Your Carbon Footprint - A “Deceptive Sham”
The arguments against caring about your carbon footprint, explained in 4 minutes.
I didn’t know this until recently, but oil and gas giant BP, the company that brought you the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, also popularised the idea of personal carbon footprints.
The company made the first personal carbon footprint calculator in 2004. Since then dozens of carbon footprinting apps have sprung up. BP’s still at it too.
Whether we use these apps or not, we’ve probably all started adjusting our daily lives to reduce our personal carbon footprint. Often I’ve done this myself without thinking too much about where the whole idea of a ‘personal carbon footprint’ comes from in the first place.
Woke millenial to the core, I’ve definitely thought about my impacts. Those reflections led to quite a few lifestyle changes, like going veggie, then on-again-off-again vegan. I’ve also paid to offset my carbon from flying and I generally keep my consumerism in check for environmental reasons too.
But I’ve never really thought about where the idea of my personal carbon footprint came from, or if the idea was controversial.
As it turns out, not everyone’s happy with the idea that we should all be working to reduce…
