Your Carbon Footprint is Just a Sham
Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast
Episode 52
Your Carbon Footprint is Just a Sham
If you have listened to some of my previous episodes, then you have heard me say more than once that preventing a single piece of trash from going to the landfill is not going to save the planet. But, a lifetime of sustainable habits will.
Similarly, focusing on your carbon footprint is not what is going to save the planet. Although I discussed the concept of a carbon footprint in E47, there is much more at stake than that. In fact, the whole topic of carbon footprint is a propaganda sham promoted and popularized by a large oil conglomerate.
If you want the entire story then listen to this episode Your Carbon Footprint is Just a Sham.
Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E52 called. Your Carbon Footprint is Just a Sham.
I think we can all agree that we truly dislike it when we are led to believe something that is not entirely true. After conducting some further research on the topic of carbon footprint, I truly felt compelled to produce this follow up episode. The reason is that I realized focusing simply on your carbon footprint is only a small part of your entire environmental impact. My hope is that by the end of the episode you will get the full picture of what is truly important.
Now you must know that I am by no means a conspiracy type person. But I also tend to ignore public opinion and I often say that if you find yourself in agreement with 90% of the population, you need to run in the opposite direction as fast as you can.
But, I also question who decides what we get to hear. And I ponder whether or not the constant exposure to violence in television and in popular movies really adds meaning to our lives.
Now you must remember that I’ve have not watched network television in over 25 years. I rarely listen to the radio. And it once took me 5 years to realize that the State of Colorado had a new governor.
But I also questioned the wisdom of millions of people flocking to get a COVID 19 vaccine that was not approved by the FDA, with the government funding the pharmaceutical research to the tune of $900 million. In turn the Pfizer company alone made $3.5 billion in profit the first 3 months their vaccine was on the market.
Did I get vaccinated? Yes. But that was after reading study data released by the Center for Disease Control regarding the effectiveness of the vaccine.
So my point being, someone has to decide what we hear and who is that and how does it get decided. Furthermore, are we actually being told the truth. Now you can easily scroll through numerous pages on the internet and find example after example of how the public has been duped into believing something is true or safe, when the opposite is actually the case. But, I want to point out just a couple of really good examples to make my point.
The Tobacco Industry
Initially the tobacco industry completely denied the health risks associated with smoking cigarettes. In 1950 there was a landmark study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, authored by a physician and epidemiologist Dr Ernst Wynder, that pointed to cigarette smoking as a cause of lung cancer.
In response to this, six major cigarette manufacturers funded their own massive research project which was not focused on finding the truth but was more of an effort to deny responsibility and confuse the public. In January 1954 the Tobacco Institute Research Committee ran full page ads in 400 newspapers claiming, and I quote “eminent doctors and research scientists have publicly questioned the claimed significance of these experiments”. Furthermore, they asserted that the industry believed that smoking was not hazardous to your health. And if you look back at old advertisements for cigarettes, you can easily find photographs of nurses and other health professionals enjoying a smoke.
But the truth was that industry scientists already knew there was a link between smoking and cancer. The industry continued to cover it up until attorney-generals from 46 states joined together in a massive lawsuit against the industry.
Example number two.
Asbestos Industry
In the early 19th century there were scattered reports on the health risks of asbestos in Canada, Europe, and the U.S. By the 1920s leading medical journals were publishing articles that linked asbestos to a condition known as asbestosis, which at the time was an emerging and sometimes fatal lung condition caused by the inhalation of asbestos. Asbestos particles caused scars in the lungs and made it difficult to breath. By the 1930s scientists established a link between asbestos and lung cancer.
Despite the growing evidence, between 1940 and 1980, the asbestos business expanded into a multibillion dollar industry. The key to their success was keeping the health risks of asbestos concealed from the miners, factory workers and the public. Major players in the asbestos industry, as well as the companies that insured them, consistently covered up and down played the risks of asbestos exposure. Even prominent physicians in the industry were paid to lie.
