Carbon Propaganda

Have you calculated your personal carbon footprint recently? I have, and I'm glad to say that I have very small feet, ecologically speaking, that is. Here's a short post on why that isn't relevant or something to be proud of...

If you want to calculate your own carbon footprint, you can do that here, although I can't imagine why you would; I just did it for the first time and purely because I'm writing this article. So, why am I not impressed by the size of my, or anyone else's, carbon footprint? Well, for one it's because I know where the term originated, and what it's stated goal is. The origin of the term is but a Google search away and is clearly described in Wikipedia under the heading "Origin of the concept":

The idea of a personal carbon footprint was popularized by a large advertising campaign of the fossil fuel company BP in 2005, designed by Ogilvy. It instructed people to calculate their personal footprints and provided ways for people to "go on a low-carbon diet". This strategy, also employed by other major fossil fuel companies borrowed heavily from previous campaigns by the tobacco industry and plastics industry to shift the blame for negative consequences of those industries (under-age smoking, cigarette butt pollution, and plastic pollution) onto individual choices.

BP made no attempt to reduce its own carbon footprint, instead expanding its oil drilling into the 2020s. However, the strategy had some success, with a rise in consumers concerned about their own personal actions, and creation of multiple carbon footprint calculators.
_{source: Wikipedia}

BP hired Ogilvy, a New York City-based British advertising, marketing, and public relations agency, to create a propaganda campaign "to shift responsibility of climate change-causing pollution away from the corporations and institutions that created a society where carbon emissions are unavoidable and onto personal lifestyle choices." This trend of blaming the individual for systemic problems is the rule, and not the exception in our highly individualized late-capitalist society. We see this happening everywhere: In the debate about systemic racism and the wealth-gap between the white and black populations in America, poverty among blacks is often ascribed to them making poor individual choices, for example.

For as long as we, as a society, have been aware of our effect on the environment, left wing activists have been fighting for systemic change, while right wing billionaires and corporations have been fighting for individual diligence. And you now know why: it's to shift the blame on you, personally. You should feel guilty for the destruction of the environment and global warming. But on the other hand: you should consume and you should never feel satisfied, you should want for more. This is such bullshit, and it makes me angry. Another part of this huge scam is the recycling industry. That too was made up by corporate demons who want you to feel personally responsible for the mess they have created.

This debate always follows the same blueprint; first the right wing flatly denies that there's a problem. First they deny that global warming exists at all. Then they say it exists, but that it's not because of human activity, but that it's just nature, you know, sunspots, planetary alignments, and "global warming and cooling has been happening for as long as the planet has existed!" You know the drill. Then they finally admit that it exists, and that human activity is the cause, but they make it a personal thing; you should make better choices in your life. The same with the race-debate, the same with every debate on any systemic problem, like the wealth-gap, poverty, homelessness... What angers me even more is that so many individuals still fall for this rhetoric. There are no individual solutions for systemic problems.

The below linked video covers that other carbon footprint related scam; recycling plastic. Since plastic is made from oil and natural gas, I think you can already predict who started that propaganda campaign. Plastic, my friends, is made explicitly because it doesn't degrade or decompose; that's its winning feature. Plastic is made because it lasts forever, and because it's such a uniquely flexible and diverse material: it can have any color or be transparent, it can be molded into any shape and in any size, and so on. It just can't be recycled. Well, most of it anyway: of all the plastic offered for recycling, only 5 percent is actually recycled, the rest ends up in a landfill or in the sea. So I'm not against plastic entirely, just against single-use plastic products, like plastic shopping bags. If we use a material that lasts forever, we'd better use it in products that last a long time. Makes sense, no? Unfortunately that goes against the planned obsolescence our capitalist growth economy is based on...

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