Sarah Tuttle: Today I learned that carbon footprints were invented by BP and pushed in a mega marketing campaign to shift the conversation from corporations to individuals and I hate everyone. Except NPR, thanks for the reporting.

Today I learned that carbon footprints were invented by BP and pushed in a mega marketing campaign to shift the conversation from corporations to individuals and I hate everyone. Except NPR, thanks for the reporting.

isn’t that so fun and cool and not insanely soul crushing at all

Exactly correct yes.

same with carbon credits, which my whole lib family think is gonna save us

lol my BiL helped start up a carbon credit company on the blockchain and when I asked if it would be proof of work or proof of stake he just got confused. Then the CEO turned out to be a skeezy dick bag and fucked them completely over and boy was I shocked 😬

lol my brother is trying to make a bike equipment startup that pays you with carbon credits to bike??? somehow?? it makes no fucking sense

That's very dumb and I see no profit path but ... I will invest everything I have if they called it CarbonCycle

I'll have to ask him what he's thinking of calling it and get back to you. 0% chance of him ever selling it to a VC tho lol

Well you can pitch that to him for a 3% non-voting share that we can split.

Another funny story about that side of the family. I was sitting in a brewery in Hamburg with my BiL and one of his closest friends who is loaded. He got into Bitcoin early and is full pilled on it. This was December of '22, so a year ago. He swore up and down that Bitcoin would hit $1m in 5 years.

lol, I made my comment before I read the thread, but I am HERE for this sub-thread.

This is also not true.

I didn't realize this hadn't become broad public knowledge by now! I think I'm in a climate bubble LOL

*existential scream intensifies* But my tobacco product..

Me too

"Climate bubble" is very good. Thanks

Perfection. (It would be even more perfect with alt text so everyone can enjoy this epic burn. Let me know if you want me to walk you thru turning on the requirement in settings, it's a little hidden)

Exactly the same way that drinks companies all moved over to plastics, and turned the responsibility of recycling over to the consumer.

It's like in the 70s when we said, "you guys are polluting the air and water" and they said, "Against pollution? We'll organize campaigns for you to pick up litter by the roadside."

Exactly this

Reminds me of Margret Thatcher's govmt cuting funds for garbage recepticles & trash collection & blaming general public for littering up UK cities.

Industry PR marketing campaigns that co-opt enviro sensibilities to deflect blame from corps onto individuals go back to the early 70's when the Keep America Beautiful's "Crying Indian" ad about public littering was actually an industry campaign to prevent legislation mandating reusable containers.

The ‘Crying Indian’ ad that fooled the environmental movementwww.chicagotribune.com How the beverage and packaging industries shifted the public conversation about litter.

lol

Guess what: the BMI was invented by insurance companies.

you didnt even give me a chance to guess

hahahaha.

The idea that I'm responsible for climate change is such bullshit. I don't worry about using straws when billionaires have yachts and private jets.

Similarly, most plastics aren’t recycled. www.npr.org/2020/09/11/8...

www.npr.org

There is a bright side in that. If we consider our personal footprints and buy less, demand for oil goes down. They've played themselves!

It's a scale and accountability issue

It is. But I'm scrambling to find something that feels much less bleak.

I appreciate that ✨

someone should hold them accountable

Care to explain that to an environmental economist specializing in climate?

I'm pretty sure no one who has interacted here is like "revel in grotesque consumption! Micro plastics are awesome!" AND, the path of opting into sack cloth and ashes doesn't magically solve the climate crisis. We need gov't/policy/corp scale shifts as well.

We have government and policy. The corporations won't change their behavior except internally for their own efficiency you needs unless you change your consumption. Supply follows demand. It's as simple as that.

The belief that our individual choices do not impact climate ignore's the fact that our choices have an aggregate impact on both emissions and corporate decisions. that is why World Resources Institute (not corporate by any means) allocates emissions based on causer not supplier.

The big carbon savings are in decarbonising huge industrial processes (steel, ammonia, power generation...) which are nothing to do with individual consumption habits.

Everyone now thinks their individual actions singularly make a greater impact on the environment than industry does.

😦

A small correction. The concept was invented by Mathias Wackernagel and William Rees through a series of journal articles and a book in the early 90s. The idea was, however, popularized by the petroleum industry to push an individualist responsibility narrative

The initial concept used a lens of collective responsibility, i.e., quantifying the ecological footprint of a nation or humanity as a whole, over an individual approach. The originators of the idea viewed having multiple scales of analysis as useful

Jesus

It's not true.

in the end of the day we all know capitalism is the problem

Same deal with straws. Huge push to take the attention off of corporations' plastic waste and say, hey, consumer, your straws are destroying the environment. Cut it out.

100% - also highly recommend this book by Naomi Klein if you'd like some more eye-opening information on why our current economic system is never going to be able to solve climate change, we need a fundamental shift!

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate a book by Naomi Kleinbookshop.org The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core "free market" ideolo...

Same with plastic recycling and the numbers that don't mean anything. Greenwash.

I HATE that environmentalism keeps being presented as "what are you willing to sacrifice?" instead of how can we make this a better world? (And also, we should be going after the 100 or so companies that are actually a threat)

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