Now I won’t belabor the point, but I do have links to these articles in the transcript of this episode for further reading.
Example number three.
Climate change
There was a seminal paper published in 1896 on the topic of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causing global warming. And I do have a link to this article if you are interested. But industry experts ignored this possibility for years. Additionally, there has been considerable debate on this topic and much of the global community has ignored this for decades. Now here we are 125 years later. We hear talk about the effects of global warming almost daily. And the United Nations just recently stated that our climate pledges has put our world on a catastrophic pathway.
My point here is that it is rather common place for big business, industry and even the government to cover up major issues, lie, alter evidence, deceive the public, and purposely spend millions of dollars creating an advertising campaign that distracts us from the real and most important issues.
Thus is the case with the carbon footprint.
Now when I first heard this term, I did not know exactly what it meant. I had to do some research and at the time it was a novel concept for me. In fact E47, which I published recently, is all about explaining your carbon footprint. I even went online and used several different footprint calculators to see how I measured up in the big scheme of things. I even stated in E47 that the carbon footprint metric is not perfect but it is at least a place to start and it perhaps will get you more focused on your environmental footprint.
There is not doubt that the concept of carbon footprint is here to stay. And if you are in the right circles of people, you may even receive personal criticism for not living your life in a certain way to reduce your carbon footprint. Just go to your favorite social media platform and you can easily find some examples. This is similar to a vegetarian or vegan criticizing a meat eater for destroying the planet or someone lamb basting you for tossing a plastic bottle in the trash instead of the recycling bin.
Now there is no debating the fact that our choices drive the marketplace. Vegan, vegetarian, or meatless products are in restaurants and supermarket shelves because there is a market for it. Soft drinks, juices, sports drinks, and bottled water are easily available because there is a market for it. I run my entire homestead on solar energy because there is a market for renewable energy products.
But in the end, it comes down to who bears responsibility for a product that causes significant damage to either our health, our well being or the environment. While you may be quick to criticize someone for throwing away a plastic bottle I would ask why is big business still producing billions of single use plastic products in the first place. Instead of the industry taking responsibility, the focus is placed on the individual consumer in the form of massive recycling campaigns. Instead of the tobacco and asbestos industries taking responsibility for their product, public attention was distracted for decades due to massive advertising campaigns. And, guess what, the same is true with the concept of the carbon footprint.
The second largest non-state owned oil company in the world, British Petroleum, has 18,700 gas stations world wide. In 2004, BP introduced their carbon footprint calculator. This was promoted as a means for every person to assess how their daily life impacted the environment. And if you work through one of these calculators, as I did, you will be asked to put in data regarding your commuting time, purchasing food, air travel, electricity usage, how often you take advantage of public transportation, etc.
Sounds great, right? But here’s the wrinkle. BP, or British Petroleum, hired Ogilvy & Mater, who are public relations professionals, to promote the slant that climate change was not the fault of the oil giants, but that of the individual. So, once again the blame for the entire situation is being placed on the consumer instead of big business. Not only that, our focus is being distracted, manipulated, and pointed in the wrong direction because what you have to understand is that while your carbon footprint can be used as an indicator of your environmental impact, it is far from being the entire picture.
If you truly want to look at how you impact the environment, you have to look at q profile of your entire life. This is what I call your Eco-profile. If you remember from one of my previous episodes, I asked the question “Is there anything I can do that doesn’t affect the environment?” And of course the answer to that is NO! So think of it like this. It is impossible to walk through the sand without leaving a footprint. It is impossible to walk through fresh snow without leaving a footprint. Similarly, it is impossible to live your daily life without leaving some sort of environmental footprint. Your mere presence on the planet has an impact.
So what this means is that the concept of a carbon footprint, while valid to some degree, is a distraction from the whole picture. We need to focus more on our entire lifestyle. And to drive this point home I want to use a specific example that is very powerful. Now I have to give complete credit for this example to Emma Pattee, who wrote an article about forgetting you carbon footprint. And I do have a link to that article in the transcript. It is a fantastic article and I strongly suggest reading it because it was the inspiration for this episode.
