What can I do to reduce climate change?
If you are a resident of the 21st century, still under 60, rich enough that you do not need to worry about the cost of your next meal, and have any sense of obligation towards the society at large, that question might have crossed your mind. Perhaps, it even keeps you awake at night. Climate anxiety is a thing. (I wrote about it before – here’s something that may help.)
Perhaps, you have even been successful in converting your worries into concrete actions. You consume less meat, avoid flights, buy products that say that are environment-friendly, or even better, avoid buying anything unnecessary at all. Perhaps you converted your house into solar. You try to cut down your carbon footprint as much as possible. And even motivate others to do the same. You hope that some day, majority of humanity will follow suit and opt for an environment friendly lifestyle. And, perhaps then, the climate crisis will be averted, right? Right?
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Right?
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R.I.G.H.T.?!
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In 2005, fossil fuel company BP hired the large advertising campaign Ogilvy to popularize the idea of a carbon footprint for individuals. The campaign instructed people to calculate their personal footprints and provided ways for people to “go on a low-carbon diet”.
- source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint#History
A person from the richest 0.1% produces more carbon pollution in a day than someone in the bottom 50% produces all year.
Questions:
- Why would a fossil fuel company popularize carbon footprint?
- Let’s assume majority of humans follow suit towards a environment-friendly lifestyle, may be 50%, or even 90%. But if carbon inequality remains, does that mean, just the tiny non-environmentally-compliant 1% (or even 0.1%) humans produce enough emissions to not only cause but also accelerate the climate crisis?
The answer to the second question is a short “unfortunately, yes”.
About the first. Why would a fossil fuel company popularize carbon footprint?
Perhaps the company is ethical? The most ethical thing a fossil fuel company can do to mitigate the climate crisis is to stop being a fossil fuel company. Just change the business. Is money more important than life? A short read at BP’s wikipedia page, including sections of ‘Polical Influence’, reveals that for BP, money indeed is more important than life.
BP is not alone. Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from just 32 fossil fuel firms.
But.
But, these companies exist because we all consume their goods and services, right? If we just stop consuming their goods and opt for better companies, individual actions can avert the climate crisis, right? Look at the bottom 50% of humans. The average income of the bottom 50% of humans was about $3920 per year. That’s about INR 4,26,000 or 32,300 Yuan annually. If you factor in regional disparities, the picture should be sharper. The poorest 50% simply do not consume enough to have any significant impact on the climate. Honestly, having grown up in India, if I did not need to factor in retirement funds, the ever-rising housing prices, and (future) children’s college fees, INR 4,00,000 is actually a sufficient income for a comfortable life in an Indian town. So, what exactly do the rich consume that throws their carbon pollution off the charts compared to the rest of us?
Before that, just remember that carbon footprint as popularized in the media was a tool used by fossil fuel companies to divert attention from their own misdeeds. That’s not to say, individual actions do not matter. But solely focusing on them would completely miss the climate goals, given the carbon (and income) inequality highlighted above.
The best illustration of how the rich consume is perhaps made not by text, but by videos:
At 20 minutes, it is several times longer than the average instagram or youtube shorts, but hopefully, it is a nice watch down the subway, or during your dinner or lunch break!
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The standard guess is that the rich use private jets and yachts that pollute. And that is certainly true. The rich certainly consume more. 1000s of times more than the poorest. But when we say that 12 billionaires pollute more than 2.1 million homes, we are looking at a million-fold disparity. The difference in consumption habits only accounts for a thousand-fold inequality.
In terms of consumption alone, Taylor Swift emits more than the CEO of Exxonmobil! However, persons like the latter are also in charge of highly polluting means of production, such as fossil fuel and cement. Holcim’s cement production in 2020 alone produced about 19,000 times the carbon emissions of Taylor Swift’s private jets! In general, the cement industry is owned by roughly 7,000 individuals (< 1/1,000,000 of humans) and emits about 8% (about 1/12) of the global carbon emissions. The worse case holds for the fossil-fuel industry with 100 companies (their owners and the board) accountable for 70% of global emissions. It is also not the case that there are no solutions. There exist alternative means of production that can still drive profits. But perhaps, this is lesser profit than what can change the rich owner’s minds.
Besides controlling the means of production, the rich owners also engage in political lobbying influencing legal policies and public opinions. Remember the carbon footprint debacle?
Essentially, if you are rich, I commend you for reading this far. If you invest, you can choose to invest in environment friendly firms.
For the others, perhaps our actions need to be more thoughtful in terms of the impact they produce. They need to consider not only our individual consumption, but the means of production themselves, that are the final source of all the crisis. What concrete actions should we take? That’s a good question I don’t have the answer to.