport products, sell products to the consumer - you. It's not being being burnt for fun.
When you engage in consumption, any amount of it, you're pulling a string connected to a million other strings that mostly end up in an oil well one way or another. The luxury you speak of is in that consumption, not the lack of it.
And if you think otherwise, compare your lifestyle, your lifelong level of comfort to that of someone who spent their whole life living in a hut in Mali, whose lifelong emissions equal a few months worth of yours. Now try to tell that person that you're not responsible for the gas you burn, it's the fault of those that provided you with the option to do it. It's insulting.
Consumer greenhouse gas emissions are the smallest of all sources of emissions.
Please tell me, when it says "Transportation" on that chart, what exactly do you think is being transported, and where?