Anyway, Emma uses this example in her article about your carbon footprint. Consider the lifestyle of two different people. One person lives in a studio apartment and works from home. The other person flies for work once a week. On the surface, and by using the carbon footprint calculator, it is quite obvious that the person flying once a week has a far greater impact on the environment. But here is the thing you don’t see. The person that flies once a week is a climate scientist that travels to different countries teaching people about the dangers of climate change. The person that works from home produces promotional ads for a major oil conglomerate. So, who is the one that actually produces the greater environmental impact?
And, by the way, environmental lawyers have launched an unprecedented complaint against BP for “greenwashing” it’s image with a massive advertising campaign that has given the impression that the company is moving toward renewables when in fact the majority of its future investments are slated toward gas and oil.
BP is now being compared to the tobacco industry, which in the past was able to mislead the public about the dangers of their products. Environmental lawyers are now calling for the government to require BP to put tobacco style warnings on their advertisements warning people about the dangers of using their products.
So, let’s look at another example. There are two households just a couple of miles apart. One household consists of two people with a three bedroom home and a nice yard. The other one is a single person living in a tiny home. On the surface you would think the two people living in the three bedroom home has the greater carbon footprint. But that does not account for other things in their lives.
What you don’t see is that the larger home is fully powered by solar, the couple bicycles to work 50% of the time, and in the backyard they have a large garden. The single person living in the tiny home uses a gas powered generator 40% of the time, they commute 50 miles a day and eat fast food twice a day. So, who has the eco-profile that produces the greater impact?
As you can see, we cannot focus solely on this concept of carbon footprint. This does not take into account the total influence of your entire lifestyle and the various choices you make that impact the environment.
For example, does the company you work for actually focus on sustainable practices in the work place? Or do they daily engage in obvious wasteful practices or just ignore the situation. If this is the case and you continue to work for them then you are supporting their wastefulness and environmentally damaging habits. That is part of your eco-profile.
Most of us have insurance of some type of another. Auto insurance, home owners insurance, life insurance, health insurance, etc. Is the company you support with your insurance payments engaged in environmentally sustainable practices. After all, it was one of the major national life insurance companies that aided in the decades long cover up of the dangers of smoking cigarettes. This is part of your eco-profile.
What you chose to eat is part of your eco-profile. Other choices such as putting up solar panels, planting a garden, buying local, riding your bike to work, cutting back on meat consumption, are all part of your eco-profile.
How you spend your personal time and your choice of entertainment is even part of your eco-profile. Do you spend your time actually reading and learning about climate change, sustainable practices, renewable energy choices, etc. Or do you spend your time attending professional sporting events which have an enormous negative environmental impact.
What you talk about is part of your eco-profile. Do you brag to friends, family, and coworkers about your latest online purchase or do you openly discuss climate change, sustainability, your latest garden project, and how to can your own food. This is part of your eco-profile.
The problem with the concept of the carbon footprint it that it only focuses on your consumption. Now I will have to admit that when I first came across this concept I thought it was absolutely fantastic. I even devoted an entire episode toward explaining it. But the problem is that it is not the entire picture.
As I said earlier in this episode, I am not a conspiracy type person but I commonly question and doubt the validity of certain things in our world. And I used the example of who is it that decides what we hear in the news everyday. I question the validity of massive advertising and campaigning for COVID 19 vaccines when the government backed the pharmaceutical companies to the tune of $900 million dollars and one company alone profited $3.5 billion in the first three months of their vaccines being on the market.
Likewise, I now question and doubt the validity of this carbon footprint calculator when that concept was formed and promoted by the second largest non-state owned oil company in the world. Almost 20 years ago it was a clever concept presented to the public that has now become the ubiquitous poster child of how we are each personally responsible for our share of climate change.
