Evaluating the Invisible ‘I’ in Change
Raise your hand if you have googled, “how to reduce my carbon footprint?” in the last year. I imagine it is most people reading this article. Particularly following the climate activism of 2019, carbon footprint has become a household name. The search results are clear – stop eating meat, use public transport, and turn off the light when you leave a room. But what if I told you that William E. Rees and Mathis Wackernagel’s original ecological footprint concept was never designed to assess individual action?
For this, we can only credit one of the world's seven oil and gas "supermajors”, BP, who in 2005 spent $250 million on an advertisement campaign psychologically designed to shift emission responsibility away from the activities of fossil fuel companies, and onto individual lifestyle choices. A year prior, BP had unveiled a ‘carbon footprint calculator’ to help people assess the ways their normal daily life was responsible for global warming. While the public was provided with innovative ways to reduce their individual carbon footprint, BP continued to extract astronomical levels of fossil fuels.
Since then, we have witnessed an outpouring of corporate communications campaigns pushing the responsibility of carbon emissions onto individuals. In 2017, BMW had an advertisement pulled by the ASA for their i3 electric car, following their claim that any purchases would be “giving back” to the environment. In reality, the car contained a small petrol engine to help maintain charge.
In 2019, Coca-Cola launched a ‘World Without Waste’ campaign, with an ambitious goal – “To help collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030’… ‘To do that, we aim to invest our marketing dollars and skills to help people understand what to recycle, how to recycle, and where to recycle’.
It is an impressive PR strategy for a company producing millions of plastic bottles a year. However, convincing consumers that a recycling bin or a carpool scheme is enough to cut billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions is problematic for several reasons. Carbon emissions are a vital benchmark in the fight against climate change, but we will not be back consuming our beloved red meat on our fifth sunny foreign holiday of the year once global emissions hit below a certain annual level. Society requires something much more complex.
If the events of the last year have taught us anything, it is that individual actions will not be enough to change the world. Covid-19 quarantine may have inadvertently slashed our individual carbon footprints, but the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere still peaked at a record-breaking level in May last. Why? 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1998. Most of these are coal and oil companies, including ExxonMobil and Shell.
No other socioeconomic challenge in history has turned to individual action as a solution, so it is unrealistic to assign solving a global problem to individuals. Recently, an excellent point was made by Levermann in the Guardian: you would not ever ask an individual who was worried about unemployment, “what action are you personally going to take in the fight against unemployment?”.
For the sake of the future, we need all businesses across all sectors to start adopting sustainable practices. If we fail to stop the actions of high-polluting enterprises, we are guaranteed to reach an increase in global average temperatures of 4°c by the end of the century. Any David Attenborough documentary can explain why that would be such a devastating outcome for the planet.
If we are being realistic, it is only governments and regulatory figures that can implement the legislation to force corporations to adopt sustainable practices. They have the power to make renewable energy sources affordable to consumers via subsidies, including solar panels and wind turbines. They hold the cards to invest in low-carbon mass transportation to replace emission-heavy means of travel, like planes and cars. They are the only means to restructure our global dependency on the fossil fuels that are producing such damaging greenhouse gases.
So what is the point of having alternative milk in your coffee if it is making no fundamental difference to carbon emissions? For climate change activist Greta Thunberg, the point is actually quite simple.
“The point”, she told the BBC, “is to create an opinion. By stopping flying, you don’t only reduce your own carbon footprint, but also send a signal to other people around you that the climate crisis is a real thing - and that helps to push a political movement”.
Unlike BP, do not underestimate the power of the individual in carbon emissions. Personal sacrifice, however, is not going to save the world. Our ultimate responsibility as informed carbon-conscious citizens should start and end with holding governments and unsustainable corporations to account to ensure that they protect the citizens they represent.
Written By Rhianna Hurren-Myers
Originally from Taunton Deane, Somerset, Rhianna is currently studying an MA at Cardiff University in ‘Public Relations and Communications Management’. Her master’s thesis plans to explore how corporate greenwashing within the aviation industry is impacting public consensus on the climate crisis. With hopes to specialise in sustainability communications, Rhianna’s personal writing often centres on topics surrounding climate change, inequality, and current affairs.
She has been the Features Editor of Cardiff University’s award-winning Quench Magazine for nearly two years, which won ‘Best Section’ at the Cardiff Student Media awards for 2019-2020. Last summer, Rhianna was also part of the founding team of The Collective Magazine as Deputy Editor in Chief, which helps students and recent graduates grow their writing portfolios outside of traditional, university-led student media.