But as you can see, while this may be a clever tool, it does little to paint an accurate picture of our individual environmental impact. Instead of focusing on your carbon footprint what you need to consider is your personal eco-profile, which is the sum total of your carbon footprint, your life choices, where you work, what type of work you do, how you invest your money, what companies you support, whether you choose two day expedited shipping, and whether not you actually speak up about wasteful practices and sustainability. Do you accept the fact that we all need to change our wasteful lifestyles or do you just sit back in denial.
Think of it this way. What if Greta Thunberg had sat quietly at home and reduced her meat consumption instead of standing up, speaking out, and actually making herself heard. That is what we all need to be doing.
You have to accept the fact that everywhere you go, everything you do, every choice you make does in fact has an impact. And the sum of all of this reaches much, much further than your carbon footprint. So do not focus on that as your sole metric of measuring up your life and how you are going to make some sustainable changes.
The problem is that we are constantly distracted from what is really important. Big industry and big government have a proven track record for strategic communication in such a way to confuse the public and undermine real action and real change. In other words, it’s nothing more than effective propaganda.
The brilliant 1971 TV ad showing a person throwing a bag of trash out of their vehicle which lands at the feet of a buck skin clad Native American. The catch line that is promoted is “People start pollution. People can stop it.” The real message here is that pollution is your problem not the fault of the industry mass producing disposable products.
The tobacco industry literally blamed smokers for becoming addictive to their habit forming, carcinogenic products.
Now BP wants us to take the blame for global warming and climate change. In 2006 BP wrote on their website “It’s time to go on a low carbon diet.” This was part of their ad campaign of “Beyond Petroleum” along with the concept of the carbon footprint. And while we all feel better about taking shorter showers, hanging our clothes out to dry, and replacing old light bulbs with LEDs, in 2019 BP made their biggest acquisition in over 20 years with new oil and gas reserves in West Texas. And in 2018 their total investment in renewable energy was 2.3 percent of their budget. What happened to the low carbon diet?
Yet the concept of carbon footprint is here to stay because it gives each of us something to do about the climate problem. You see, no individual can wrap their head around slashing 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions and transforming the dominant global energy system. But we can recycle, drive less, eat less meat, plant a garden, and reduce our water usage.
But the underlying problem is that as long as we live in a society that is largely powered by fossils fuels even if you have no car, no home, and walk to work your carbon footprint is still sizable. As long as fossil fuels are in play, you can never have a sustainable carbon footprint. You just can’t do it.
Instead of 111,000 gas stations across the country why not 111,000 recharging stations. Although you have a carbon footprint every time you fill up your vehicle and drive away, we are actually not given a choice. Instead of the consumer being given a choice to move “Beyond Petroleum” the strategy is to put as much of the blame on the consumer as possible.
Again, while the concept of carbon footprint is valid to some degree, I would urge you to move beyond that and look at your complete eco-profile. If you still want to reduce you carbon footprint that’s great. Eat less meat, install solar panels, live in a smaller home, simplify your life, avoid air travel, get rid of your car. But in addition to that you need to take a long hard look at the eco-profile of your entire life and the impact of all the other choices you make.
The other thing you need to do is speak up and speak out. Talk about sustainability. Be an example of that wherever you go. Speak out against wasteful practices. Put solar panels on your house. Vote for community and national leaders that have the environment in mind. What we really truly need is collective action. We need to exit the age of fossil fuels. Cites need to commit to clean energy. States need to stop further exploration for oil. The federal government need to stop fuel subsidies. We really need to reinvent our thoughts of where our energy comes from. None of this is going to happen if we sit quietly at home and be good.
Now I want to close this episode with a quote from Winston Churchill.
“We make a living by what we get. But we make a life by what we give.”
So give something back. Develop a lifetime of sustainable habits and make your eco-profile something to be admired.
This is your host Patrick signing off until next week. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future.
Resources
10 Cover Ups Made Things Worse
It Was the Government That Produce COVID019 Vaccines Success
The First Paper on Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming
The UN Says Climate Pledges Put World on Catastrophic Pathway
Forget Your Carbon Footprint. Let’s Talk About Your Climate Shadow
